THE SKY
ROAD
KEN MACLEOD
TOR
ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed'*
to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
book are either products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.
THE SKY ROAD
First published in Great Britain by Orbit
Copyright © 1999 by Ken MacLeod
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-812-57759-0
First U.S. edition: August 2000
First mass market edition: August 2001
Printed in the United States of America
0987654321
For Mic
CONTENTS
1 THE LIGHT AND THE FAIR 1
2 ANCIENT TIME 17
3 THE SHIP O THE YIRD 36
PAPER TIGERS 76
4
5 THE CHURCH OF MAN 101
6 LIGHT WEAPONS 132
THE CLAIMANT BAR 163
7
8 WESTERN APPROACHES 193
9 THE SICKLE'S SANG 219
10 FORGET BABYLON 240
11 THE ROCK COVENANT 273
12 DARK ISLAND 300
THE SEA EAGLE 340
13
14 FINAL ANALYSIS 359
15 THE HAMMER'S HARVEST 402
1
THE LIGHT AND THE FAIR
So it came that Menial found him
in the square at Carron Town
S he walked through the fair in the light of
a northern summer evening, looking for me. Of
the hundreds of people around her, the thousands
in the town and the thousands on the project, only
I would serve her purpose. My voice and visage,
mind and body were her target acquisition
parameters.
I sat on the plinth of the statue of the Deliverer,
drained a bottle of beer and put it carefully down
and looked around, screwing up my eyes against the
westering sun. The music faded for a moment, then
another band struck up, something rollicking and
loud that echoed off the tall buildings around three
sides of the square and boomed out from the open
side across the shore and over the water. The still
sealoch was miles of gold, the distant hills and is-
lands stacks of black. The air was warm and shaking
with the music and heavy with scent and sweat,
2 KEN MACLEOD
alcohol-breath and weed-smoke. People were al-
ready dancing, swinging and swirling among the re-
maining stalls of the day's market. I caught glimpses
and greetings from various of my workmates, Jondo
and Druin and Machard and the rest, as they
whirled past in the throng with somebody who
might be their partner for the hour, or for the
night, or for longer.
For a moment, I felt intensely alone, and was
about to jump up and plunge in and seek out some-
one, anyone, who would take me even for one
dance. It was not normally this way; usually at such
occasions through the summer I had got lucky. Like
most of my fellow-workers, I was young and - of ne-
cessity - strong, and my vanity needed no flattery,
and we were most of us open-handed strangers, and
therefore welcome. But I was in a serious and ab-
stracted mood, the coming autumn's study already
casting its long shadow back, and in all that eve-
ning's gaiety I had not once made a woman laugh,
and my luck had fled.
She walked through that dense crowd as if it
wasn't there. I saw her before she saw me. Her long
black hair was caught around the temples by two
narrow braids; the tumbling waves of the rest
showed traces of auburn in the late sun. That
golden light and ruddy shadow defined her tanned
and flushed face: the large bright eyes, the high
cheekbones, the curve of her cheek and jaw, the red
lips. She wore a gown of plain green velvet that
seemed, and probably was, made to show off her
strong and well-endowed figure. Her gaze met mine,
and locked. Her eyes were large and a little slanted,
and they caught my glance like a trap.
There is, no doubt, some bodily basis for the
crude cartoon of such moments - the arrow
THE SKY ROAD 3
through the heart. A sudden demand on the sugar
reserves of the cells, perhaps. It's more like a thorn
than an arrow, and passes in less than a second, but
it's there, that sharp, sweet stab.
A moment later she stood in front of me, looking
down at me quizzically, curiously, then she came to
some decision and sat down beside me on the cold
black marble. The hooves of the Deliverer's horse
reared above us. We stared at each other for a mo-
ment. My heart was hammering. She appeared
younger, more hesitant, than she'd seemed with her
first bold gaze. Her irises were golden-brown, ringed
with green-blue. I could see a faint spatter of freck-
les beneath her tan. A fine gold chain around her
neck suspended a rough mesh of gold wire contain-
ing a seer-stone the size of a pigeon's egg. It hung
between her breasts, its small world flickering ran-
domly in that gentle friction. An even thinner silver
chain implied some other ornament, but it hung
below where I could see. The dagger and derringer
and purse on her narrow waist-belt were each so el-
egant and delicate as to be almost nominal. There
was some powerful undertone to her scent, whether
natural or artificial I didn't know.
'Well, here you are,' she said, as though we'd ar-
ranged to meet at this very place. For a couple of
heartbeats I entertained the thought that this might
be true, that she was someone I really did know and
had unaccountably, unforgivably forgotten — but no,
I had no memory of ever having met her before. At
the same time I couldn't get rid of a conviction that
I already knew her, and always had.
'Hello,' I said, for want of anything less banal.
'What's your name?'
'Menial,' she said. 'And you are . .. ?'
'Clovis,' I said 'Clovis colha Gree.'
4 KEN MACLEOD
She nodded to herself, as though some datum
had been confirmed, and smiled at me.
'So, colha Gree, are you going to ask me for a
dance?'
I jumped to my feet, amazed. 'Yes, of course.
Would you do me the honour?'
'Thank you,' she said. She took my hand in a
warm, dry grasp and rose gracefully, merging that
movement with her first step. It was a fast dance to
a traditional air, 'The Tactical Boys'. Talking was
impossible, but we communicated a great deal none
the less. Another measure followed, and then a
slower dance.
We finished it a long way from where we'd started
- fetched up close to the outside tables of the big-
gest pub on the square, The Carronade. Some of
the lads from work were already at one of the tables,
with their local girls. My mates gave me odd looks,
compounded of envy and secret amusement; their
female partners were looking lasers at Menial, for
no reason I could fathom. She was attractive all
right, and looking more beautiful to my eyes with
every passing second, but the other girls were not
obviously less blessed; and she wasn't a harlot, unless
she was foolish (harlotry being a respected but reg-
ulated trade in that town, its plying not permitted
in the square).
Introductions were awkwardly made.
'What will you be having, Menial?' I asked.
She smiled up at me. She was, in truth, almost as
tall as I, but my boots had high heels.
'A beer, please.'
'Fine. Will you wait here?'
I gestured to a vacant place on the nearest bench,
beside Jondo and his current lass.
'I will that,' Menial said.
THE SKY ROAD 5
Jondo shot me another odd look, a smile with one
corner of his mouth turned down, and his eyebrows
raised. I shrugged and went through to the bar, re-
turning a few minutes later with a three litre jug and
a couple of tall glasses. Menial was sitting where
she'd been, ignoring the fact that she was being ig-
nored. I put this unaccustomed rudeness down to
some petty pretty local quarrel, of which Carron
Town - and the yard and, indeed, the project - had
plenty. If one of Menial's ancestors had offended
one of Jondo's (or whoever's) that was no business
of mine, as yet.
The table was too wide for any intimate conver-
sation to be carried on across it, so I sat down beside
her, setting off a Newtonian collision of hips all the
way along the bench as my friends and their girl-
friends shuffled their bums away from us. I filled
our glasses and raised mine.
'Slainte,' I said.
'Slainte, mo chridhe? she said, quietly but firmly,
her gaze level across the tilted rim.
And cheers, my dear, to you, I thought. Again her
whole manner was neither shy nor brazen, but as
though we had been together for months or years.
I didn't know what to say, so I said that.
'I feel we know each other already,' I said. 'But
we don't' I laughed. 'Unless when we were both
children?'
Menial shook her head. 'I was not here as a
child,' she said, in a vague tone. 'Maybe you've seen
me at the project'
'I think I would remember,' I said. She smiled,
acknowledging the compliment, as I added, *You
work at the project? I sounded more surprised than
I should have been - there were plenty of women
6 KEN MACLEOD
working on it, after all, in catering and administra-
tion.
'Aye,' she said, 'I do.' She fondled the pendant,
warming a fire within it, and not only there. 'On the
guidance system.'
'Oh,' I said, suddenly understanding. 'You're a —
an engineer.'
'I am a tinker,' she said in a level tone, using the
word I'd so clumsily avoided. She spoke it with a
pride as obvious, and loud enough to be heard. A
snigger and a giggle passed around the table. I
glared past Menial's shoulder at Jondo and Ma-
chard. They shook their heads slightly, doubtfully,
then returned to their conversations.
Justice judge them. As a city man I felt myself
above such rural idiocies - though realising her oc-
cupation had given even me something of a jolt.
Whatever passed between us, it would be less or
more serious than any fling with a local lass. I leaned
inward, so that Menial's shoulders and mine de-
fined a social circle of our own.
'Sounds like interesting work,' I said.
She nodded. 'A lot of mathematics, a lot of - and
this time she did lower her voice - 'programming.'
'Ah,' I said, trying to think of some response that
wouldn't reveal me to be as prejudiced as my work-
mates. 'Isn't it very dangerous?' I resisted the im-
pulse to look over my shoulder, but I was suddenly,
acutely aware of the massive presence of the hills
around the town, their forested slopes like the bris-
tling backs of great beasts in the greater Wood of
Caledon.
'White logic,' Menial explained. 'The right-hand
path, you know? The path of light.' She did not
sound as though the distinction mattered a lot to
her.
THE SKY ROAD 7
'Reason guide you,' I responded, with reflex pi-
ety. 'But - it must be tempting. The short cuts,
yeah?'
'The path of power is always a temptation,' she
said, with casual familiarity. 'Especially when you're
working on a guidance system!' She laughed; I con-
fess I shuddered. She fingered her talisman.
'Enough about that. I know what I'm doing, so it
isn't dangerous. At least, not as dangerous as it looks
from outside.'
'Well.' Despite the electric frisson her words
aroused, I was as keen as she was to change the sub-
ject. *You could say the same about what I do.'
'And what do you do?' She asked it out of polite-
ness; she already knew. I was sure of that, without
quite knowing why.
'I work in the yard,' I said.
'On the ship?'
'Oh, not on the ship!' A self-deprecating laugh,
not very sincere. 'On the platform. For the summer,
I'm a welder.'
She slugged back some beer. 'And the rest of the
time?'
'I'm a scholar,' I said. 'Of history. At Glaschu.'
This was a slight exaggeration. I had just attained
the degree of Master of Arts, and my summer job
was a frantic, frugal effort to earn enough to sup-
port myself for an attempt at a doctorate. Scholar-
ship was my ambition, not my occupation. But I
refused to call myself a student. Menial looked at
me with the sort of effortful empathy with which I'd
favoured her self-disclosure. 'That sounds ... inter-
esting,' she said. 'What part of history?'
I gestured across the square, to the statue's black
silhouette. Behind it, from the east, the first visible
stars of the evening pricked the sky.
8 KEN MACLEOD
The life of the Deliverer,' I said.
'And what have you learned?' She leaned closer,
transparently more interested; her black brows
raised a fraction, her bright dark eyes widening.
Without thinking, I lit a cigarette; remembered my
manners, and offered her one. She took it, grin-
ning, and helped herself to the jug of beer, then
filled my glass too. *You wouldn't think there'd be
much new to learn,' she added, looking up through
her eyelashes.
I rose to the bait. 'Ah, but there is!' I told her.
'The Deliverer lived in Glasgow, you know. For a
while.'
'A lot of places will tell you she lived there - for
a while!' Menial laughed.
'Aye, but we have evidence,' I said. 'I've seen pa-
pers written with her own hand, and signed. There
is no controversy that it was her who wrote them.
What they mean, now, that's another matter. And a
great deal of other writing, printed articles that is,
and material that is still in the - you know.'
'Dark storage?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Dark storage. I wish—' Even here,
even now, it was impossible to say just what I wished.
But Merrial understood.
'There you go, colha Gree,' she said. 'The path
of power is always a temptation!'
'Aye, it is that,' I admitted gloomily. *You can look
at them, labelled in her own hand, and you wonder
what's in them, and - well.'
'Probably corrupt,' she said briskly. 'Not worth
bothering with.'
'Of course corrupt—'
She shook her head, with a brief, small frown. 'In
the technical sense,' she explained. 'Garbage data,
unreadable.'
THE SKY ROAD 9
Garbage data? What did that mean?
'I see,' I said, seeing only that she'd just tried to
explicate part of the argot of her profession; an-
other unseasonable intimacy.
'All the same,' she went on, 'it must be strange
work, history. I don't know how you can bear it,
digging about in the dead past.'
I had heard variations of this sentiment from so
many people, starting with my mother, that exas-
peration welled within me and I'm sure showed on
my face. She smiled as though to assure me that she
didn't hold it against me personally, and added,
'The Possessors don't work only through the black
logic, you know. They can get to your mind through
their words on paper, too.'
*You speak very freely,' I said. For a woman, I
didn't add.
She took it as a compliment, and thus paid me
one by not recognising the stiff-kneed priggishness
that my remark represented.
'It's the tinker way,' she said, giving me another
small shock. 'We talk as we please.'
I couldn't come back on that, so I ploughed on.
'We have to understand the Possession,' I ex-
plained self-righteously, 'to understand the Deliver-
ance.'
'But do we understand the Deliverance?' she
asked, teasing me relentlessly. 'Do you, Clovis colha
Gree?'
T can't say,' I said - which was true enough,
though ecological with the truth.
'Good,' Merrial said. 'We would not claim to un-
derstand it, and we knew the Deliverer better than
most.' A sly smile. 'As you know.'
I nodded, slowly. I knew all right. Despised and
feared though they sometimes are, it is not for noth-
10 KEN MACLEOD
ing that the tinkers are known as the Deliverer's
children. They worked her will long ago, in the trou-
bled times, and the benison of that work has pro-
tected them down the generations; that and - on a
more cynical view — their obscure and irreplaceable
knowledge.
I had heard rumours - always disparaged by the
University historians - of a firmer continuity, a
darker arcana, that linked today's tinkers and the
Deliverer, and that reached back to times yet more
remote, when even the Possession was but a sapling,
its shadow not yet covering the Earth.
Her hand covered mine, briefly.
'Don't talk about it,' she said.
So we talked about other things: her work, my
work, her childhood and mine. The glasses were
twice refilled. She stood up, hefting the now empty
jug. 'Same again?'
I rose too, saying, 'I'll get them—'
'I insist,' she said, and was gone. I watched the
sway of her hips, the way it carried over to swing her
heavy skirt and ripple the torrent of hair down her
back, as she passed through the crowd and disap-
peared through the wide door of The Carronade.
My friends observed this attention with sardonic
smiles.
*You're in for an interesting time, Clovis,' Jondo
remarked. He stroked his long red pony-tail sugges-
tively, making his girlfriend laugh again. 'Looks like
the glamour's got you.'
Machard smirked. 'Seriously, man,' he told me,
'take care. You don't know tinks like we do. They're
faithless, godless, clannish and they don't settle
down. At best she'll break your heart, at worst—'
'What is the matter with you?' I hissed, leaning
sideways to keep the girls out of the path of my
THE SKY ROAD 11
wrath. 'Come on, guys, give the lady a chance/
My two friends' expressions took on looks of in-
solent innocence.
'Ease off, Clovis,' said Machard. 'Just advice. Ig-
nore it if you like, it's your business.'
'Too damn right it is,' I said. 'So mind your own.'
I spoke the harsh words lightly - not fighting words,
but firm. The two lads shrugged and went back to
chatting up their lassies. I was ignored, as Menial
had been.
The late train from Inverness glided down the
glen, sparks from the overhead wire flaring in the
twilight, and vanished behind the first houses. A
minute later I could hear the brief commotion as it
stopped at the station, a few streets away. The clouds
and the tops of the hills glowed pink, the same light
reflecting off a solitary airship, heading west. Few
lights were on in the town - half past ten in the
evening was far too early for that - but the houses
that spread up the side of the glen and along the
shore were beginning to seem as dark as the pine
forest that began where the dwellings ended.
Farther up the great glen the side-lights and tail-
lights of vehicles traced out the road's meander, and
the dark green of the wooded hillsides met the
bright green of the lower slopes, field joined to
field, pasture to pasture all the way to where the
haunches of the hills hid the view, and the land was
dark. Somewhere far away, but sounding uncannily
close, a wolf howled, its protracted, sinister note
clearly audible above the sounds of the town and
the revelry of the fair.
The square was becoming more packed and noisy
by the minute. The drinking and dancing would go
on for hours. Jugglers and tumblers, fire-eaters and
musicians competed for attention and spare cash,
12 KEN MACLEOD
with each other and with the hawkers. The markets
on summer Thursdays were locally called 'the fair',
but only once a month did they amount to much,
with a more impressive contingent of performers
than were here now, as well as travelling players,
whirling mechanical rides and, of course, tinkers; the
last pursuing their legitimate trade of engineering
and their less reputable, but often more lucrative,
craft of fortune-telling.
The train pulled away, trailing its sparks along the
Canon's estuarial plain and around the Carron sea-
loch's southern shore.
Menial returned with a full jug, a bottle of whisky
and a tray of small glasses. Without a word she
placed the tray and the bottle in the middle of the
table and sat down, this time opposite me. She filled
our tall glasses, put down the jug and gestured to
the whisky bottle. 'Help yourselves,' she said.
My friends became more friendly towards her af-
ter that. We all found ourselves talking together,
talking shop, the inevitable gossip and grumbles of
the project, about this scandal and that foreman
and the other balls-up; ironically, the girls seemed
to feel excluded, and fell to talking between them-
selves. Menial, showing tact enough for both of us,
noticed this and gradually, now that the ice was bro-
ken, returned her conversation to me. Jondo and
Machard took up again their neglected tasks of se-
duction or flirtation. When, a couple of hours later,
she asked me to see her home, their ribaldry was
relatively restrained.
The square was noisier than ever; the only people
heading for home, or for bed, were like ourselves
workers on the project who, unlike the locals, had
to work on the following day, a Friday. We walked
THE SKY ROAD 13
through the dark street to the north of the square
and across the bridge over the Carron River towards
the suburb of New Kelso. Merrial stopped in the
middle of the bridge. One arm was tight around my
waist. With the other, she waved around.
'Look,' she said. 'What do you see?'
On our right the town's atomic power-station's au-
tomation hummed blackly in the dark; to our left
the fish-farms, warmed by the reactor's run-off,
spread down to the shore. I looked to left and right,
and then behind to the main town, ahead to New
Kelso, across the loch to the other small towns.
She smiled at my baffled silence.
'Look up.'
Overhead the Milky Way blazed, the aurora bo-
realis flickered, a communications aerostat glowed
pink in a sun long since set for us. The Plough hung
above the hills to the north. A meteor flared briefly,
my indrawn breath a sound effect for its silent pas-
sage. To the west the sky still had light in it: the sun
would be up in four hours.
T can see the stars,' I said.
'That's it,' she said, sounding pleased at my per-
ceptiveness. 'You can. We're in the very middle of a
town of ten thousand people, and you can see the
Milky Way. Not as well as you could see it from the
top of Glas Bhein, sure enough, but you can see it.
Why?'
I shrugged, looking again back and forth. I'd
never given the matter thought.
'No clouds?' I suggested brightly.
She laughed and caught my hand and tugged me
forward. 'And you a scholar of history!'
'What's that got to do with it?'
She pointed to the street-lamp at the end of the
bridge's parapet. Its post was about three metres
14 KEN MACLEOD
high; its conical cowl's reflective inner surface
sharply cut off all but the smallest upward illumi-
nation. 'Did you ever see lamps like that in pictures
of the olden times?' she asked.
'Now that I come to think of it,' I said, 'no.'
'A town this size would have had lamps every-
where, blazing light into the sky. From street-lamps
and windows and shop-fronts. The very air itself
would glow with it. You could see just a handful of
stars on the clearest night.'
I thought about the ancient pictures I'd peered
at under glass. You know, you're right,' I said.
'That's what it looked like.'
'Some people,' Menial went on, in a sudden gust
of anger, 'lived their whole lives without once seeing
the Milky Way!'
'Very sad,' I said. In fact the thought gave me a
tight feeling in my chest, as if I were struggling to
breathe. 'How did they stand it?'
'Aye, well, that's a question you could well ask.'
She glanced up at me. 'I thought you might know.'
'I never noticed, to be honest.'
'And why don't we do it?' She gestured again at
the electric twilight of the surrounding town.
'Because it would be wasteful,' I said. As soon as
the words were out I realised I'd said them without
thinking, and that it wasn't the answer.
Menial laughed. 'We have power to spare!'
It was my turn to stop suddenly. We'd taken a
right and were going down a path past the power-
station. I knew for a fact that it could, when called
upon in a rare emergency - such as when extra heat-
ing was required to clear snow from a blizzard -
produce enough electricity to light up Canon Town
several times over.
You're right,' I said. 'So why don't we do it? I've
THE SKY ROAD 15
seen pictures of the great cities of antiquity, and
you're right, they shone. They looked. . . magnifi-
cent. Perhaps it was so bright they didn't need to
see the stars - they had the city lights instead! They
made their own stars!'
Menial was slowly shaking her head.
'Maybe that was fine for them,' she said. 'But it
wouldn't be for us. We all get - uneasy when we
can't see the night sky. Don't you, just thinking
about it?'
I took a deep breath, and let it out with a sigh.
'Aye, you're right at that!'
We walked on, her strides pacing my slower steps.
*You're a strange woman,' I said.
She smiled and held my waist more firmly and
leaned her head against my shoulder. I found myself
looking down at her hair, and down at the scoop
neckline of her dress and the glowing stone between
her breasts.
'Sure I am,' she said. 'But so are we all, that's what
I'm saying. We're different from the people who
came before us, or before the Deliverer's time, and
nobody wonders how or why. The feeling we have
about the sky is just part of it. We live longer and
we breed less, we sicken little, sometimes I think
even our eyes are sharper} these changes are hard-
wired into our radiation-hardened genes—'
'Our what?'
I felt the shrug of her shoulder.
'Just tinker cant, colha Gree. Don't worry. You'll
pick it up.'
'Oh, I will, will I?'
'Aye. If you stay with me.'
There was only one answer to that. I turned her
around and kissed her. She clasped her lips to mine
and slid her hands under my open waistcoat and
16 KEN MACLEOD
sent them roving around my sides and back. I could
feel them through my silk shirt like hot little ani-
mals. The kiss went on for some time and ended
with our tongues flickering together like fish at the
bottom of a deep pool; then she leaned away and
gripped my shoulders and looked at me and said, 'I
reckon that means you're staying, colha Gree.'
Suddenly we were both laughing. She caught my
hand and swung it and we started walking again,
talking about I don't know what. Out on the edge
of town we turned a corner into a litde estate of
dozens of single-storey wooden houses with chim-
neys. Some of the houses were separate, each with
its own patch of garden; others, smaller, were lined
up in not quite orderly rows. Even in the summer,
even with electricity cables strung everywhere, a
smell of woodsmoke hung in the air. Yellow light
glowed from behind straw-mat blinds. A dog barked
and was silenced by an irritable yell.
'Hey, come on/ Menial said with an impish smile.
I hadn't realised how my feet had hesitated as the
path had changed from cobbles to trampled gravel.
'Never been in a tinker camp before,' I apologi-
sed.
'We don't bite.' Another cheeky grin. 'Well, that
is to say...'
You really are a terrible woman.'
'Oh, I am that, indeed. Ferocious - so I'm told.'
'I'll hold you to that'
'I'll hold you to more.'
She held me as she stopped in front of one of the
small houses in the middle of the row, and fingered
out a tiny key five centimetres long on a thong at-
tached to her belt but hidden in a slit in the side of
her skirt. The lock too seemed absurdly small, a
THE SKY ROAD 17
brass circular patch on the white-painted door at eye
level.
'So are you coming in, or what?'
Lust and reason warred with fear and superstition,
and won. I followed her over the polished wooden
threshold as she switched on the electric light. I
stood for a moment, blinking in the sudden 40-watt
flood. The main room was about four metres by six.
Against the far wall was a wood-burning stove,
banked low; above it was a broad mantelpiece on
which a large clock ticked loudly. The time was half
past midnight. On either side of the stove were rows
of shelves with hundreds of books. In the left-hand
corner a workbench jutted from the wall, with a mi-
croscope and an unholy clutter of soldering gear
and bits of wire and tools. Rough, unpolished seer-
stones of various sizes lay among them. The main
table of the house was a huge oaken piece about a
metre and a half square, with carved and castered
legs. A crocheted cotton throw covered it, weighted
at the centre by a seer-stone hemisphere at least
thirty centimetres in diameter, so finely finished
that it looked like a dome of glass. Within it, hills
and clouds drifted by.
Menial stood by the table for a moment, reached
up behind her head and removed a clasp from her
hair, so that the two narrow braids fell forward and
framed her face. Then she lifted the chain with the
talisman, and the other, finer silver chain, from
around her neck and deposited them on the table.
The place smelt of woodsmoke and pot-pourri
and the bunches of flowering plants stuffed into
carelessly chosen containers in every available cor-
ner. The wooden walls were varnished, and hung
with an incongruous variety of old prints and paint-
ings - landscapes, ladies, foxes, cats, that sort of
18 KEN MACLEOD
thing - and tacked-up picture-posters related to the
project. An open door led to a tiny scullery; a cur-
tained alcove beside it took up the rest of that end
of the room. I presumed it contained the bed.
But it was to a big old leather couch in front of
the stove that she drew me first. She half-leaned,
half-sat on the back of it, and began unbuttoning
my shirt, then explored my chest with her lips and
tongue - and teeth - as I applied myself to undoing
the fastenings down the back of her dress, and work-
ing my boots off. As I kicked away the right boot
the sgean dhu clattered to the floor. By this time she
had unbuckled my belt, and with a shrug and a step
we both shed our outer clothes, which fell to the
floor in a promiscuous coupling of their own. Mer-
rial stood for a moment in nothing but her long silk
underskirt. I clasped her in my arms, her nipples
hard, her breasts warm and soft against my chest;
and we kissed again.
We moved, we danced, Menial leading, towards
the curtained alcove. She pulled away the curtain to
reveal a large and reassuringly solid-looking bed. I
knelt in front of her and pulled down her slip and
knickers, and kissed her between the legs until she
pulled me gently to my feet. I managed to leave my
own briefs on the floor.
We faced each other naked, like the Man and the
Woman in the Garden in the story. Menial half-
turned, threw back the bedcovers and picked up
from the bed a long white cotton nightgown, which
she shook out and held at arm's length for a mo-
ment.
'I won't be needing that tonight,' she grinned,
and cast it to the floor, and me to the bed.
THE SKY ROAD 19
I woke in daylight, and lay for a minute or so bask-
ing in the warm afterglow, and hot after-images, of
love and sex. Rolling over and reaching out my
arm, I found that I was alone in the bed. It was still
warm where Menial had slept. The air was filled
with the aroma of coffee and the steady ticking of
the clock -
The time! I sat up in a hurry and leaned forward
to see the big timepiece, and discovered with relief
that it was only five o'clock. Thank Providence, we'd
only slept an hour and a half. With the same move-
ment I discovered a host of minor pains: bites on
my shoulder and neck, scratches on my back and
buttocks, aching muscles, raw skin ...
The animal whose attacks had caused all this dam-
age padded out of the scullery.
'Good morning,' she said.
I made some sort of croaking noise. Menial
smiled and handed me one of the two steaming
mugs she'd carried in. She sat down on the foot of
the bed, drawing her knees up to her chin to huddle
inside her sark, its high neck and long sleeves and
intricate whitework giving her an incongruous ap-
pearance of modesty.
I sipped the coffee gratefully, unable to take my
eyes off her. She looked calmly back at me, with the
smile of a contented cat.
'Good morning,' I said, finding my voice at last.
'And thank you.'
'Not just for the coffee, I hope,' said Menial.
I was grinning so much that my cheeks, too, were
aching.
'No, not just for the coffee. God, Menial, I've
never...'
I didn't know how to put it.
'Done it before?' she inquired innocently.
20 KEN MACLEOD
Coffee went up the back of my nose as I splut-
tered a laugh.
* Compared with last night, I might as well not
have,' I ruefully admitted. 'You are - you're amaz-
ing!'
Her level gaze held me. She showed not the
slightest embarrassment. 'Oh, you're not so bad
yourself, colha Gree,' she said in a judicious tone.
'But you have a lot to learn.'
'I hope you'll teach me.'
'I'm sure I will,' she said. 'If you want to stay with
me, that is.' She waved a hand, as if this were a mat-
ter yet to be decided.
'Stay with you? Oh, Merrial!' I couldn't speak.
'What?'
'Nothing could make me leave you. Ever.'
I was almost appalled at what I was saying. I had
not expected to hear myself speak such words, not
for a long time to come.
'How sweet of you to say that,' she said, very se-
riously, but smiling. 'But—'
'But nothing!' I reached sideways and put the
mug on the floor and shifted myself down the bed
towards her. Without looking away from me, she put
her mug down too, on a trunk at the end of the
bed, and rocked forward to her knees to meet me.
We knelt with our arms around each other.
'I love you,' I said. I must have said it before, said
it a lot of times through the night, but now there
was all the weight in the world behind the words.
'I love you too,' she said. She clung to me with a
sudden fierceness, and laid her face on my shoul-
der. A wet, salt tear stung a love-bite there. She
sniffed and raised her head, blinking her now even
brighter eyes.
THE SKY ROAD 21
'What's wrong?' I asked.
Tm happy/ she said.
'So am 1/
She regarded me solemnly. 'I have to say this/ she
said, with another unladylike sniffle. 'Loving me will
not always make you happy/
I could not imagine what she meant, and I didn't
want to. 'Why are you saying this?'
'Because I must,' she said. Her voice was strained.
'Because I have to be fair with you.'
'Aye, sure,' I said. 'Well, now you've warned me,
can I get on with loving you?'
She brightened instantly, as though some arduous
responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders.
'Oh yes!' she said, hugging me closer again. 'Love
me as much as you like, love me for ever!' She
pulled back a little, looked down, then raised her
gaze again to mine.
'But not right now,' she added regretfully. *You
have to go.'
'Now?!' We had fallen out of our mutual dream
into the workaday world, where we were two people
who didn't, really, know each other all that well.
'Yes,' she insisted. *You have to get back across
town, get... washed, and ready for work and catch
the bus at half past six.'
'I can catch it from here.'
'The hell you can. People will talk.'
'They'll talk anyway.'
'People around here, I mean.'
I climbed reluctantly off the bed. Menial slipped
lithely under the covers and pulled them up to her
chin.
'What about you?' I asked, as I searched out and
sorted my clothes.
22 KEN MACLEOD
I'm an intellectual worker/ she said smugly as
she snuggled down. 'We start at nine.'
She watched me dress with a sort of affectionate
curiosity. 'What have you got on your belt?'
I patted the hard leather pouches and fastened
the buckle. 'The tools of a tradesman,' I told her,
'and the weapons of a gentleman.'
'I see,' she said approvingly.
'So when will I see you again?' I asked, as I re-
covered the sgean dhu and stuck it back down the
side of my boot.
'Tonight, eight o'clock, at the statue? Go for
something to eat?'
I pretended to give this idea thoughtful consid-
eration, then we both laughed, and she sat up again
and reached out to me. We hugged and kissed
goodbye. As I backed away to the door, grudging
even a moment without her in my sight, a flickering
from the big seer-stone caught my eye. I stopped
beside the table and stooped to examine it. As I did
so I noticed Menial's two pendants: the talisman -
the small seer-stone - now showing a vaguely or-
ganic tracery of green, and on the silver chain a
silver piece about a centimetre in diameter which
appeared to be a monogram made up of the letters
'G' and T' and the numeral '4'.
The table's centre-piece was all black within, ex-
cept for an arrangement of points of light which
might have been torches, or cities, or stars. They
flashed on and off, on and off, and the bright dots
spelled out one word: HELP.
I glanced over at Menial. 'It's reached the end of
its run,' I remarked.
'Reset it then,' she said sleepily from the pillow.
I brushed the stone's chill surface with my sleeve,
restoring it to chaos, and with a final smile at Mer-
THE SKY ROAD 23
rial opened the door and stepped out into the cock-
crowing sunlight.
and she threw her arms around him
that same night she drew him down.
2
ANCIENT TIME
D. eath follows me, she thought, as she
rode into the labour-camp. There was something
implacable about it, like logic: it follows, it follows .
. . The thought's occurrence had nothing to do with
logic; it appeared like a screensaver on the surface
of her mind, whenever her mind went blank. It
troubled her a little, as did another thought that
drifted by in such moments: where are the swift
cavalry ?
The gate rolled shut behind her, squealing in its
rusty grooves. The wind from the steppe hummed
in the barbed-wire fence and whipped away the dust
kicked up as she reined in the black horse. A guard
hurried over; he somehow managed to make his
brisk soldierly step look obsequious, even as his
bearing made his dark-blue microfibre fatigues look
military. He doffed a baseball cap with the Mutual
Protection lettering and logo.
' Good morning, Citizen.'
That title was already an honorific. Myra Godwin-
Davidova smiled and handed him the reins.
'Good morning,' she said, swinging down from
THE SKY ROAD 25
the horse. She could hear her knee-joints creak. She
lifted the saddlebags and slung them over her shoul-
der. The weight almost made her stagger, and the
guard's arm twitched towards her; but she wasn't
going to accept any help from that quarter. 'That
will be all, thank you.'
'As you wish, Citizen.' The guard saluted and re-
placed his cap. She was still looking down at him,
her riding-boots adding three inches to her five-
foot-eleven height.
She patted the big mare's rump and watched as
the guard led the beast away, then set off towards
the accommodation huts. As she walked she pulled
off her leather gauntlets and stuffed them awk-
wardly into the deep pockets of her long fur coat,
and tucked a stray strand of silver hair under her
sable hat. Hands mottled, veins showing, nails
ridged: tough claws of an old bird, still flexible, but
a better indication of her true age than her harshly
lined but firm face, straight back and limber stride.
Her knees hurt, but she tried not to let it show, or
slow her down.
The camp perimeter was about one kilometre by
two. Beyond the far fence she could see straight to
the horizon, above which rose the many gantries
and the few remaining tall ships of the old port. It
had been a proud fleet once. How long before she
would have to say, all my ships are gone and all my men
are dead?
As if to mock her thought, a small ship screamed
overhead; she caught a glimpse of it: angular, fac-
eted, translucent, a spectral stealth-bomber shriek-
ing skyward from Baikonur on a jet of laser-heated
steam. The trail's after-image floated irritatingly in
front of her as she turned her gaze resolutely back
to earth.
26 KEN MACLEOD
One of the camp's factories was a couple of hun-
dred metres away, a complex of aluminium pipework
and fibre-optic cabling in a queasily organic-looking
mass about fifty metres wide and twenty high,
through which the control cabins and walkways of
the human element were beaded and threaded like
the eggs and exudate of some gargantuan insect. The
name of the company that owned it, Space Mer-
chants, was spelled out on the roof in twisty neon.
As she approached the nearest workers' housing
area it struck Myra, not for the first time, that the
huts were more modern and comfortable than the
concrete apartment block she lived in herself. Each
hut was semi-cylindrical, its rounded ends stream-
lined to the prevailing wind; soot-black polycarbon
skin with rows of laminated-diamond windows.
This particular cluster of accommodation huts
was in two rows of ten, with the rutted remains of a
twenty metre-wide paved road between them. A
gang of a dozen men was engaged in repairing the
road; the breeze carried a waft of sweat and tar. The
men were using shovels, a gas burner under a
tipping-and-spreading contraption, and a coughing
diesel-engined road-roller: primitive, heavy equip-
ment. On the sidewalk a blue-suited Mutual Protec-
tion guard lounged, picking his teeth and
apparently watching a show in his eyes and hearing
music or commentary in his ears.
The loom of Myra's shadow made him jump,
blink and shake his head with a small shudder. He
started to his feet.
'No need to get up,' Myra said unkindly. 'I just
want to speak to some of the men.'
'They're on a break, Citizen,' he said, squinting
up at her. 'So it's up to them, right?'
THE SKY ROAD 27
* Right,' said Myra. Physical work counted as rec-
reation. It was the intellectual labour of design and
monitoring that taxed the convicts' nerves.
She turned to the men, who waved to her and
shouted greetings and explanations: she'd have to
wait the few minutes it would take for them to finish
spreading and rolling some freshly poured tarmac.
Not offering one to the guard, she lit a Marley and
let the men take their time finishing their break.
She'd always insisted that her arrivals and inspec-
tions counted as work-time for the labourers.
Her spirits lifted as the Virginia and the Morocco
kicked in. The labourers had their yellow suits
rolled down to the waist, and were sweating even
though the temperature had just climbed above
freezing. Most of them were younger - let's face it,
far younger - than herself; dark-tanned Koreans and
Japanese, muscular as martial arts adepts - which,
indeed, some of them were. She enjoyed watching
them, the effect of smoke amplifying the underlying
undertone of lust, the happy, hippy hormonal
hum . . .
But that reminded her of Georgi, and her mood
crashed again. Georgi was dead. Sometimes it
seemed every man she'd ever fucked was dead; it
was like she carried a disease: Niall MacCallum had
died in a car crash, Jaime Gonzalez had died - what?
- seventy years ago in the contra war, Jon Wilde had
died in her arms on the side of the Karaganda road
(on snow that turned red as his face turned white),
and now Georgi Davidov had died in the consulate
at Almaty, of a heart attack. (They expected her to
believe thai?)
There had been others, she reminded herself.
Quite recent others. It wasn't every man she'd ever
fucked who was doomed, it was every man she'd
28 KEN MACLEOD
ever loved. There was only one exception she knew
of. All her men were dead, except one, and he was
a killer.
Even, perhaps, Georgi's killer. Fucking heart attack,
my ass! It was one of their moves, it had to be — a
move in the endgame.
A door banged open somewhere and the street
suddenly swarmed with children pelting along and
yelling, their languages and accents as varied as the
colours of their skins. Few of the camp's bonded
labour-force were women, but many of the men had
women with them; there was every inducement for
the prisoners to bring their families along. It was
humane, but politic as well: a man with a woman
and children was unlikely to risk escape or revolt.
Surrounded by children calling to their fathers,
poking fingers in the hot asphalt, crowding around
the machines and loudly investigating, die gang
knocked off at last, leaving the guard to mind the
newly tarred road. Myra savoured his disgruntled
look as she crushed the filter roach under her heel
and stepped out into the centre of the untarred part
of the street.
'Hi, guys.'
They all knew who she was, but the only ones
among them she recognised were two members of
the camp committee, Kim Nok-Yung and Shin Se-
Ha. The former was a young Korean shipyard
worker, stocky and tough; the latter a Japanese
mathematician of slender build and watchful mien.
Kim seized her hand, grinning broadly.
'Hello, Myra.'
'Good to see you, Nok-Yung. And you, Se-Ha.'
The Japanese man inclined his head. 'Hi.' He in-
sisted on taking her saddlebags. The whole gang
surrounded her, flashing eyes and teeth, talking to
THE SKY ROAD 29
each other and to her without much regard for mu-
tual comprehension. They shooed away the children
and led her into the nearest hut. Its doorway film
brushed over her, burst in a shower of droplets with
an odour of antiseptic, and reformed behind her.
She blinked rapidly and shrugged out of her heavy
coat, throwing it on to one of a row of hooks that
grew from the curving wall.
Her first deep breath was evidence enough of how
effective the filter film was at keeping out the dust.
At the same time, it brought a flush to her skin as
her immune system rushed to investigate whatever
she'd just inhaled of the nanoware endemic to the
building's interior. She followed Kim into the
dining-area, an airy space of flat-surfaced furnish-
ings - some a warning red to indicate that they were
for heating, others white for eating off. The chairs
were padded black polycarbon plastic. Around the
walls, racked on shelves or stacked on floors, were
thousands of books: centuries' worth of classics and
bestsellers and blockbusters and textbooks, as if
blown from the four winds and fetched up against
these barriers. It would have been the same in any
of the huts. The next most common items of clutter
were musical instruments and craft equipment and
products: plastic scrimshank, spaceships in bottles,
elaborately carved wooden toys.
As they sat down around a table Myra felt prickly
and on edge. She tugged her eyeband, a half-
centimetre-wide crescent of translucent plastic, from
her hair and placed it across her temples, in front
of her eyes. A message drifted across her retina.
'Nanoprotect56 has detected the following known
surveillance molecules in the room: Dataphage,
Hackendice, Reportback, Mercury, Moldavian. Do
you wish to clean up?'
30 KEN MACLEOD
She blinked when the cursor stopped on the Pro-
ceed option, took a deep breath, held it until her
lungs were burning, then exhaled. The faces around
the table were incurious and amused.
'Cleanup in progress,' the retinal display re-
ported. Myra took a deep breath. It felt cool this
time, as well as smooth.
'So we have privacy,' one of the Koreans said, with
heavy irony.
'Ah, fuck it,' Myra said. 'Happens every time. You
gotta assume they're listening.' There was bound to
be something else her current release of 'ware
wasn't up to catching: she imagined some tiny Tur-
ing machine ticking away, stitching sound-vibrations
into a long-chain molecule in the dirt She took a
recorder - larger and less advanced than the one in
her mental picture - from her pocket and laid it on
the table. 'And I'm listening. So, what have you got
for me?'
A quick exchange of glances around the table
ended as usual with Kim Nok-Yung accepted as the
spokesman. He rustled a paper from an inner
pocket and ran a finger down the minutes; Matters
Arising started with the routine first question.
'Any progress on POW recognition?'
Myra was touched by the note of hope with which
he asked the question, the hundredth time no dif-
ferent from the first. She compressed her lips and
shook her head. 'Sorry, guys. Red Cross and Cres-
cent are working on it, and Amnesty. Still no dice.'
Nok-Yung shrugged. 'Oh well. Please make the
standard protest.'
'Of course.'
As they ticked their way down the list of com-
plaints and conditions and assignments and pay-
ments, Myra noticed that the whole pattern of
THE SKY ROAD 31
production in the camp had changed. The intensity
of the work, and the volume of output, had gone
up drastically. Twenty engines and a hundred hab-
itat modules completed for Space Merchants in the
past month! Nok-Yung and Se-Ha were subtly un-
derlining the changes with guarded glances and
shifts in tone, but they weren't commenting explic-
itly.
Myra looked around the table when they reached
the end of the agenda. No one had complained
about the speed-up. They didn't seem troubled; they
had an air of suppressed excitement, almost glee, as
they waited for her to speak. She checked over again
the figures in her head, and realised with a jolt that
at this rate most of the men here would work off
their fines - or 'debts' - in months rather than
years.
Another endgame move. Myra nodded slightly
and smiled. 'Well, that's it,' she said. 'Don't over-
work yourselves, guys. I mean it. Make sure you get
in plenty of road-mending, OK?'
The prisoners just grinned at their shared secret
She reached for the saddlebags, as though just re-
membering something. 'I've brought some books
for you.'
The men leaned inward eagerly as she unpacked.
They weren't allowed any kind of interface with the
net, and nothing that could be used to build one:
no televisions or computers or readers or VR rigs,
not even music decks. Nothing could stop Myra
carrying in whatever she liked - the saddlebags were
legally a diplomatic bag - but any electronic or
molecular contraband would have been confiscated
the moment she left. So hardbooks it had to be. The
prisoners and their families had an unquenchable
32 KEN MACLEOD
thirst for them. Myra's every visit brought more ad-
ditions to the drift.
This time she had dozens of paperbacks with
tasteful Modern Art covers and grey spines, 20th
Century Classics - Harold Robbins, Stephen King,
Dean Koontz and so on - which she shoved across
the table to the men whose names she didn't know.
For her friends Nok-Yung and Se-Ha she'd saved the
best for last: hardbooks so ancient that only ad-
vanced preservation treatments kept them from
crumbling to dust—
Rather like herself, she thought, as the books
passed one by one from her gnarled hands: an in-
credibly rare, possibly unique, copy of Tucker's edi-
tion of Stirner; the Viking Portable Nietzsche; and a
battered Thinker's Library edition of Spencer's First
Principles.
Kim Nok-Yung looked down at them reverently,
then up at her. Shin Se-Ha was in some kind of
trance. Nok-Yung shook his head.
'This is too much,' he said, almost angrily. 'Myra,
you can't—'
'Oh yes, I can.'
'Where did you get them?' asked Se-Ha.
Myra shrugged. 'From Reid, funnily enough.'
All the men were looking at her now, with sour
smiles.
'From David Reid? The owner?' Kim waved his
hand, indicating everything in sight.
'Yeah,' said Myra. 'The very same.'
There was a moment of sober silence.
'Well,' Nok-Yung said at last, 'I hope we make bet-
ter use of them than he did, the bastard.'
Everybody laughed, even Myra.
'So do I,' she said.
She settled back in her chair and passed around
THE SKY ROAD 33
the Marley pack and accepted the offer of coffee.
'OK, guys/ she said. 'The news. Everything's still
going to hell.' She grimaced. 'Same as last week. A
few shifts in the fronts, that's all. Take it from me,
you ain't missing much.'
'A few shifts in which fronts?' asked Se-Ha suspi-
ciously.
'Ah,' said Myra. 'If you must know - the north-
eastern front is... active.'
Another silent exchange of glances and smiles.
Myra didn't share in their pleasure, but couldn't
blame them for it. The two encroaching events that
filled her most with dread were, for them, each in
different ways an earnest of their early liberation.
She said her goodbyes, wondering if it was for the
last time, and took her now empty bags and stalked
away through the restitution-camp streets, and
mounted her horse and rode out of the gate, to-
wards the city.
Thinking about Reid, trying to think calmly and
destructively about Reid, she found her mind drift-
ing back. He had not always been such a bastard.
He'd been the first person to tell her she need never
die. That had been eighty-three years ago, when she
was twenty-two years old. She hadn't believed
him...
Death follows me.
*You don't have to die,' he told her.
Black hair framed his face, black eyebrows his in-
tent, brown-eyed gaze. Dave Reid was dark and
handsome but not, alas, tall. He wore a denim jacket
with a tin button - a badge, as the Brits called them
- pinned to its lapel. The badge was red with the
black hammer-and-sickle-and-4 of the International.
'What!' Myra laughed. 'I know it feels that way
34 KEN MACLEOD
now, everybody our age feels like that, yeah? But it'll
come to us all, man, don't kid yourself.'
She rolled back on her elbows on the grass and
looked up at the blue spring sky. It was too bloody
cold for this, but the sun was out and the ground
was dry, and that was good enough for sunbathing
in Scotland. The grassy slope behind the Boyd Orr
Building was covered with groups and couples of
students, drinking and smoking and talking. Prob-
ably missing lectures - it was already two in the af-
ternoon.
* Seriously,' Dave said, in that Highland accent
that carried the sound of wind on grass, of waves on
shore, 'if you can live into the twenty-first century,
you have a damn good chance of living for ever.'
'Says who? L. Ron Hubbard?'
Dave snorted. 'Arthur C. Clarke, actually.'
'Who?'
He frowned at her. 'You know - scientist, futurist
The man who invented the communications satel-
lite.'
'Oh, him,' Myra said scornfully. 'Sci-fi. 2001 and
all that' She saw the slight flinch of hurt in David's
face, and went on, *Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm
not saying it's impossible. Maybe hundreds of years
from now, maybe in communism. Not in our life-
times, though. Tough shit'
Dave shrugged and rolled another cigarette.
'We'll see.'
'I guess. And the rate you smoke those things,
you'll be lucky to be alive in the twenty-first century.
You won't even get to first base.'
'Och, I'll last another twenty-four years.' He
sighed, blowing smoke on to the slightly warm
breeze, then smiled at her mischievously. 'Unless I
become a martyr of the revolution, of course.'
THE SKY ROAD 35
* "I have a rendezvous with death, on some dis-
puted barricade"/ Myra quoted. 'Don't worry.
That's another thing won't happen in our lifetimes.'
The shadow of the tall building crept over Dave's
face. He shifted deftly, back into the sunlight.
'That's what you think, is it?'
*Yeah, that's what I think.' She smiled, and added,
with ironic reassurance, 'Our natural lifetimes, that
is.'
Dave hefted a satchel stuffed with copies of rev-
olutionary newspapers and magazines. 'Then what's
the point of all this? Why don't we just eat, drink
and be merry?'
Myra swigged from a can of MacEwan's, lowered
it and looked at him over its rim. 'That's what I am
doing right now, lover.'
He took her point, and reached out and stroked
the curve of her cheekbone. 'But still,' he persisted.
'Why bother with politics if you don't think we're
going to win?'
'Dave,' she said, 'I'm not a socialist because I ex-
pect to end up running some kinda workers' state
of my own some day. I do what I do because I think
it's right. OK?'
'OK,' said Reid, smiling; but his smile was amused
as well as affectionate, as though she were being na-
ive. Irritated without quite knowing why, she turned
away.
The city was called Kapitsa, and it was the capital of
the International Scientific and Technical Workers'
Republic, which had no other city; indeed, apart
from the camps, no other human habitation. The
ISTWR was an independent enclave on the fringe
of the Polygon - the badlands between Karaganda
and Semipalatinsk, a waste-product of Kazakhstan's
36 KEN MACLEOD
nuclear-testing legacy. A long time ago, Kapitsa
would have looked modern, with its centre of high-
rise office blocks, its inner ring of automatic facto-
ries, its periphery of dusty but tree-lined streets and
estates of low-rise apartment blocks, the bustling air-
port just outside and the busy spaceport on the ho-
rizon, from which the great ships had loudly
climbed, day after day. Now it was a rustbelt, as
quaintly obsolete as the Japanese car factories or the
Clyde shipyards or the wheat plains of Ukraine.
Myra, however, felt somewhat cheered as the
mare took her through the light traffic of the noon-
day streets. The apple trees were in bloom, and
every wall had its fresh-looking, colourful mural of
flowers or stars or ships or crowds or children or
heroes or heroines. Real ancient space-age stuff, an
effect enhanced by the younger - genuinely young
- people enjoying the chilly sunshine in the fash-
ionable scanty garb, which recalled the late 1960s in
its jaunty futurism. She looked at girls in skinny
tights and shiny, garish minidresses and found her-
self wondering if they were cold . . . probably not,
the clothes were only an imitation of their nylon or
PVC originals, the nanofactured fabrics veined with
heat-exchangers, laced with molecular machines.
The bright clothing gave the people on the street
an appearance of prosperity, but Myra was all too
aware that it was superficial. The clothes were
cheaper than paper, easily affordable even on Social
Security. Over the past few years, with the coming
of the diamond ships, the heavy-booster market had
gone into free fall, and unemployment had rock-
eted. The dole was paid by her department out of
the rent from Mutual Protection, and it couldn't
last. Nostalgia tourism - the old spaceport was now
a World Heritage Site, for what that was worth -
THE SKY ROAD 37
looked like the only promising source of employ-
ment.
Before she knew it, the horse had stopped, from
habit, outside the modest ten-storey concrete office-
block of the republic's government on Revolution
Square. Myra sat still for a moment, gazing wryly at
this week's morale-boosting poster on the official
billboard: a big black-and-white blow-up of the clas-
sic Tass photo of Gagarin, grinning out from his
cosmonaut helmet. She remembered the time, in
her grade-school classroom on the Lower East Side,
when she'd first seen this human face and had
formed some synaptic connection between Gaga-
rin's grin and Guevara's glare.
Space and socialism. What a swindle it had all
been. She shook the reins, took the mare at a slow
pace around to the back, stabled it, wiped the muck
from her boots and ascended the stairs. The corri-
dors to her office - at the front of the building, as
befitted a People's Commissar for Social Policy and
Prime Minister Pro Tern and (now that she came to
think about it) Acting President — were filled with a
susurrus of hurrying feet and fast-fading whispers.
Myra glanced sharply at the groups she passed, but
few seemed willing to return her look.
She closed the door of her office with a futile but
soul-satisfying slam. Let the apparatchiks worry
about her mood, if she had to worry about theirs.
The last time she'd sniffed this evasive air in the
corridors had been just before the first - and only -
time she'd fallen out of power, back in 2046. Then,
she'd suspected an imminent move from the Mutual
Protection company and its proteges within the state
apparatus: a coup d'etat Now, she suspected that Mu-
tual Protection and its allies were into the final
moves of a much wider game-plan, as wide as it
38 KEN MACLEOD
could be: a coup du monde. Or coup d'etoilel
She stalked to the window, shedding her coat and
hat and gloves in quick, violent movements, leaned
on her knuckles on the sill and scanned her sur-
roundings in a spasm of fang-baring territoriality.
No tanks or tramping feet sounded in her city's
streets, no black helicopters clattered in her coun-
try's sky. What did she expect? There were days at
least to go before anything happened - and, when
it did, the opening blows would be overt in larger
capitals than hers; she'd be nipped by CNN sound-
bites in the new order's first seconds.
She sighed and turned away, picked up her
dropped clothes and hung them carefully on the
appropriate branches of a chrome-plated rack.
The office was as self-consciously retro-modernist as
the styles on the street, if a little more sophisticated -
pine walls and floor, lobate leather layers at random
on both; ornaments in steel and silver, ebony and
plastic, of planetary globes and interplanetary craft.
She dropped into the office chair and leaned
back, letting it massage her shoulders and neck. She
slid the band across her eyes, summoned a head-up
display and rolled her eyes to study it. The anti-viral
'ware playing across her retinae flickered, but there
was nothing untoward for it to report; here, as in
all the offices, the walls had teeth. Her own software
was wrapped around her, its loyalty as intimate, and
as hard to subvert, as the enhanced immune-systems
in her blood. It was personal, it was a personal, a
unique configuration of software agents that
scanned the world and Myra's responses to the
world, and built up from that interaction a shrewd
assessment of her needs and interests. It looked out
information for her, and it looked after her invest-
ments. It did to the world nets what her Sterling
THE SKY ROAD 39
search engine did for her Library - it selected and
extracted what was relevant from the vast and
choppy sea of data in which most people swam or,
more often, drowned.
Having a good suite of personal 'ware was slighdy
more important for a modern politician than the
traditional personal networks of influence and in-
telligence. In the decade since she'd recovered
power, Myra had made sure that her networks -
both kinds, virtual and actual - were strong and in-
tertwined, strong enough to carry her if the struc-
ture of the state ever again let her down. Though
even that was unlikely - her purges, though blood-
less, had been as ruthless as Tito's. No official of the
ISTWR would ever again have the slightest misap-
prehension of where their best interests lay, and no
employee or agent of Mutual Protection would
fancy their chances of changing that.
She'd have to consult with the rest of Sovnarkom
soon enough - a meeting was scheduled for 3 p.m.
- and round up some of the scurrying underlings
from the corridors to prepare for it, but she wanted
to get her own snapshot of the situation first.
Myra's personal didn't have a personality, as far as
she knew, but it had a persona: a revolutionary, a
stock-market speculator, an arms dealer, a spy; a free-
wheeling, high-rolling, all-swindling communist-
capitalist conspirator out of some Nazi nightmare. It
had a name.
Tarvus,' she whispered. The retinal projectors on
her eyeband summoned an image of a big man in
a baggy suit and a shirt stretched across his belly like
a filled sail, scudding along on gales of information.
He strolled towards her, smiling, his pockets stuffed
with papers, his cigarette hand waving as he pre-
pared to tell her something. She'd never come
40 KEN MACLEOD
across a recording of the original Parvus in action,
but she'd given this one the appearance of one his-
toric Trotskyist leader, and the mad-scientist man-
nerisms of another, whose standard speech she'd
once sat through, long ago in the Student Union in
Glasgow.
'Give me the big picture.'
Parvus nodded. He ran his fingers through his
mop of white hair, furrowed his brow, grinned ma-
niacally.
'Jane's, I think.' He flicked an inch of ash, con-
jured a screen. Her gaze fixed on an option; she
blinked, and the room vanished from her sight;
again, and Earth fell away.
Her first virtual view, spun in orbit, was from Jane's
Market Forces - a publicly available, but prohibitively
expensive, real-time survey of military deployments
around the world. She was running the next-but-one
release, currently in beta test. It had cost the repub-
lic's frugal defence budget nothing more than the
stipend to place a patriotic Kazakh postgrad in the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's
equally cash-starved IT department. (That, and an
untraceable credit line to his comms account.)
Myra, long familiar with the conventional symbols
and ideographs, took it all in at an abstract level:
colour-coded, vectored graphs in a 3-D space, with
other dimensions implied by subtle shadings and
the timing of pulsations. That photic filigree hung
like a complicated cloud-system over the relatively
static histograms depicting the hardware and the
warm bodies. The physical locations and quantities
of personnel and materiel could provide only a
basement-level understanding of the world military
balance, just as the location of physical plant was
THE SKY ROAD 41
only a rough cut of the state of the world market.
Second by second, market and military forces
shifted unpredictably, their mutual interpenetration
more complex than any ideology had ever foreseen.
With most of the world's official armies revolution-
ary or mercenary or both, and most of the conflicts
settled in unarguable simulation before they started,
everyone from the bankers down through the gen-
erals to the grunts on the ground would shrug and
accept the virtual verdict, and change sides, rein-
force or retreat in step with their software shadows
- all except the Greens, and the Reds. They fought
for real, and played for keeps.
It was like the old Civilization game, Myra some-
times thought, with a new twist: Barbarism II. No-
body was going to wipe the board, nobody was going
to Alpha Centauri. They were all going down to-
gether, into the dark . . . Just as soon as enough ma-
jor players decided to contest the incontestable, and
put the simulations to the audit of war.
But, for the moment, the dark was full of twisting
light. And in the real world, blinked up as backdrop,
one front was more than virtual, and closer than
she'd like. Beyond the northern border of Kazakhs-
tan, itself hundreds of kilometres north of the
ISTWR, the Sino-Soviet Union's ragged front-line
advanced in flickers of real fire: guerilla skirmishes
and sabotage on one side, half-hearted long-range
shelling and futile carpet-bombing on the other.
The Sheenisov - the name was subtly derogatory,
like Vietcong for NLF and Yank for United Nations
- were the century's first authentic communist
threat, who really believed in their updated version
of the ideology which communistans like the ISTWR
parodied in post-futurist pastiche. Based in the god
forsaken back-country of recusant collective farms
42 KEN MACLEOD
and worker-occupied factories, stubbornly surviving
decades of counter-revolution and war, armed by
partisan detachments of deserters (self-styled, inev-
itably, 'loyalists') from the ex-Soviet Eastern and ex-
PRC Northern armies, they'd held most of Mongolia
and Siberia and even parts of north-west China since
the Fall Revolution back in 2045, and in the years
since then they'd spread across the steppe like li-
chen. Myra detested and admired them in equal
measure.
Of more immediate, and frustrating, concern: the
Sheenisov were outside the virtual world, a torn
black hole in the net. Their computers were per-
manently offline; their cadres didn't trade combat
futures; they refused all simulated confrontation or
negotiation; like the Green marginals in the West
and the Khmer Vertes in the South, the Reds in the
East put all to the test of practice, the critique of
arms. Even Jane's could only guess at their current
disposition.
But their serrated south-western edge was clear
enough, and as usual it was cutting closer to her
domain than it had been the last time she'd
checked. Like, this time yesterday. . .
She sighed and turned her attention from the
communists to tracing the darker deeds of a real
international conspiracy: the space movement.
Somewhere in that scored darkness, reading be-
tween those lines of light, she had to find the foot-
prints of a larger and more ragged army, impatient
to assume the world.
Her first step - acknowledged by the system with
startled gratitude - was to update the information
on Mutual Protection's labour-camp output. When
this was integrated and plausibly projected to the
company's whole global archipelago, a first-cut re-
THE SKY ROAD 43
evaluation of relative military-industrial weightings
sent ripples through the entire web. Just as well she
was working with a personal copy, Myra thought
wryly. This was information to kill for (although al-
ready, presumably, discounted by Mutual Protection
itself, which must surely know she knew).
She zapped the speculative update with a flashing
'urgent' tag to the People's Commissar for Finance,
and a less urgent summary to the comrade over at
Defence. Then she invoked her ongoing dossier of
space-movement activity, meshed in the new output
figures, and sent it to all the commissars, with her
own interpretation.
The 'space-movement coup' had been talked
about, openly, for so long that it had become unreal
- as unreal as the Revolution had been, until it had
finally come to pass. Myra herself had cried wolf on
the coup, once before. But now she felt herself vin
dicated. And, again, David Reid was involved.
Her former lover had built up Mutual Protection
from a security-service subsidiary of an insurance
company into a global business that dealt in resti-
tution: criminals working to compensate the dam-
age they'd done. Originally touted as a humane,
market-driven reform and replacement of the old
barbaric prison systems, its extension from common
criminals to political and military prisoners after the
Fall Revolution had given it an appalling, unstop-
pable logic of runaway expansion, in much the same
way as the use of prison labour in the First Five-Year
Plan had done for the original GULag.
For more than a decade now, those on the losing
side of small wars and increasingly minor crimes had
provided the manpower for a gigantic space-
settlement boom, applying whatever skills they had
- or could rapidly learn - to pay off their crime-
44 KEN MACLEOD
debts as quickly as possible. At the same time, the
proliferation of space-movement enclaves, each of
which incited a horde of beleaguering barbarians or
a swarm of furious bureaucrats, had provided an
endless pool of new convicts. Quite a large propor-
tion of the prisoners, on completion of their pay-
back time, had seized the abundant employment
opportunities the space projects offered.
Mutual Protection was now the armature of a
global coalition of defence companies, launch com-
panies, space settlement programmes, political cam-
paigns and a host of minor governments - many of
them creatures of these same companies. The space-
movement coalition was on the point of assembling
enough forces to re-create a stable world govern-
ment and to bring the former Space Defense batde-
sats back under UN control. Their objective, long
mooted, was to roll back the environmentalist and
anti-technological opposition movements, and shift
enough labour and capital into Earth orbit to create
a self-sustaining space presence that could ride out
any of the expected catastrophes below - of which,
God knew, there were plenty to choose from.
The coup itself was expected to proceed on two
levels. One was a political move to take over the rump
ReUN, by the votes of all the numerous ministates
that could be subverted, suborned or convinced. The
other was a military move, thus legitimised, to seize
the old US/UN Space Defense battlesats. That, Myra
reckoned, was behind the speed-up in the labour-
camps. No doubt massive subversion was going on
among the orbital military personnel, but by the na-
ture of the case there wasn't much she could know
about that.
She stared at the virtual screen for a long time,
until the clenchings of her fists and the twitching
THE SKY ROAD 45
grimaces of her face and the blinking-back of tears
confused the 'ware so much that it shut off, and left
her staring at the wall.
Sovnarkom - the Council of People's Commissars,
or, in more conventional terminology, the Cabinet
- was the appropriately small government of an al-
most unviably small state (population 99,854, last
time anyone had bothered to count, and dropping
by the day). The structures of the ISTWR were an
exercise in socialist camp, modelled on those of the
old Soviet republics but without the leading role of
the Party. The result of that strategic omission had
been a democracy as genuine as that of its inspira-
tion had been false. Or so it had seemed, in the
republic's more prosperous days.
Myra arrived early, and took the privilege of the
first arrival - the chairman's seat, at the head of the
long, bare table of scarred mahogany with a clunky
blast-proof secretarial device in the centre. There
were another dozen seats, six along either side of
the table, each with its traditional mineral water and
notepaper in front of it. The room was bare, win-
dowless but lit by full-spectrum plates in the ceiling.
The only decoration on the white walls was a framed
photograph of the long-dead nuclear physicist after
whom the city was named.
Valentina Kozlova came in, her military fatigues
elegant as always, her hair untidy, her hands full of
hardcopy. She was in her fifties, a still-young child
of the century, young enough and lucky enough to
have got the anti-ageing treatments before she got
old. She smiled tensely and sat down. Then Andrei
Mukhartov, cropped-blond, fortyish and looking it -
probably by intent - soberly conventional in a three-
piece suit of electric-blue raw silk. Denis Gubanov,
46 KEN MACLEOD
younger than the others, ostentatiously casual, need-
ing a shave, looking as though he'd just come in
from sounding out an informer in some sleazy
spaceport bar. Alexander Sherman arrived last, giv-
ing his usual impression of having been pulled away
from more urgent business. His fashionable pseudo-
plastic jump-suit was doubtless just the job for his
post, but Myra liked it even less than she liked him.
He sat down and glanced around as though expect-
ing the meeting to begin immediately, then pursed
his lips and slid two sheets of paper across to Myra.
'More resignations, I'm afraid,' he said. 'Tatyana
and Michael have ...'
Taken off for richer pastures,' Myra said. 'I
heard.' She looked at the empty spaces around the
depleted table, and shrugged. 'Well, according to
revolutionary convention there is no such thing as
an inquorate meeting, so ...'
'We really must co-opt some new members!' Sher-
man said.
'Yes,' said Myra drily. 'We really must'
Her tone made Alexander snap back, 'It's a dis-
grace - we have no Commissar for Law, or the In-
terior, or—'
*Yes, yes,' Myra interrupted. 'And half the fucking
members of the Supreme Soviet have fucked off -
the wrong half, as it happens, /couldn't find a com-
petent commissar for anything among the remain-
der. At the rate we're going, we won't have enough
of an electorate to make up the numbers! So what do
you suggest?'
Alexander Sherman opened his mouth, closed it,
and shrugged. His mutinous look convinced Myra
that he'd be the next to go — as Commissar for In-
dustry, he had the right connections already.
'OK, comrades,' Myra said, 'let's call the meeting
THE SKY ROAD 47
to order.' She took off her eyeband and laid it for-
mally on the table, and those who hadn't already
done so followed suit. It was not quite a rule to do
so, but it was the custom - a gesture of politeness
as well as an assurance that everyone was paying at-
tention - to set aside one's personal for the duration
of the meeting. Myra could never make up her mind
whether it was mutual trust, or mutual suspicion,
that lay behind the custom of not doing the same
with one's personal weapons. Nobody'd ever pulled
a gun at a Sovnarkom meeting, but there were prec-
edents ...
'Recorder: on. Regular meeting of the Council,
Friday 9 May 2059, Myra Godwin-Davidova presid-
ing, five members present' She looked around,
then looked back at the recorder's steel grille. 'I
move that we shelve the agenda and go straight to
emergency session. Starting with the death of Citi-
zen Davidov.'
No dissent. Seconds of silence passed.
'Don't all talk at once,' she said.
Valentina Kozlova (Defence) spoke first. 'Look,
Myra - Comrade Chair - we've all spoken to you
about Georgi's death. We were all very sorry to hear
of it'
Myra nodded. 'Thank you.'
'Having said that - we need to decide on our po-
litical response. Now, obviously the police in Almaty
are investigating, and so far there seem to be no
indications of foul play.' She shrugged. 'That, of
course, is hard to prove, these days. However...
Georgi Yefrimovich had a great deal of responsibil-
ity -' she gestured vaguely at Andrei Mukhartov, the
International Affairs Commissar ' - and in the cir-
cumstances, natural causes do seem likely.'
Myra sighed. *Yes, I appreciate that. And I appre-
48 KEN MACLEOD
ciate what all of you have said to me. Let me say for
the record that personally I don't accept that
Georgi's death was anything but an assassination.'
She faced down the resulting commotion.
'However,'' she continued, 'I don't ask or expect
any of you to take this as more than a suspicion. At
the moment, even the question of who might ben-
efit from it is very unclear - if Georgi was murdered,
it might have been by one side or the other. Possibly
some elements in the space movement saw him as
an obstacle to their... diplomacy. Possibly some
forces opposed to the space movement thought
we'd think exactly that, and had him killed as a
provocation. Or maybe, just maybe, his heart gave
out. Whatever - it's come at a bad time for us.'
Mukhartov grunted agreement.
After a moment of gloomy silence Valentina
spoke again. 'We've all studied your message,' she
said. 'What's your own suggested course of action?'
'We try to stop them, of course. Damned if I want
the fucking UN back on top of us, let alone one
controlled by the goddam space movement and its
proxies.'
Valentina leaned forward. 'For my part,' she said,
'I agree with your assessment. We have to be ready
for the new situation in which the space movement
controls the ReUN, and with it the Earth Defense
battlesats. But ' she hesitated a moment, sighed al-
most imperceptibly, and continued ' — I think that
the death of Georgi, the understandable suspicions
this has aroused, and the, ah, unexpected and unau-
thorised increase in labour-camp output may have
given your response a. . . subjective element' Ko-
zlova glanced around the table. 'The coming shift
in the balance of power can't be stopped by us, or
by anybody. The most we've been able to do -
THE SKY ROAD 49
thanks to Georgi's diplomacy - has been to help
keep Kazakhstan neutral, with a tilt against the take-
over. Even they wouldn't take direct action against
it, though God knows Georgi tried to persuade
them to. They assured us they just didn't have the
clout, and I believe them. Now you seem to be sug-
gesting that we throw our weight, such as it is,
against it. My own view is that we'd accomplish more
by staying neutral. It could work to our advantage -
if we accommodate ourselves to new realities in
good time.'
Myra unfroze her face. 'Get in on the winning
side, you mean?' she suggested lightly.
Yes, exactly,' Kozlova said. She seemed encour-
aged by Myra's response, or lack of response. 'After
all,' she ploughed on, 'we ourselves are in a way part
of the space movement, we go back a long way with
it, and the Sheenisov are as much a threat to us as
the barbarians and reactionary governments are to
some other enclaves. Frankly, I think we should put
out some diplomatic feelers to the other side before
the crunch, which as you correctly point out is a
matter of days or weeks away. And we're not exactly
in a position of strength at the moment. So there is
indeed a certain urgency to our decision.'
'Interesting,' Myra murmured. 'Anyone else?'
Denis Gubanov (Internal Security) broke in
sharply. 'The Chair spoke in her message of states be-
ing suborned and subverted. I don't think we should
let ourselves become one of them! Whatever the
rhetoric, and the propaganda of inevitability, it's ob-
vious what's going on. Imperialism took a severe blow
with the fall of the Yanks, but the blow wasn't fatal,
worse luck. Monopoly capital always finds new politi-
cal instruments, and the space movement, so-called,
has proved an admirable vehicle.' He snorted,
50 KEN MACLEOD
briefly. 'Literally - a launch vehicle! Through it, the
rich desert the Earth. Why should we help them on
their way?'
'More to the point,' said Sherman (Trade and In-
dustry) , making his disdain for Denis's rhetoric em-
phatically clear, 'there is the question of what we
will do for a living when the camps are worked out.'
'We could always—' began Kozlova, as though
about to say something in jest, then glanced at Myra
and shut up.
'What?'
'Nah. Forget it. The business to hand is what we
do now, about the coup.'
Myra let the argument go on. There was a case,
she admitted to herself, on both sides. But Valentina
had been right - there was a subjective edge to
Myra's response. The space movement's central el-
ement was Mutual Protection, and Mutual Protec-
tion's central element was David Reid. If the space
movement got its way he would be the most pow-
erful man in the world.
No way was she going to let that bastard win.
3
THE SHIP O THE YIRD
A, .n hour later, after a run across town
that was bloody hard in (and on) my boots, and a
hasty wash and change into my work clothes, I
stood at the station bus-stop with my steel safety-
helmet in one hand and my aluminium lunch-box
in the other. Packing my lunch was the only non-
basic service that my landlady provided, but for me
that was enough to forgive her the absence of
breakfast, dinner, laundry and reliable hot water.
The sun's growing heat was burning off the morn-
ing mist on the loch and between the hills. I felt as
though I might at any moment rise and float away
myself. My eyes felt sandy and my brain felt hot, but
these discomforts did not diminish the kinder glow
of elation somewhere in my chest and gut. In a
strange way I could hardly bear to think about Mer-
rial - every time I did so brought on such an explo-
sion of joy that I quivered at the knees, and I almost
feared to indulge it to excess. I wanted to keep it,
hoard it, dole it out to myself when I really needed
it, not gulp it all down at once. (Which is of course
52 KEN MACLEOD
a mistaken notion - that particular well, like all too
many others, is bottomless.
What I thought about instead was another woman
- the Deliverer, under whose memorial I had met
Merrial, and under whose remote and ancient pro-
tection she and her people lived. (Protected from
persecution, at any rate, if not from prejudice.)
Over the past four years, History had been one of
the arts I. had struggled to master. It hadn't been
easy, even in Glaschu, where the place fair drips
with it, as they say. The baffled aversion expressed
by Merrial was a common enough reaction. In a
time of so many opportunities, and a place buzzing
with innovative work in so many fields which could
be applied to bring about manifest human better-
ment, it seemed perverse (sometimes even to me)
for a vigorous and intelligent young man to turn
aside from such arts as Literature, and Music, and
Kinematography, or from the sciences: Astronomy,
Medicine, the many branches of Natural Theology;
from the improving pursuits of Practical Philosophy
and Mechanical and Civil Engineering - to turn
aside from all these useful works of the intellect, not
even for the understandable and, within reason,
commendable attractions of business and pleasure,
but to fossick about in mouldering documents and
crumbling ruins, and to fill his head with bloody
images and mind-numbing figures from the mega-
dead past.
It was a distasteful and faintly disreputable fasci-
nation, with a whiff of necrophilia, even of necro-
mancy, about it. But, whether we will or no, we're
all historians, each with our own outline of history
in our heads. This was a point I'd often had to make
to sceptical listeners, from parents and siblings
through to patronage committees and on to friends
THE SKY ROAD 53
and workmates in drink-fuelled debate. We pick up
the outline from parents and teachers and preach-
ers, from songs and statues and stories.
In the beginning, God made the Big Bang, and
there was light. After the first four minutes, there
was matter. After billions of years, there were stars
and planets, and the Earth was formed. The water
above the sky separated from the water below the
sky, which brought forth all manner of creeping
things. Over millions of years they were shaped by
God's invisible hand, Natural Selection, into great
monsters of land and sea. The Earth was filled with
violence, and God sent an asteroid, Katy Boundary,
to destroy it. The sky was dark at noon for forty days,
and almost all the living things were destroyed.
Among those who survived were little beasts like
mice, and they replenished the Earth, and burrowed
into it and became coneys, and climbed trees and
became monkeys, and climbed down and became
Men—
— ape-men and cave-men, Egyptians and Babylo-
nians, Greeks and Romans, Christians and Ameri-
cans, Chinese and Russians. The Americans fell but
their empire lived on as the Possession, until the
Deliverer rose in the east and struck it down. Trou-
bled times followed, and then peace.
So why disturb it - answer me that, lad!
Because the truth is more interesting and ulti-
mately more instructive than a farrago of fable? I
had acquired the taste not just for truth but for de-
tail; for the peculiar pleasure that comes from see-
ing the real relationship between events in terms of
cause and effect rather than narrative convention.
It's a satisfaction which I'll defend as genuinely sci-
entific.
But what use is it, eh ?
54 KEN MACLEOD
To that I had no ready answer, except to define
the result as art, in the same way as the method
could be defined as science. The argument that
those who do not learn from history are doomed to
repeat it failed to impress most people, convinced
as they were that there was no risk whatsoever of
history's more ruinous errors being repeated. So I
had to reach for the argument that real history told
a better story because it was a truer story; that reality
had its own beauty, sterner and higher than that of
myth.
The particular story I wanted to tell was of the life
of the Deliverer. My proposal for a thesis on her
early years as a student and academic in Glasgow,
long before she became the figure known to history,
was only the beginning of my own world-conquering
ambition: to reconstruct, as much as one can across
that gulf of time, the mind and personality and cir-
cumstance that had shaped the future that was now
our past.
It might take decades of research, years of writing.
Whatever else I did, this biography would define my
own: a life for a Life. Perhaps it was an unconscious
balking at that price, or some half-baked, self-
justifying attempt to pay my dues to what my more
practical-minded contemporaries called 'real work',
or something more positive, a dimly felt attraction
to the world of material striving and measurable suc-
cess, a turning towards the future and away from the
past, that led me that summer to Garron Town and
the Kishorn Yard.
'Thank God it's Thursday,' said a cheerful voice be-
hind me. I turned and grinned at Jondo, who was
leaning against the bus-stop sign and eating a black
pudding and fried-egg roll. Behind him a score of
THE SKY ROAD 55
workers were by now queuing up. Vendors of snacks,
hot drinks and newspapers worked along the line.
'It's Friday,' I pointed out.
'That's what I meant,' he said around a mouthful,
hand-waving with the remainder of his breakfast.
'Force of habit.' He swallowed. 'Pay-day, at any rate.'
I nodded enthusiastically. Half my pay was tele-
graphed straight to my account at the Caledonian
Mutual Bank; out of the remainder I had to pay for
my lodgings, food and drink, and a modicum of ca-
rousing at the weekly fair. By Friday mornings I had
just enough cash to get through the day. Pay was
high, but so was the cost of living - the project had
pulled up prices for miles around it.
Jondo was a man about my own age, his beer-gut
already as impressive as his muscles. His long red
hair, now as usual worn in a pony-tail, and his pale
eyes and eyebrows gave him the look of a paradox-
ically innocent pirate; inherited perhaps from his
ancestors who'd gone a-viking, and come to this
land to pillage and settled down to farm, and to
whom the Christian gospel had come as good news
indeed, a welcome relief from heathendom's im-
placable codes of honour and vengeance. He spoke
with the soft accent of Inverness, where - rumour
had it - there were Christians still.
I tried to imagine Jondo drinking blood at some
dark ceremony. The momentary absurd image must
have brought a smirk to my face.
'What's so funny, Clovis?' he growled. Then he
smiled, balling up the waxed paper and chucking it,
wiping the grease from his hands on the oily thighs
of his overalls. 'Ach, I know. A good night with your
tinker lass, was it?'
*You could say that.'
'Aye, well, each to their own, I suppose,' he said,
56 KEN MACLEOD
in the tone of one making a profound and original
observation. 'Here's the bus.'
The bus, already half-full, drew to a halt beside us
in a cloud of wood-alcohol exhaust, its brakes
squealing and its flywheel shrieking. I hopped on,
paid my groat to the driver and settled down in a
window seat. Jondo heaved his bulk in beside me,
gave me another lewd grin and a wink, released an
evidently satisfying fart and went instantly to sleep.
Some passengers busied themselves with newspa-
pers or conversation, but most dozed like Jondo or
stared bleary-eyed like me. The discrepancy between
the time-honoured four-day week and the project's
more demanding schedules reduced Friday work to
a matter of clearing up problems left over from the
past week and preparing for the next. Not even the
inducement of double time could make more than
a handful of the labour-force encroach on the sanc-
tity of Saturday and Sunday, although it could make
most of us work overtime through the week. No
amount of patient lecturing from managers with
clipboards and redundant hard hats could persuade
us to adopt what they considered a more rational
work pacing.
The bus lurched into motion. I lit a cigarette to
dispel Jondo's intestinal methane and laid my tem-
ple against the welcome throbbing coolness of the
window. As we crossed the Carron and passed New
Kelso I gazed beyond the suburb's neat bungalows
to where morning smoke rose from the tinker camp.
A vivid image of Menial asleep - the tumble of black
hair, the white-sleeved arm across the pillow - lit up
my mind. I wondered what my chances were of see-
ing her through the day. I didn't even know which
office she worked in, and a desultory fantasy took
shape of finding some fantastic excuse to visit them
THE SKY ROAD 57
all: of working my way through the administration
blocks and drawing-offices, spurning the flirtations
of giggling girls and pensive older women with
hunky pin-ups above their desks, until I finally
walked into an engineering lab to find Menial alone
and in a day-dream of her own, about me, into
which my real arrival would be a passionately wel-
comed incursion . . .
Probably not.
My head swung away from the window as the bus
turned left on to the main road along the northern
shore. I jolted upright, making sure my head didn't
swing back and crack against the pane. Even at this
hour in the morning the road was busy with com-
muter traffic and heavy trucks. The bus chugged
slowly along, picking up yet more passengers in
Jeantown, another village that the project had ex-
panded, its packed buildings teetering perilously up
the hillside. Out on the loch a pod of dolphins
sported, their leaps drawing gasps and sighs from
the less jaded or dozy of my fellow-passengers.
Then, with a great clashing of gears and screech-
ing of flywheel as the auxiliary electric motors
kicked in, the bus turned right, on to the road up
into the hills between the two mountains, An Sgurr
and Glas Bhein, that dominated the northern sky-
line of the lochside towns. To me, this afforded an
inexhaustibly fascinating view of further ranges of
hills and reaches of water. Everybody else on the bus
ignored it completely. Someone opened a window
to let out the smoke and let in some fresh air; a bee
blundered in, causing a ripple of excitement and
much brandishing of rolled newspapers before it
bumbled out.
Above the last houses, above the meadows, the
trees began: twenty-metre-tall beeches, then pine
58 KEN MACLEOD
and rowan and birch, all the way up to the crags and
the scree. Centuries ago these hills had been bare of
all but rough pasture and heather, cropped by the
infamous black-faced sheep. But these same bare hills
had somehow sustained the sparse guerilla forces of
Jacobite and Land Leaguer and Republican. Far
below I could see the rocky peninsula known as the
Island, a sheltering arm around the harbour, still with
a small bunker on its top. During the First World
Revolution a thirteen-year-old had * written herself
into local legend by bringing down a stealth fighter
with a nuclear-tipped rocket-propelled grenade. In
Jeantown's poky museum you can see an ancient
photograph of her: the grubby, grinning cadre of a
Celtic Vietcong, posed with the rocket tube slung on
her shoulder, beside unrecognisable wreckage on a
scarred hillside where to this day nothing will grow.
Over the top of the saddleback and down into the
long, dark glen where the Pretender had evaded
Cumberland's troops, where the Free Kirk had
preached to the dispossessed, and where, later, the
Army of the New Republic had cached their com-
puters, the hardware of their software war against
the last empire. The grim glen opened to another
fertile plain of woods and fields and recently grown
town, Courthill. Beyond it, at the edge of the sea-
loch, lay the great scar of the Kishorn Yard. There
was a trick of the eye in interpreting the sight -
everything there, the cranes and the platform and
the ship, were much bigger than their normal equiv-
alents, like the Pleistocene relatives of familiar mam-
mals.
The bus pulled up at the works gate. The stockade
around the yard had been constructed more to pro-
tect the careless or reckless from wandering in than
THE SKY ROAD 59
to safeguard anything it enclosed. I nudged Jondo
awake and we alighted in a dangerous, fast-moving
convergence of buses and cars and bikes. We
strolled through the gate just as the seven-o'clock
klaxon brayed. Hundreds, then thousands, of work-
ers streamed through the gate and swarmed out
across the yard. The place looked like a benign bat-
tlefield, crater-pocked, vehicle-strewn, littered with
the living. I clamped the heavy helmet on my head,
and with Jondo puffing along behind me, plunged
in; ducking and dodging along walkways, over
trenches, under cables; leaping perilous small-gauge
railway tracks and over waterlogged trenches and
dried-up culverts (drainage here had always been a
bit hit-and-miss); past haulage vehicles and earth-
movers, air-compressors and power-plants, portable
cabins and toilets set down as if at random in the
muck, until at length we reached the immense dry-
dock that was the focus of the whole glorious affray.
The dry-dock was a giant rounded gouge out of
the side of a hill where it sloped down to the sea -
hundreds of metres across, tens of metres deep. Its
rocky cliffs were old and weathered; it looked like
some work of Nature, or of Providence — even of
Justice, the smiting of the Earth by a wrathful God;
but in fact it was the centuries-old work of Man. (It
is their civil engineering that most impresses, of the
works of the ancients, but this is perhaps because so
much of it endures - greater works than these have
gone to the rust and the rot.) Iron sluice-gates, on
an appropriately Brobdingnagian scale, held back
the sea - though pumps laboured day and night to
counter the inevitable seepage and spill.
Within it towered the platform, a - someday soon
- floating bastion of concrete and painted steel, and
within that towered the ship. The Sea Eagle (lolair -
60 KEN MACLEOD
f
pronounced something like Yillirrih' - in the
Gaelic) looked like a rocket-propelled grenade bur-
ied nose-down in the platform. Four fin-like flanges
sloped from its central tower to intersect the ovoid
surface of its reactor-shell and reaction-mass tank,
which was forty metres across at its widest diameter.
The part of it concealed by the platform tapered
from this equator to the aerospike of the main jet,
around which the flared nozzles of attitude jets
made a scalloped array.
By now I was tramping along in the middle of my
work-gang, Jondo and I having been joined by Ma-
chard, Druin, the Lewismen - Murdo One and
Murdo Too - Angelo and Trike. We descended a
zig-zag iron stairway, down and down again, and
walked across the floor of the dock, splashing
through puddles of rainwater and seawater (some
of which were so long-established that they had their
own ecosystems) to the door at the base of the plat-
form's southwest leg. It was like going into a light-
house: up and up, around and around the winding
stair. The air smelt of wet metal, hot oil, damp con-
crete. Every surface dripped, every sound echoed.
After two minutes' climb we reached the level of
the internal scaffolding where we were working. I
ducked through a service door in the inner side of
the leg and emerged on to a walkway facing one of
the platform's turbines across a twenty-metre gap.
At our current worksite, a dozen metres along the
walkway, ladders, more scaffolding and planks dis-
appeared into - in fact appeared to merge with -
the unfinished structure of struts joining the sup-
port leg to the platform's engine mount.
Our contract for the month was to finish that
structure. There was no flexibility in the contract:
there was only a month to go before the platform
THE SKY ROAD 61
was floated out. Angus Grizzlyback, the foreman,
was sitting at a wooden pallet mounted on crates to
form a table, on which were spread some disassem-
bled welding-torches, a small tin of kerosene and a
few now very dirty seagull quills. He stood and glow-
ered at us, reflexively lowering his head so as not to
bash his pate on the next level up. You could see
the white hairs on his chest and forearms which had
inspired his nickname (or, for all I know, his sur-
name, local custom being what it was). He was
nearly two metres tall and about a hundred and fifty
years old.
'Ah, good afternoon, gentlemen,' he said. 'I trust
you all enjoyed your long lie? Let's see if we can
think of something to occupy our leisure for the rest
of the day.'
He drew a sheaf of finger-marked papers from his
pocket as we gathered around the pallet. His pale
grey eyes, under white brows, fixed me for a second.
1
And you can get started right away, colha Gree,'
he added.
I nodded brightly, winced at the effect of this sud-
den violent motion, and went off to make the tea.
The morning meeting - twenty minutes of sitting
around, drinking tea and smoking - was the routine
start to the day. Work on the project was organised
through a sort of ecological pyramid of contractors
and sub-contractors, from the great kraken of the
International Scientific Society all the way down to
frantically scrabbling krill like myself. Angus Grizz-
lyback combined the functions of entrepreneur and
foreman, which partly cut across, and pardy com-
plemented, the job of the shop steward (in our case,
Jondo) who held the equivalent position in the par-
allel pyramid of the union.
62 KEN MACLEOD
Conversation at the meeting, in my two months'
experience, revolved around rumour, the day's news
and sport. At the end of it everybody would drain
their mugs, fold their newspapers, stub out their cig-
arettes, glance at some scrap of paper or doodle of
slopped tea, nod to Angus and get cracking on some
complex job to which only the most recondite al-
lusion had been made. I would clear up the mess,
rinse out the mugs if we were near a tap, and listen
to Angus spell out my task for the day in terms suit-
able for the simple-minded.
Today's agenda was dominated by a motion
before the Strathcarron district council, reported in
the West Highland Free Press, that the locality should
delegate its coinage to the regional council at In-
verfefforan. This dangerous proposal for centralisa-
tion found no favour around the pallet. It was
forensically dissected by Angus, vulgarly derided by
the Lewismen, angrily dismissed by the Carronich. I
myself pointed out a recent lesson of history. A few
years earlier, a similar proposal had been passed in
Strathclyde. The Glasgow mark had lost all public
confidence, and the scheme was abandoned when
annual inflation reached a ruinous two per cent.
The discussion moved on to the national football
league, and my attention wandered.
You can guess where. This time, however, my
thoughts were more rational, and troubling, than
my previous delighted memories, eager anticipa-
tions and fond fantasies. High as my opinion was of
myself, I could not shake off my impression that
Menial had expected to find me; that she had
known me, or known of me; that her first glance
had signified recognition. Love and lust at that sight
there had been, on both sides I was sure; but I was
equally, though more obscurely, sure that this was
THE SKY ROAD 63
not the first sight. I had recognised her too, but had
no idea from where; with her it was conscious from
the beginning, unconcealed but unexplained.
For a moment - I admit with shame - I consid-
ered the notion that we might have known each other
in a previous life, whatever that may mean. On an
instant I dismissed the idea as the foolish, woman-
ish, oriental superstition that it is. Metempsychosis
(though undoubtedly within the power of Omnip-
otence) has no place in the natural and rational re-
ligion.
So I lounged, elbows on the rough wood of the
crude table, and sipped tea and smoked leaf while
my companions argued about finance or football,
and tried to apply my infinitesimal portion of Rea-
son to a problem on which my passions were fully,
and turbulently, engaged. The rational conclusion
was that if we recognised each other we must have
met before, not in an imagined previous life, but
previously in this.
There were a number of possibilities on my side
of the equation. (Menial's I set aside - there were
any number of ways in which she, from her privi-
leged vantage, could have observed me, unobserved
herself, and investigated me, undetected.) Was it
conceivable that one of the hundreds of faces I saw
nearly every day had been hers, unnoticed at the
time? It seemed unlikely: hers was the kind of face
I couldn't help but notice. I'd have given her a sec-
ond look, and more, in a crowd of thousands.
Had I seen her, then, in another context, perhaps
not even in the flesh? In, for example, some poster
or moving picture about the project (all of which,
for understandable reasons of recruitment, lied
about its complement of pretty girls)? The same ob-
64 KEN MACLEOD
jections applied - I'd remember the film, I'd have
the poster.
By further elimination I quickly returned to the
first explanation that had struck me: that we had
met, or at least seen each other, in our earlier years;
in childhood. Menial, I now recalled with renewed
interest, had not explicitly disavowed the possibility
- only discounted it, saying that she wasn't from
around here.
Neither, of course, was I. There was no reason
why I couldn't have seen her. I couldn't remember
any such encounter, but I already knew that our
childhood memories are as vagrant as our child-
hood selves, and as elusive; and as capable of in-
nocent, shameless deceit.
The brute-force approach suggested itself: inter-
rogate my parents, brothers and sisters; ransack fam-
ily photographs ... not yet. Already, the conscious
thought that I sought the memory would have re-
leased the insensible agency in my mind that I pri-
vately thought of as the Librarian. That part of me
would do the rest, and bring back the record if it
were to be found at all - no doubt at some time as
unexpected as it would be inopportune, but wel-
come nonetheless.
' - the torch parts?' said Angus.
I realised I had missed something. Angus sighed.
*You understand how to fit them, test and adjust?'
'Sure,' I said, nodding with more confidence than
I felt.
Tine, fine,' said Angus, standing up and briskly
brushing the palms of his hands together. 'Let's get
on with it, gendemen.'
The others were grinning at me.
'Some night that must have been,' said Murdo
Too, setting off another round of ribald teasing. I
THE SKY ROAD 65
took it in good part but was relieved when they'd
all clambered away into the support structure, leav-
ing me to get on with my job without benefit of
Angus's unheard instructions. A couple of hours
passed quite pleasantly, if dangerously, and at the
morning tea-break Angus was happy enough with
the results to turn me loose on some sheet metal a
dozen metres inward and ten up. I perched in the
din-filled open space of the support structure, with
nothing visible while I worked but what my own
torch's jet illuminated, and with little else on my
mind.
About twelve o'clock I decided to knock off for
lunch. I throttled down the torch and lifted my
mask. As I gathered up the bits of kit to carry back
I heard Menial's voice. I blinked and looked down.
There she was, looking up from under a safety-
helmet.
'Hi, Clovis!' she shouted, waving a lunch-box.
I waved back and returned to the scaffolding,
dropped my tools and grabbed my lunch-box and
descended to the dock's floor so quickly that my
boots made the stairwell ring. By the time I'd reached
the bottom, Merrial had walked over and was waiting
for me. She was wearing the standard boiler-suit and
boots, an outfit which - with her tied-back hair -
gave her a boyish look. Her hug and kiss of greeting
were sweet and warm; the rims of our helmets
clanged, and we pulled apart, laughing.
'This is a fine surprise,' I said.
She caught my hand. 'Gome on,' she said. 'I know
a good place.'
We set off across the dock, to the predictable
whistles and cat-calls of my mates, high above.
Around the vast perimeter of the platform we went,
and out into the daylight on the seaward side. Just
66 KEN MACLEOD
left of the huge sea-doors Menial turned towards
the cliff, where a series of shelves and foot-holds
formed a dangerous-looking natural stairway, which
she skipped up on to and nimbly ascended. I fol-
lowed, not looking down, until she stopped on a
wider, grassy, heathery shelf a good thirty metres up.
We sat down. Menial leaned back against the
rockface, and I, unthinking, did the same - then
jerked forward as I discovered again the scratches
and bruises on my back. With our legs stretched out,
our feet were almost at the edge. I felt more uneasy
on that solid rock than I ever had at greater heights
on the platform. Across the top of the gates, across
the sea-loch, the Torridonian battlements of Apple-
cross challenged the sky. The scale of those ancient
mountains dwarfed the ship itself to a metal sculp-
ture some eccentric artist had made in his back gar-
den in his spare time.
'My place/ Menial said.
'Some place,' I acknowledged. 'It's you who
should be working on the platform, with a head for
heights like this.'
Til keep to my cosy lab and my long lies, thanks.'
We opened our boxes and spread out and shared
the contents, then got stuck in, both ravenous. For
a few minutes we ate, without saying much, then
Menial topped up the mugs, lit herself a cigarette,
passed one to me and leaned back against the rock.
'Clovis, I have something to ask you—'
She stopped. She was looking straight ahead, as
though she wanted to talk without looking at me.
'What is it?'
'Something you can maybe tell me. Something
you might not be supposed to. It's to do with the
ship.'
This was getting more serious than love.
THE SKY ROAD 67
You want to know about welding?' I asked, trying
to be flippant.
She laughed. 'No, about history.'
'Oh.' I waved a hand. 'Any time. But there must
be plenty better qualified than I, all I know about
in any depth is—'
She watched me as the penny dropped.
'The life of the Deliverer?'
'That's the one,' she agreed cheerily.
'You're serious?'
'I'm serious,' she said. She wasn't looking away
from me now, she was looking at me with a fixity
and intensity of gaze I found alarming.
'All right,' I said, my mind treading water. 'You
seriously want to know something about the Deliv-
erer? I can tell you anything you want. But what has
that to do with the ship, for God's sake?'
She took a deep breath, gazing away from me
again at the tall ship. 'It's a fine ship there, colha
Gree, and proud I am to be working on it. But con-
sider this: it'll be the first ship to have lifted from
the Yird for many a hundred year. The first since
the Deliverance. We don't know much of what hap-
pened then, but we do know there were people and
machines in space before the Deliverance, and
we've heard never a word from them since. There's
no doubt they're all dead. Why do you think that
is?'
'There was a war,' I said patiently, 'and a revolu-
tion. The Second World Revolution, or the Deliv-
erance, as we call it. The folk outside the Yird had
followed the path of power, and they fell with the
Possession. Starved of supplies, or killed each other,
most like.'
'So the story goes,' she said, in the tone of one
tired of disputing it. 'But what if it's wrong? What if
68 KEN MACLEOD
whatever cleared the near heaven of folk and ma-
chines and deils alike is still there?'
'Ah,' I said, glancing involuntarily up at the clear
blue sky. 'But it stands to Reason, the people in
charge of the project will have considered this. Why
don't you take it up with them?'
They've considered it all right,' she said, 'and re-
jected it. There's no evidence of anything up there
that could do the ship any harm. There's no evi-
dence that the loss of the space habitations was any-
thing but what you've said.'
'So why do you think I might know anything
about this -' I waved my hand dismissively ' - sup-
posed danger?'
'Because . . .' At this point, I swear, she looked
around and leaned closer, almost whispering in my
ear. 'There has long been a tinker tradition, or ru-
mour, or hint - you know how it is with the old folk
- that whatever did destroy the space settlements
and satellites and so on might still be there, and that
it was . . . the Deliverer's own doing.'
My mouth must have fallen open. I could feel it
go instantly dry, and I felt a moment of giddiness
and nausea. My fingers dug into the tough grass as
the world spun dangerously. I looked at her, sick-
ened, yet fascinated despite myself. The natural re-
ligion has no sin of blasphemy, but this was
blasphemy as near as dammit. 'That's deep water,
Menial.'
'You're telling meV she snorted. 'I've had trouble
enough for even suggesting it. Everybody thinks the
Deliverer was a perfect soldier of God, like Kho-
meini or somebody like that! Oh, among my own
folk there's a more realistic attitude, they'll admit
she had faults, but that's just among ourselves. In
THE SKY ROAD 69
public you won't find a tink saying a word against
her.'
I smiled wryly. 'Except you.'
'This is not public, colha Gree.' She ran a finger
down the side of my face and across my lips.
You must be very confident of that,' I said. 'To
tell me.'
'I'm confident all right,' she said. 'I'm sure of
you.'
To distract myself from the turmoil of mixed feel-
ings this assurance induced, I asked her, 'So what is
it that I can tell you?'
'What you know,' she said. Tve always thought
the scholars might know more about the Deliverer
than they're letting on.'
I laughed. 'There are no secrets among scholars,
they're not like the tinkers. All we find out is pub-
lished. If it doesn't square with what most folk be-
lieve, that's their problem; but most folk don't read
scholarly works, anyway. And - well, I suppose they
are like the tinkers in this - they have a more real-
istic attitude among themselves. It's true, the Deliv-
erer was no perfect saint. But I've seen nothing to
suggest that she ever did anything as dire as. . . as
you said.'
She made a grimace of disappointment. 'Oh, well.
Maybe it was too much to hope that something like
that would be written down on paper.' She plucked
a pink clover and began tugging out the scrolled
petals one by one and sucking them; passed one to
me. I took it between my teeth, releasing the tiny
drop of nectar on to my tongue.
'On paper,' I said thoughtfully. 'There could be
other information where we can't reach it.'
'In the dark storage?'
70 KEN MACLEOD
'Aye, well, like I said last night - it's there, but we
can't reach it.'
'I could reach it,' Merrial said casually.
'Oh, you could, could you?'
'Yes,' she said. 'I can get hold of equipment to
take data out of the dark storage and put it in safe
storage.'
'Safe storage?' I asked, too astonished to query
more deeply at that moment.
'You know,' she said. 'The seer-stones.'
'And how would you know that?'
Again the remote gaze. 'I've seen it done. By. . .
engineers taking short cuts.'
'There's a good reason why the left-hand path is
avoided,' I said.
' "Necessity is its own law",' she said, as though
quoting, but the expression came from no sage I'd
ever read. 'Anyway, Clovis, it's not as dangerous as
you may think.'
Curiosity drove me like prurience. 'How do they
do it safely? Draw pentagrams with salt, or what?'
'No,' she said, quite seriously. 'They make lines
with wire - isolated circuits, you know? That's what
confines anything that might be waiting to get out.
There are other simple precautions, for the visuals —'
she made a cutting motion with her hand in re-
sponse to my baffled look ' - but ninety-nine times
out of a hundred there's nothing to worry about
anyway. Just words and pictures.' She chuckled
darkly. 'Sometimes strange words and pictures, I'll
give you that.'
'And the hundredth time?'
*You meet a demon,' she said, very quietly but
emphatically. 'Most times, you can shut it down be-
fore it does any damage.'
'And the other times?' I persisted.
THE SKY ROAD 71
'It gets loose and eats your soul.'
9
I stared at her. 'You mean that's actually true?
She laughed at me. 'Of course not. It makes your
equipment burst into flames or explode with a loud
bang, though.'
'I can see how that might be a hazard.'
She reached over and touched my lips. 'Shush,
man, don't go on like an old woman. Most of the
stuff in the dark storage is useless to us, or evil in a
different way from what you think. Evil ideas from
the old times, they can make you sick, and make
you want to share them, so they spread like a dis-
ease.'
She leaned back again and closed her eyes, en-
joying the sun like a cat. 'I reckon you and I are
strong enough and healthy enough in our minds to
be safe from that sort of thing.' She opened her eyes
again and gave me a challenging look.
The path of power is always a temptation, as Mer-
rial had so lightly said last night. Until now, it had
never seriously tempted me; I knew the dangers,
and knew no way of getting to the undoubted re-
wards. Now such a way was being offered; it might
reduce by years the time required for researching
my thesis, it might even give me a head start on the
Life. The lust for the lost knowledge made my head
throb.
The question was out before I knew what I was
saying. 'Do you want me to help you to do it?'
Her eyes widened and brightened. 'Could you?
That would be just - wonderful!'
She was looking at me with so much admiration
and respect that I could not imagine not doing what
it would take to deserve it. But even in my besotted
eagerness to please her, my genuine concern about
the problem she thought she'd uncovered, and my
72 KEN MACLEOD
own desire for the knowledge and for the adventure
of obtaining it - even with all that, my whole train-
ing and my natural caution came rushing back, and
I wavered.
'Oh, God,' I said. 'I'll have to think about it.'
'Can you get your thinking about it over by eight
tonight?' Merrial asked drily.
'Maybe. And what if I say no?'
She held me in her level gaze. 'I won't think any
the less of you. It won't change a thing about that'
'Sure?' I said, not anxiously but mischievously. I
had already decided. She had seduced me into a
frame of mind that feared neither God nor men nor
devils. 'Then what will you do?'
She shook her head. Til find some other way, or
at the worst just register my protest in the record,
and go on with my work as I'm told.'
'That sounds like a more sensible course in the
first place.'
'It is that,' she said. 'But I'd rather have the sat-
isfaction of knowing the ship is safe, one way or an-
other, than of saying "I told you so" afterwards.'
I couldn't argue with that, and I didn't want to.
What she said must have had some deeper effect on
me, because when we descended the perilous steps
down from the heathery eyrie, each of us one stum-
ble away from the welcoming arms of Darwin, I
wasn't afraid at all.
My room was narrow and long, under the slope of
the roof. After the heat of the day it was full of the
smell of old varnish and warm rust and the sound
of creaking wood. The westward-facing skylight let
in enough light to see by, and enough air to
breathe.
I came in from work and threw off my overalls
THE SKY ROAD 73
and shirt, tossed my temporarily heavy purse on the
bed, and uncapped a chilled bottle of beer I'd
bought at the bus-stop. I opened the skylight to its
fullest extent and sat myself under it on the room's
one tall chair, and leaned my elbow on the window's
frame as though sitting at a bar. Beside my forearm
tiny red arachnids moved about on the grey and
yellow lichen like dots in front of my eyes.
Merrial and I would meet again in two hours.
Plenty of time to wash and shave and dress, to con-
sider and reconsider. I was almost tempted to have
a brief sleep, but decided against it, attractive
though the barely straightened bedding seemed at
this moment. After soaking up the beer I'd get a
good jolt of coffee. I lit my fifth cigarette of the day
and gazed out over the rooftops towards the loch,
my parched body gratefully absorbing the drink, my
tired brain riding the rush of the leaf.
Merrial's disturbing but alluring proposition had
preoccupied me all afternoon, and although my de-
cision was made I had plenty of doubts and fears. I
would not be the first to mine the dark archives in
the interests of history, or of engineering for that
matter; it was neither a crime nor a sin, but it had
always been impressed upon me that it was a dan-
gerous folly. And, to be sure, I could think of no
good reason for doing it, other than the ones which
motivated myself and Merrial; no doubt everyone
who had taken that path had felt the same about
their reasons. Rationally, it was obvious why the dan-
gers were better publicised than the benefits - those
who found only madness and death in the black
logic could not but be noticed, whereas those who
found knowledge or wealth or pleasure discreedy
kept their sinister source to themselves.
What hypocrisies, I wondered, did the tinkers
74 KEN MACLEOD
practise, if they themselves would on occasion turn
their hand to the leftward path? Until Menial had
mentioned it, I'd suspected no such thing: but then,
with the tinkers' virtual monopoly of an understand-
ing of the white logic, it was in their interests to
publicly disparage the black. Optical and mechani-
cal computing, and more especially the delicate in-
terface between them - the seer-stones set like gems
in the shining brass of the calculating machinery -
were their speciality and secret skill. What would
happen if people outside their guild were to start
exploring the left-hand path in earnest, as a public
enterprise rather than a private vice, heaven only
knew. A new Possession, perhaps; in which case the
tinkers might have to engineer a new Deliverance.
It was not a reassuring thought.
I stubbed out the cigarette and sent the butt tum-
bling down the slate roof-tiles to the dry gutter. The
sounds of people going home, of engines and
hooves and feet, rose from the street below. I turned
back into the room and finished the beer, then un-
dressed and went into the sluice-shower and washed
myself down. The water ran cold just before I got
the last soap-suds off; I gritted my teeth and per-
sisted, then leapt out and dried myself off while the
electric kettle boiled. I filled a ewer with a mixture
of cold and hot water and shaved carefully, then set
some coffee to brew while I got dressed: in the same
trousers and waistcoat as I'd worn the previous
night, but I thought the occasion deserved a clean
shirt.
The bed was close enough to the table for the two
items of furniture to form a somewhat unergonomic
desk. I sat down with the coffee and looked at the
stack of books and papers I'd brought with me to
read over the summer. I reached over and hauled a
THE SKY ROAD 75
volume from the stack, cursed and got up and
found a rag and wiped dust and cobwebs from all
the books, washed my hands and sat down again.
Sipping the cooling coffee, turning over the pages,
I tried to focus my mind on the matters they con-
tained.
When I was awakened for a third time by my fore-
head hitting the table I gave up and poured another
coffee and turned my mind to my real worry, the
one I didn't want to think about: what if Merrial
were simply using me? That she had sought me out
in the first place because she wanted me to do a job
for her?
I walked up and down the room's narrow length,
turning the question over almost as often as I turned
around. After several iterations I decided that I
couldn't have been fooled about her feelings, that
her passion was real - and that if she'd been intent
on manipulating me, she would have done it more
subtly—
But then, perhaps that itself was evidence of how
subtly she'd done it. At that point I stopped. To
suspect manipulation that subtle - an apparently
clumsy and obvious approach disguising one devi-
ous and elegant - was to undermine the very con-
fidence in my own judgement on which all such
discriminations must perforce rely.
So I forgot my suspicions, and looked once more
at the books, and at a quarter before eight went out
into the evening to meet her, and my fate.
4
PAPER TIGERS
T hree flags hung behind the coffin: the
Soviet, red with gold hammer and sickle; the
Kazakhstani, blue with yellow sun and eagle; and the
ISTWR, yellow with black trefoil.
About two hundred people were crammed into
the hall of the crematorium. The funeral was the
nearest thing to a State occasion the republic had
had since the Sputnik centenary. The entire de-
pleted apparat was there, and a good proportion of
the workers, peasants and intelligentsia was proba-
bly watching on television. The distinguished for-
eign guests included the Kazakhstani consul, the
head of the Western United States Interests Section,
and David Reid, who was wedged between a couple
of Mutual Protection greps. Myra sat with the rest
of Sovnarkom in the front row, dry-eyed, as one of
Georgi's old comrades - another Afganets - deliv-
ered the eulogy.
'Major Georgi Yefrimovich Davidov was born in
Alma-Ata in 1956. At school, in the Pioneers and the
Komsomol, he soon distinguished himself as an ex-
THE SKY ROAD 77
emplary individual - studious, civic-minded, with
great athletic prowess. After obtaining a degree at
the University of Kazakhstan, where he joined the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he completed
his national service and chose a military career. In
1979 he qualified as a helicopter pilot, and later that
same year was among the first of the limited contin-
gent of the Soviet armed forces to fulfil their inter-
nationalist duty to the peoples of Afghanistan.'
A ripple of dissidence, expressed with indrawn
breaths, or sighs, or shifting of feet, went through
the room. Myra herself sniffed, compressed her lips,
looked down. All those nights he'd woken her by
grabbing her, holding her, talking away his night-
mares; all those mornings when he'd said not a
word, given no indication that he remembered any
interruption to his sleep, or to hers.
The speaker raised his voice a little and continued
undaunted.
'His service earned him promotion and the hon-
our of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1985 he applied
for transfer to the space programme, and after train-
ing at Baikonur he won the proud title of Cosmo-
naut of the Soviet Union. However, many decades
were to pass before he was able to fulfil this part of
his destiny.'
By which time it was a fucking milk-run, and there
was no fucking Soviet Union, so get on with it—
'During the turbulent years of the late 1980s, Ma-
jor Davidov took some political stands about which
his friends and comrades may honesdy differ-'
Nice one, he was a fucking Yeltsinite, get on with
it—
' - but which testify to his true Soviet and Kazakh
patriotism and the seriousness with which he took
his civic duty and the Leninist ideals of the armed
78 KEN MACLEOD
forces, which in his view proscribed the use of vio-
lence against the people.'
Myra was not the only one who had to choke back
a laugh.
'After the Republic of Kazakhstan became inde-
pendent, Major Davidov's expertise in the areas of
nuclear weaponry and questions of nuclear disar-
mament gave him a new field for his great political
skill and personal charm . . .'
Myra bit her lip.
He was in front of her in the taxi queue outside the
airport at Alma-Ata. Tall, even taller than she was,
very dark; swept-back black hair, eyebrows almost as
thick as his black moustache; relaxed in a stiff olive-
green uniform; smoking a Marlboro and glancing
occasionally at a counterfeit Rolex.
Myra, just arrived, lost and anxious, could not
take her eyes off him. But it was the yellow plastic
bag at his feet that gave her the nerve to speak.
Printed on it in red were a picture of a parrot and
the words:
THE PET SHOP
992 Pollockshaws Road
Glasgow G41 2HA
She leaned forward, into his field of vision.
You've flown in from Glasgow?' she asked, in Rus-
sian.
He turned, startled out of some trance, and
looked at her with a bemused expression which rap-
idly became a smile.
'Ah, the bag.' He poked it with his foot, revealing
that the carrier was bulging with cartons of ciga-
THE SKY ROAD 79
rettes and bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label.
Toil're a stranger here, then.'
'Oh?'
'These plastic bags have nothing to do with Glas-
gow. They're used by every shop from here to
China, God knows why.' He laughed, showing
strong teeth stained with nicotine. 'Have you been
to Glasgow?'
'Yes,' said Myra. 'I lived there for several years,
back in the seventies.'
Something cooled in his look. 'What were you do-
ing?'
'I was writing a thesis,' Myra said, 'on the econ-
omy of the Soviet Union.'
He guffawed. 'You got permission to do thai?'
'It wasn't a problem—' she began, then stopped.
She realised that he'd taken her for a former-Soviet
citizen. Former nomenklatura, if she'd had clearance
for such dangerous research.
'I'm not a Russian, I'm from the United States!'
He raised his eyebrows.
'Your accent is very good,' he said, in English. His
accent was very good. They talked until they reached
the top of the queue, and then went on talking,
because they shared a taxi into town, and went on
talking. ..
Would she ever have spoken to him, Myra won-
dered, if it hadn't been for that yellow bag? And if
she hadn't spoken to him, would she ever have seen
him again? Perhaps; but perhaps not, or not at such
a moment, when they were both free, and on the
rebound from other lovers, and in that case . ..
She wouldn't be here, for one thing, and Georgi
wouldn't be in that coffin, and . . . the consequences
went on and on, escalating until she didn't know
80 KEN MACLEOD
whether to laugh or cry. For want of a nail the king-
dom was lost - and the result of that triviality, the
fictitious Pollockshaws pet-shop address on the plas-
tic bag, had gained her a republic, and imposed on
others losses she could not bear to contemplate. Or
so it might seem, if anyone ever learned enough
about her to see her hand in history.
But then again, maybe not, maybe old Engels and
Plekhanov had been right after all about the role of
the individual in history: maybe it did all come out
in the wash — at the end of the French Revolution
someone, but, of course, ha-ha, 'not necessarily that
particular Corsican', would have stepped into the
tall boots which circumstances, like a good valet,
had laid out for a man on horseback.
She'd never found that theory particularly con-
vincing, and it gave her small comfort now to even
consider it. No, she was stuck, as were they all, with
her actions and their consequences.
' - in recent years Georgi Yefrimovich played a
leading part in the diplomatic service of the ISTWR,
in which duty he met his death.' The eulogist
paused for a moment to direct a stabbing glance at
the distinguished foreign guests. 'He is survived by
his former wife and loyal friend, Myra Godwin-
Davidova, their children and grandchildren-'
Too many to read out, and none of them here,
get on with it—
Messages were, however, read out from all of the
absent offspring, other relatives, old friends. The eu-
logist laid down his sheaf of papers at last, and
raised his hand. The crematorium filled with the
oddly quiet and modest sound of Kazakhstan's na-
tional anthem. The coffin rolled silendy through
the unobtrusive hatch. Everyone stood up and sang,
or mimed along to, the Internationale. And that was
THE SKY ROAD 81
that. Another good materialist gone to ash.
Myra turned and walked out of the crematorium,
and row by row, from the front, they fell in and
walked out behind her.
Her hands were shaking as she fumbled with her
black fur hat and tried to light a cigarette in the
driveway. Out on the street, cars were being moved
into position to carry the dignitaries off to the post-
funeral luncheon function. Somebody steadied her
hand, helped her with the cigarette. She lit up and
looked up, to see David Reid. Dark brows, dark eyes,
white hair down to the upturned collar of his astra-
khan coat. He looked less than half his age, with
only the white hair - itself an affectation - indicat-
ing anything different; none of her give-away flaws.
She was pretty sure his joints didn't creak, or his
bones ache. They had better fixes in the West. His
minders hung about a few steps away, their gaze
grepping the surroundings. People were milling
around, drifting towards the waiting cars.
4
Are you all right?' Reid asked.
Tm fine, Dave.'
He scuffed a foot on the gravel, scratched the
back of his neck.
'We didn't do it, Myra.'
'Yeah, well...' She shrugged. 'I read the autopsy.
I believe it.'
You'd be dead if I didn% she disdained to add. She
believed the autopsy; she had no choice. She
believed Reid, too. She still had her doubts about
the verdict: natural causes - it might be one of those
dark episodes where she could never be sure of the
truth, like Stalin's hand in the Kirov affair, or in the
death of Robert Harte . . . But Reid took the point
she wanted him to take. He seemed to relax slightly,
and lit a cigarette himself. His gaze flicked from the
82 KEN MACLEOD
burning tip to the crematorium chimney, then to
her.
'Ah, shit. It seems such a waste.'
Myra nodded. She knew what he meant. Burning
dead people, burying them in a fucking hole in the
ground - it was already beginning to seem barbaric.
'He didn't even want cryo,' she said. 'Let alone
that Californian computer-scan scam.*
'Why not?' Reid asked. 'He could've afforded it'
'Oh, sure,' Myra said. 'Just didn't believe in it, is
all.'
Reid smiled thinly. 'Neither do I.'
'Oh?'
He spread his hands. 'I just sell the policies.'
'Is there any pie you don't have a finger in?'
Reid rubbed the side of his nose with his finger.
'Diversification, Myra. Name of the game. Spread
the risks. Learned that in insurance, way back
when.' He reached out, waiting for her unspoken
permission to take her arm. 'We need to talk busi-
ness.'
'Car,' she said, catching his elbow firmly and turn-
ing about on the crunching gravel. They walked side
by side to the armoured limousine. Myra, out of the
corner of her eye, watched people watching. Good:
let it be clear that she no longer suspected Reid.
Not publicly, not politically, not even - at a certain
level - privately. Just personally, just in her jealous
old bones. But there was more to it than making a
diplomatic display; there was still a genuine affec-
tion between them, attenuated though it was by the
years, exasperated though it was by their antago-
nism. Reid had never been a man to let enmity get
in the way of friendship.
THE SKY ROAD 83
Myra glanced at her watch as the car door shut with
a well-engineered clunk. They had about five
minutes to talk in private as the big black Zhil rolled
through Kapitsa's city centre to its only posh hotel,
the Sheraton. She setded back in the leather seat
and eyed Reid cautiously.
'OK,' she said. 'Get on with it/
Reid reached for the massive ashtray, stubbed out
one cigarette and lit up another. Myra did the same.
Their smoky sighs met in a front of mutual disrup-
tion. Reid scratched his eyebrow, looked away,
looked back.
'Well,' he said. 'I want to make you an offer. We
know you still have some of your old —' he hesitated;
even here, there were words one did not say ' -
strategic assets, and we'd like to buy them off you.'
He could be bluffing.
'I have no—' she began. Reid tilted his head back
and puffed a tiny jet of smoke that, after a few cen-
timetres, curled back on itself in a miniature
mushroom-cloud.
'Don't waste time denying it,' he said.
'All right,' said Myra. She swallowed a rising nau-
sea, steadied herself against a dizzy, chill darkening
of her sight. It was like being caught with a guilty
secret, but one which she had not known she held.
But, she knew too well, if she had not known it was
because she had never tried, and never wanted, to
find out.
'Suppose we do. We wouldn't sell them to anyone,
let alone you. We're against your coup—'
It was Reid's turn to feign ignorance, Myra's to
show impatience.
'We wouldn't use them,' he said. 'Good God, what
do you take us for? We just want them .. . off the
board, so to speak. Out of the game. And quite
84 KEN MACLEOD
frankly, the only way we can be sure of that is to
have control of them ourselves.'
Myra shook her head. 'No way. No deal.'
Reid raised his hand. 'Let me tell you what we
have to offer, before you reject it. We can buy you
out, free and clear. Give everybody in this state,
every one of your citizens, enough money to settle
anywhere and live more than comfortably. Think
about it. The camps are going to be wound down,
and whoever wins the next round is going to move
against you. Your assets aren't going to be much use
when Space Defense gets back in business.'
That's a threat, I take it?'
'Not at all. Statement of fact. Sell them now or
lose them later, it's up to you.'
'Lose them - or use them!'
Reid gave her a 'we are not amused' look.
'I'm not fooling,' Myra told him. 'The best I can
see coming out of your coup is more chaos, in which
case we'll need all the goddamn assets we can get!'
Reid took a deep breath. 'No, Myra. If you do get
chaos, it'll be because we haven't won. This coup,
as you call it, is the last best chance for stability. If
we fail the world will go to hell in its own way. Your
personal contribution to that will then be no con-
cern of mine - I'll be dead, or in space - but you
can help make sure it doesn't happen, and benefit
yourself and your people in the process.' He was
putting all of his undeniable charm into his voice
and expression as he concluded, 'Think it over,
Myra. That's all I ask.'
'I'll think about it,' she said, granting him at least
this victory, for what it was worth. She looked
around. 'We've arrived.'
*
THE SKY ROAD 85
The hotel's ornately furnished function suite was
filled with people in dark clothes, standing about in
small groups and conversing in low voices. Already
they were beginning to relax out of their funereal
solemnity, to smile and laugh a little: life goes on.
Fine.
Myra and Reid walked together to the long tables
on which the buffet was spread, and contrived to
lose each other in the random movement of people
selecting food and drinks. With a plate of savouries
in one hand and a large glass of whisky in the other,
Myra looked around. Over in one corner Andrei
Mukhartov was deep in conversation with a lady in
a black suit and a large hat; she was answering his
quiet questions in a loud voice. Myra hoped this rep-
resentative of the tattered Western fringe of the for-
mer United States wasn't talking about anything
confidential. Possibly that was the point. She no-
ticed that Valentina was standing alone, in an olive-
green outfit whose black armband was rather
shouted down by an astonishing amount of gold
braid. Myra made a less than subtle bee-line for her.
'Ah, there you are,' she said, as Valentina turned.
She nudged her defence minister towards the near-
est of the many small tables dotted around the vast
floor. They sat.
'New uniform?' Myra asked.
Valentina's rigid epaulettes moved up and down.
'Never had much occasion for it before,' she said.
'Never knew you'd accumulated so many medals,
either.'
Valentina had to laugh. Teah, it is a bit.. . Brezh-
nevian, isn't it?'
'All too appropriate, for us. The period of stag-
nation.' .
Valentina devoured a canape, not looking away
86 KEN MACLEOD
from Myra. 'Indeed. I see you had a little chat with
our main inward investor.'
'Yes. He made me an interesting offer/ Myra
looked down at her plate, picked up something with
legs. 'I do hope this stuff's synthetic; I'd hate to
think of the radiation levels if it isn't.'
'I think we have to rely on somebody's business
ethics on the radiation question,' Valentina said.
'Ah, right.' Myra peered at the shrimp's shell; it
had an ICI trademark. Full of artificial goodness.
She hauled the pale pink flesh out with her teeth.
'Anyway, Madame Comrade People's Commissar for
Defence, my dear: our inward investor gave me to
understand that he knows we've done a little less ...
outward divestment than I'd been led to believe.'
Valentina, rather to her credit, Myra thought,
looked embarrassed.
'I inherited the assets from my predecessors. . .
and I never mentioned them because I thought you
already knew, or you didn't and you needed to have
deniability.'
So it was true. The confirmation was less of a
shock than Reid's original claim had been. It would
take a while for the full enormity of it all to sink in.
Myra nodded, her mouth full. Swallowed, with a
shot of whisky. 'The latter, actually. I didn't know. I
thought they'd all been seized by the Yanks after the
war.'
'Most of them were. There was one exception,
though. A large portfolio of assets that made it
through the crackdown, that the US/UN just
couldn't get their hands on; one contract that was
always renewed. Until the Fall Revolution, of course.
Then it. . . lapsed, and I was left holding the babies.
They were sent back to us in a large consignment
THE SKY ROAD 87
of large diplomatic bags, from various locations, all
controlled by ...'
'You can tell me now, I take it?'
Valentina looked around, and shrugged.
'The original ministate, with the original merce-
nary defence force/
Myra had to think for a moment before she real-
ised just which state Valentina was talking about.
'Jesus wept!'
'Quite possibly,' said Valentina, 'quite possibly he
did.'
There are times when all you can do is be cynical,
put up a hard front, don't let it get to you ... Myra
joined in Valentina's dark chuckle.
'So what happened to the assets, and why is our
investor concerned about them?'
'Ah,' said Valentina. 'You'll recall the Sputnik
centenary a couple of years ago. We rather extrav-
agantly launched one of our obsolete boosters to
celebrate it. What I did at the time was take the
opportunity to place most of our embarrassing leg-
acy in orbit.'
'In Earth orbit?' Myra resisted an irrational impulse
to pull her head down between her shoulders.
'Some of them,' said Valentina. 'The ones de-
signed specifically for orbital use, you know?
They're in high orbit, quite safe.' She frowned, and
against some inner resistance added, 'Well, fairly
safe. But the rest we sent to an even safer place:
Lagrange.'
Myra had a momentary mental picture, vivid as a
virtual display, of Lagrange: L5, one of the points
where Earth's gravity and the Moon's combined to
create a region of orbital stability, and which had,
over half a century, accumulated a cluttered cluster
of research stations, military satellites, official and
88 KEN MACLEOD
unofficial space habitats, canned Utopias, aban-
doned spacecraft, squatted modules, random junk
. . . It was the space movement's promised land, and
with the new nanofactured ultralight laser-launched
spacecraft its population was rising as fast as Kapi-
tsa's was falling.
'Oh, fucking hell,' said Myra.
'Don't worry,' Valentina assured her. 'They're al-
most undetectable among all the debris.'
Myra didn't have the heart to tell her how much
she was missing the point.
'Why the fuck did you park them there?' she de-
manded. 'Safe, in a way, yeah, that I can understand,
but didn't it occur to you that if it ever came out,
we might find our intentions .. . misunderstood?'
Valentina looked even more embarrassed. 'It was
- well, it was a Party thing, Myra. A request'
'Oh, right. Jeez. Are you still in the fucking Party?'
Valentina chuckled. 'I am the Party. The ISTWR
section, at least'
'Now that Georgi's gone. Shit, I'd forgotten.'
They hadn't even put the fourth flag, the flag of
the Fourth, on his coffin. Shit. Not that it mattered
now. Not to Georgi, anyway. And not to those who'd
gathered to pay their respects - the only one present
who'd have understood its significance was Reid.
'Don't worry,' said Valentina.
'What does the International want with - oh, fuck.
I can think of any number of things it might want
with them.'
Valentina nodded. 'Some of them could be to our
advantage.'
'Hah. I'll be the judge of that. You've kept the
access codes to yourself?'
'Of course!'
'Well, that's something.'
THE SKY ROAD 89
'So our man's proposing in a buy-out, is he?' Val-
entina continued. 'Could be worth considering.'
'Yeah.' Myra stood up, taking her glass. 'I'm going
to talk to him some more. Thanks for the update,
Val.'
She refilled her glass, with vodka this time, and
set out in a carefully casual ramble to where Reid
stood chatting to an awestruck gaggle of low-level
functionaries. Denis Gubanov and one of Reid's
greps circled unobtrusively, keeping a wary distance
from the group and from each other, each at a La-
grange point of his own. She couldn't hear the con-
versation. On her way, she was intercepted by
Alexander Sherman. The Industry Commissar was
wearing the same sharp plastic suit, its colour ad-
justed to black. He looked shiftier than usual; a bad
sign.
'Ah, Myra. A sad day for us all.' He shook his head
slowly. 'A sad day.'
'Yes,' said Myra. The phrase get on with it once
more came to mind.
Alex took a deep breath and, as if telepathic, an-
nounced, T have something to tell you. It's not a
good time, but. . . Well, I've had an offer from Mr
Reid.'
'To buy out our assets?'
'No, no!' Alex looked surprised at the suggestion.
'An employment offer.'
'Oh, right,' said Myra dismissively. She waved a
hand as she walked past him. 'Take it'
She could see herself in the big gilt-framed mirrors
as she walked up; they faced similar mirrors at the
far side of the room, and for a moment she saw
herself multiplied, a potential infinity of different
versions of herself: a visual, virtual image of the
90 KEN MACLEOD
many worlds interpretation. She had entertained a
childish notion, once, that mirror images might be
windows into those other worlds. Did the photon
ever decide, she'd wondered, did it ever turn aside
in its reflection?
What she saw was the endlessly repeated image of
a tall, thin woman in a long black dress, moving
towards the still oblivious Reid like some MIRVed
nemesis. She saw the flickered glances exchange
their messages, between her Security Commissar,
Reid's security man, Reid, and herself, until Reid's
reflected eyes met her actual eyes, and widened.
She encountered a sort of deadness in the air,
and realised that the security men were, between
them, setting up audio countermeasures, casting a
cloak of silence around the group. Then she was
through the region of dead air, where the voices
were garbled and strange, and suddenly the conver-
sation was audible - for the moment before it died
on the lips of those who noticed her arrival.
'Well, hello again,' she said. Her gaze swept the
half-dozen of her employees gathered around Reid;
they were all making comical efforts to flee, walking
backwards as discreetly as possible. 'Head-hunting
my lower-middle cadres as well as my commissars?'
Tup,' said Reid, quite unabashed. He made a
fractional movement of his fingertips and eyebrows,
and his supplicants - or applicants - dispersed like
smoke in a draught. The grep and Gubanov contin-
ued their watchful mutual circling. A waiter went
past with a salver of glasses and a tray of Beluga on
rye; Myra and Reid helped themselves from both,
then stood facing each other with a slight awkward-
ness, like tongue-tied teenagers after a dance.
'I could do some head-hunting the other way, you
know,' Myra said. 'Perhaps I should buy a spy or two
THE SKY ROAD 91
from you. It turns out you're better informed about
our investment portfolio than I've been. Particularly
its, ah, spread.'
Reid acknowledged this with a small nod.
Tuts us in a difficult position,' he said. 'You have
the drop on us, frankly. Earth orbit is the high
ground, after all.'
Oh? she thought to herself. So he didn't know
about Lagrange? Or didn't want her to know he
knew.
'However,' Reid went on, Tm pretty confident
that you won't, um, liquidate. For obvious reasons.'
'So why the offer?'
'Peace of mind . .. nah, seriously. Between us, you
and I know everyone who knows of the current level
of exposure. But neither of us can guarantee that
that'll last. A word in the wrong place and there
could be severe market jitters on my side. Which, I
hasten to add, would not be to your benefit, either,
so we have a mutual—'
'Assured deterrence?'
Reid gave her a shut the fuck up look. 'You could
say that. . . but I'd rather you didn't'
Myra grinned evilly. 'OK,' she said. 'It's still no
deal, Dave.'
He gazed back at her, expressionless, but he
couldn't hide the plea in his voice. 'Will you at least
agree not to dump your assets during the takeover
bid? Not to make any offers to the competition?'
Oh, Jeez. This was a tricky one. She had no inten-
tion of doing any of the things he feared. On the
other hand - if he were to fear them (even if only
theoretically, and only at the margin, but still. .. )
it might restrain him. It might keep him, and his
allies, from crossing that invisible border, that ter-
92 KEN MACLEOD
minator between the daylight and the dark. Let
them hate, as long as they fear.
She shook her head, and saw her multiple reflec-
tions do the same, in solemn repetition. The act of
observation collapses the wave-function, yes: the die
cast, the cat dies.
'Sorry, Dave,' she told him. 'I can't make any
promises.'
His gaze measured hers for a moment, and then
he shrugged.
*You win some, you lose some,' he said lightly.
4
See you around, Myra.'
She watched him walk away, as she so often had.
His grep followed at a safe distance. Denis raised his
eyebrows, rolled his eyes, came over.
4
What was all that about?'
'Oh, just some old stuff between us,' Myra said.
'We don't see eye to eye, is all.' She took his arm.
'Let's see how Andrei is getting on with that lady
from the Western United States, shall we?'
Not well, as it turned out. This was not the place for
secret diplomacy, even if they'd been using the pri-
vacy shields, which they weren't. Juniper Bear, the
West American unofficial consul, was making her
diplomatic position no secret at all. Her broad-
brimmed black hat with black wax fruit around its
crown seemed chosen to amplify her voice, even
though her pose indicated urgent, confidential
communication.
' .. .Just in the last month we hit a Green guerilla
incursion from SoCal, and at the same time a White
Aryan Nations push across the Rockies, and would
you believe the First Nations Federation, the god-
damn Indians, lobbing significant conventional
hardware on our northern settlements on the Can-
THE SKY ROAD 93
nuck side of the old border? Let me tell you, Com-
rade Mukhartov, we could do with some orbital
backup, this time on our side for a change.' She
laughed, grinning at Myra and Valentina as they
joined the conversation. 'Would you believe? she re-
peated, 'the goddamn Greens are actually lobbying
the old guard to keep the battlesats as asteroid de-
fence? Like we ever really needed that, and now we
got everything bigger'n a pea out there mapped and
tracked, we might as well worry about a new ice age!'
'Well, that's coming,' said Valentina.
Juniper Bear's hatbrim tilted. 'Sure, the Milan-
kovitch cycle, yeah, but it isn't a worry, now is it?'
She laughed. 'Hey, I remember global warming!'
'And thafs happening,' Myra said. 'But, like you
say, it isn't a worry, not any more. And the ozone
holes, and the background radiation levels, and the
synthetic polymers in every organic, and the jump-
ing genes and all that, yeah, we're not worrying.' She
felt surprised at the sound of her own voice, at how
angry she felt about all that, now she was articulat-
ing it; it was as though she had a deep Green deep
inside her, just waiting to get out. 'But to be honest,
Ms Bear, we are worried about something else.
About the plan to revitalise the ReUnited Nations.
Even if they will be the enemies of our enemies, in
the first instance. We don't want that kind of power
turned against anyone on Earth, ever again.' She
took off her hat, fingering the smooth hairs and
running her thumb over the red star and gold sigil;
realised she was standing there, literally cap in hand,
begging for help.
Juniper Bear shook her head. She was an old
woman, not as old as Myra; she looked about thirty,
by pre-rejuvenation reckoning, when her face was in
repose, but the weight of her years showed in her
94 KEN MACLEOD
every facial expression, if you were old enough to
notice these things. You learned to transmit and to
receive those non-verbal tics, in parallel processes of
increasing wisdom.
'That's what our opposition are saying,' the
woman said. " 'No more New World Orders!" Well,
I'm sorry, but we need a real new world order, one
on our side this time. It'll be only temporary - once
we get enough forces out there, there's no way any-
one can keep central control. Once the emergency
is over, it'll just...' She made a downward-planning
gesture.
'Wither away?'
Juniper's creased eyes registered the irony, her
compressed lips her refusal to let it deflect her.
'Speaking of states that wither away,' she said,
changing the subject adroitly, 'if any of you find
yourselves looking for new opportunities, when all
this is over one way or another. . .'
Valentina and Andrei said nothing, at least not in
Myra's presence; but Myra herself smiled, and nod-
ded, and said she'd bear it in mind.
'Well!' said Andrei Mukhartov, when the function
was over and the guests had departed, the diplo-
mats, the apparatchiks and captains of industry. An-
drei, Valentina, Denis and Myra had retired to one
of the hotel's smaller and quieter bars. Hardwood
and mirrors, leather and glass, plush carpets and
quiet music. There were plenty of people in the bar
who'd had nothing directly to do with the funeral.
This made for a degree of security for the four re-
maining Commissars, huddled as they were around
a vodka bottle on a corner table, like dissidents.
'Thanks for your intervention earlier, comrades. I
THE SKY ROAD 95
thought I was getting somewhere until you turned
up.'
'You thought wrong,' said Myra. She didn't feel
like arguing the point. 'I know Juniper, she'll seem
to agree with you and then start talking about the
war. Which is where we came in. You didn't lose
anything.'
'Huh,' grunted Andrei. He knocked back a
thumbnail glass. 'Tell me why you need a Foreign
Secretary at all.'
'Because I can't do everything myself,' Myra told
him. 'Even if I can do every particular thing better
than anyone. Division of labour, don't knock it. It's
all in Ricardo.'
Andrei and Valentina were looking at each other
with eye-rolling, exaggerated bafflement.
'Megalomania,' said Andrei sadly. 'Comes to all
the dictators of the proletariat, just before the end.'
'Think we should overthrow her before it's too
late?' Valentina straightened her back and sketched
a salute. 'Get Denis in on it and we can form a
troika. Blame all the problems on Myra and declare
a clean slate.'
'That is not funny,' said Myra. She poured an-
other round, watched the clear spirit splash into the
crystal ware, four times. 'That is exactly how it will
be. One day all the problems of the world will be
blamed on me.' This was not funny, she thought.
This was her deepest suspicion, in her darkest mo-
ments. She grinned at her confederates. 'To that
glorious future!'
They slugged back the vodka shots and slammed
down the empty glasses. Myra passed up an offer of
a Marley or a Moscow Gold, lit up a Dunhill from
her last trip out. The double foil inside the pack,
the red and the gold of its exterior — there was still,
96 KEN MACLEOD
to her, something wicked and opulent about the
brand, which she'd first smoked when duty-free still
meant something.
'So, what's the score, Andrei? Apart from today's
subtle approaches.'
'Ah.' Andrei exhaled the fragrant smoke through
his nostrils. 'Not good, I have to say. Kazakhstan's
still keeping out of it - after all, they have Baikonur
to think about, and the Sheenisov threat. If it
weren't for previous bad blood between them and
the space movement, I think they might be tempted
to side with it. So their neutrality is something, when
all's said and done. As for the rest -1 have canvassed
every country, I have checked with our delegates in
New York, and frankly it looks as if next week's vote
will go through.'
'Valentina?'
Myra didn't need to spell anything out. Kozlova
had spent days and nights tracking reports from
agents in the battlesats and the settlements. She re-
plied by holding out her spread hand and waggling
it.
'Nothing much we can do up there,' she said.
'The other side have all the resources to tip the bal-
ance their way, whichever way the argument is go-
ing.'
'Not all the resources,' Myra said.
'Oh, come,' said Valentina, with careful calm. 'We
couldn't.' She might have been talking about cheat-
ing at cards.
'But they don't know we couldn't,' Myra said. 'We
do have a hard reputation, after all. Most of the new
countries, not to mention the settlements, probably
think we're some kind of ruthless Bolsheviks.'
They shared a cynical laugh.
'I'm sure Reid is disabusing them of that notion
THE SKY ROAD 97
right now,' said Andrei. He seemed to have picked
up on what they were talking about; and as for Denis
Gubanov, he was leaning back with a smug smile, as
if he'd known it for years. Probably had.
'Oh, I don't know,' Myra said. 'He's a devious son
of a bitch. He says his side don't know what we've
got, and he might still hold out a hope of winning
us over - or using us as a threat to keep his own
side in order.'
She inhaled again.
'Besides,' she added, 'he doesn't know all we've
got. Or so I gathered. He thinks it's all in Earth
orbit.'
'It isnW Denis's smile faded instantly. 'So where
is it?'
'Good question,' Myra said. 'See if you can find
out.'
Valentina was intently studying the reflection of
the chandelier in the bar mirror.
'Is this a joke, or what?' Denis demanded.
Myra shook her head, laid her palm on the back
of his hand. 'Easy, man. Don't waste too much time
on it -just treat it as an exercise, see what you can
find out about what people know or suspect—'
'And I'm not to know myself?'
'Double-blind,' Myra said firmly. 'And double-
bluff. I'll let you know after you've brought back
some results, but I don't want your investigation
dropping any inadvertent hints.'
Denis scowled. 'OK,' he allowed, 'I see the point
of that.' He looked at his watch, sighed and stood
up. 'Three-fifteen,' he said. 'Time I was back at the
office.'
'The unsleeping sword of the Cheka,' Myra said.
'Time we all went back, I guess.'
'No,' said Andrei. Tou and Valentina stay here
98 KEN MACLEOD
and get drunk.' He pushed back his chair and raised
himself ponderously to his feet. * We Russian men will
take care of the rest of the day's business.'
'Sure?'
'Sure.' He put his hand on her shoulder. 'Relax,
Davidova. The coup won't come today, or tomor-
row.'
'I know that,' she said. 'But we just lost one more
commissar today—'
'Alex, huh, son of a bitch. No loss. I cleared his
desktop and locked him out the second he men-
tioned he was leaving us.'
'He was good at his job, and we don't have a re-
placement'
'The economy can get along fine without a com-
missar for a while,' Andrei said. 'The free market,
don't knock it. It's all in Ricardo.'
The two men walked to the bar. Andrei gallantly
laid a wad of currency on it, indicating Myra and
Valentina with a glance, nodded to them and left
with Denis.
'So,' said Valentina, looking after them, 'what do
you suppose they're up to?'
'Anything but going back to work, I hope,' Myra
laughed. 'Hitting the spaceport bars, or plotting our
demise. Whatever. What the fuck.' She downed an-
other vodka; stared at the tip of a cigarette that had
burnt down, unregarded; lit another.
'You're drunk already,' Valentina accused.
'And bitter and twisted. Yeah, I know.'
'I'll tell you why they left,' Valentina said. 'Apart
from the space-port attractions, that is.'
'Yeah?'
'They're giving us space, my dear. For a caucus.'
'Women's caucus? Bit dated, that.'
Valentina loosened her uniform jacket, removed
THE SKY ROAD 99
her tie and rolled it up carefully. 'Not - what was it
called? - feminism, Myra. Socialism. A Party caucus.'
'But I'm not even in the Party!'
'Are you so sure about that?' Valentina asked. 'I've
never seen a resignation letter from you. And I
would have, you know. I'm sure you're at least a
sympathiser, even if -' she giggled ' - you've been
missing branch meetings lately.'
Myra had to think about it. She supposed there
was still a direct-debit mandate paying her dues to
some anonymous Caribbean data-haven account.
She still got the mailings, filed unread. She still
wrote for Analysis, the International's online theo-
retical journal. (Its contributors had nicknamed it
Dialysis, because of its insistent theme that every-
thing was going down the tubes.)
Myra frowned at Valentina. The noise in the bar
was louder than it had been. People were drifting
in from other functions going on in the hotel: a
business conference, an anime con, and at least two
weddings.
'What does it matter?' she asked. 'We're nothing,
we're probably among the last Internationalists in
9
the whole fucking world,
'Indeed we are,' said Valentina. 'But there's still
a couple of things we can do. One is give our com-
rade a good send-off, by getting absolutely smashed
in his memory.'
They knocked glasses, drank.
'And the other thing?'
'Oh, yes. We can see if there's anything the In-
ternational is planning to do about the coup.'
Tou must be fucking joking.'
'I am not. If you want my guess, that's what they
wanted the assets for.'
'Whoever thought of that must be out of their tiny
100 KEN MACLEOD
fucking minds. Talk about adventurism.'
'I'm not so sure. Remember, there may not be
many of us left in the world, but -' Valentina leaned
closer * - there isn't only one world.'
'Oh, don't be—' Myra gave it a second thought.
'Oh,' she said. 'Our friends in the sky.'
'Yeah,' said Valentina. 'The space fraction.' 'I don't
want to discuss this right now,' Myra said. She
looked around, wildly. The place was jumping. One
beautiful Kazakh girl whom she'd thought was a
bride yelled something in what sounded like Jap-
anese. Her big white dress shrank like shrink-wrap
to her body, changing colour and hardening to a
costume of pastel-shaded plastic armour. A smart-
suit - made from, rather than by, nanotech - was a
heinously expensive novelty, offering a limited
menu of programmed transformations. Myra won-
dered how long it would be before its price plum-
meted, its repertoire exploded; how long it would
be before people could as readily transform their
bodies. A world of comic-book super-heroes - it
didn't bear thinking about. The girl struck a com-
bative pose, to a scatter of applause from the other
anime fans.
'Let's get drunk,' Myra said.
5
THE CHURCH OF MAN
M. .errial was, as promised, waiting.
She sat on the plinth, as I had done, under the
Deliverer's equestrian statue. She wore a loose
summer dress with a colourful tiered skirt.
Something stirred in my memory, then vanished
like a dream in the morning. She was in animated
conversation with a man sitting beside her. They
both looked up as I arrived.
'Hello/ I said warily.
He was a tall, thin man, about thirty, I reckoned;
quite brown, with sharp features and dark eyes
which had a sort of quirky, questioning look in
them; black hair curly on top, short at the back and
sides; dressed in leather trousers and jacket and a
white cotton T-shirt with a red bandana. A fine
chain hung around his throat beneath the bandana,
its pendant - if any - below the T-shirt's round col-
lar.
'Hello/ Menial said warmly. 'Clovis, this is Fer-
gal.'
The man stuck his right hand out and I shook it,
102 KEN MACLEOD
noticing as I did so that one of his thumbs pressed
the back of my hand and that he held on, as though
waiting for some response, for about a second
longer than I subconsciously expected, before let-
ting go.
'Pleased to meet you, Clovis,' he said. His voice
was low and deep, his accent was hard to place: cor-
rect, but by that very correctness of intonation in
each syllable, somehow foreign; it reminded me of
a Zanu prince I'd once heard speak at the Univer-
sity.
'Let's get some drinks,' he said, rising to his feet.
We strolled to the nearest vacant table outside The
Carronade. Fergal took our requests and disap-
peared inside.
'Who is that guy?' I asked.
Merrial favoured me with a slow smile. 'You sound
jealous,' she teased.
'Ah, come on. Just curious.'
'I've known him a long time,' she said. 'Nothing
personal. Just.. . one of us.'
'Well, I had kind of figured he was a tinker.'
Menial's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Yes, that's it,'
she said.
Fergal returned in a few moments, taking his seat
beside me and opposite Merrial. I offered him a cig-
arette, which he accepted with an oddly ironic smile.
'Well,' he said, lighting it, 'you know about the
. . . concern, for the ship?'
I nodded. Tes, but Merrial said nothing about its
being shared.'
He grinned. 'Oh, it's quite widely shared, I can
tell you that. It's a brave offer you've made, and -'
he spread his hands ' - all I can say is, thanks.'
I was more puzzled than modest about this ref-
THE SKY ROAD 103
erence to the bravery of my offer, so I just shrugged
at that.
'Are you on the project too?'
He seemed amused. Tm not on site, but I am on
the payroll, if that's what you mean,' he said. 'All
of -' he glanced at Menial ' - our profession are
very much involved in the project as a whole/ He
took a long swallow of beer, and a draw on his cig-
arette, becoming visibly more relaxed and expansive
as he did so. 'Its success matters a lot to us. We're
very keen to see the sky road taken again.'
'I like that,' I said. ' "The sky road".'
*Yes,' he said. 'Well, it took you people long
enough to get back on it'
'Back?'
'You walked it once.' Another glance at Menial,
then a smile at me. 'Or we did.'
'Our ancestors did,' I said.
'That's what I meant to say,' he said idly. 'But to
business. I'll have to get a piece of equipment that
you - or rather, Menial — is going to need. That's
going to take some time, but I'll manage it this
weekend. You'll have to book some time off and
seats on the Monday train.' He smiled wryly. 'Not
much point trying to travel on the Saturday or the
Sunday, anyway. No trains and damn slow traffic,
even if you wanted to drive.'
I nodded. 'And the University would have all its
hatches battened anyway.'
Yeah, that's a point. Still, can't complain - the
free weekend is one of the gains of the working
class, eh?'
'You could call it that,' I said. 'Mind you, whether
what goes on at the University should count as
work—'
We went on talking for a bit. Fergal was cagey
104 KEN MACLEOD
about himself, and I didn't press him, and after an-
other couple of beers he got up and left. We had
the evening, and the weekend, to ourselves.
Menial slept, leaning against my shoulder, all the
way from Carron Town to Inverness. It seemed a
shame for her to miss the journey, but I reckoned
she must have seen its famously spectacular and var-
ied scenery before, many more times than I had.
Besides, I liked watching her sleep, an experience
which, in the nature of our past three nights, I had
hitherto not had much time to savour.
We had caught the early train, at 5.15 on the
Monday morning. Each of us had separately ar-
ranged to have the first two days of the week off, by
seeking out our different supervisors in the Carron
bars on the Friday evening. It was to be hoped that
Angus Grizzlyback would remember that I was not
coming in this morning; but if he didn't, I was sure
my loyal friends would remind him, with predictable
and - as it happened - inaccurate speculation as to
how I intended to spend the day.
We had, in fact, spent the Saturday and the Sun-
day in just that way, very enjoyably, in bed or out on
the hills. On the Saturday afternoon Merrial had
guddled a trout from a dark, deep pool in the Alt
na Chuirn glen; leapt up with the thrashing fish
clutched in her hands and danced around, sure-
footed on the slippery stones. Again, something had
moved in my mind, like a glimpsed flick of a tail in
the water, which had - as soon as the shadow of my
thought fell on it - flashed away.
The sun rose higher, the shadows shortening, ap-
parently in the face of the train's advance. We
stopped at all the small, busy towns built around
forestry and light industry and - increasingly as we
THE SKY ROAD 105
moved east - farming: Achnasheen, Achnashellach,
Achanalt, Garve . . . The electric engine's almost si-
lent glide surprised the short-memoried sheep, rab-
bits and deer beside the track, and set up a
continuous standing wave of animals, sauntering or
lolloping or springing away. I saw a wolf's grey-
shadowed shape at Achanalt; as we rounded the
cliff-face at Garve I saw a wild goat on a shelf; and
spotted an eagle patrolling the updrafts above the
slope of Moruisg.
I didn't wake Merrial for any of them.
I smoked, once, with a coffee brought around on
a rattling trolley by a lass in tartan trews. Neither
the sound nor the smell nor the smoke stirred Mer-
rial at all, except to a few deeper breaths, long rip-
ples in the spate of her hair across her breast and
over my chest. I let her head nestle in the now awk-
ward crook of my left arm, and alternated the cup
and the cigarette in my right hand. It was a quiet
train, for all that it was busy, with clerks and traders
on their weekly commute from their coastal homes
to their work in Inverfefforan or Inverness.
On Merrial's lap, with her left arm - crooked like
mine - protectively over it, lay a bulky poke of pol-
ished leather, fastened with a drawstring thong. It
may have bulged a little larger, and weighed a little
heavier, than the kind of bags that lasses tend to lug
around, but it would have taken a close and sharp
observer to notice. Inside it, concealed by a layer of
the sort of oddments one would expect to find in
such a poke - a cambric kerchief, cosmetics, small-
bore ammunition and the like - was the compli-
cated apparatus that Fergal had delivered to her
house early on the Sunday evening. It was built
around a seer-stone about fifteen centimetres in di-
ameter, nested in neat coils of insulated copper
106 KEN MACLEOD
wire. The strangest aspect, to me, of this device was
an arrangement of delicate levers, each marked with
a letter of the alphabet, queerly ordered:
QWERTYUIOP . . .
Probably, I thought, a spell
'Grotty old place,' said Merrial, rubbing her face
with her hands and looking around the damp, flag-
stoned concourse of Inverness station. Her cheeks
reddened, her eyes widened under the smooth fric-
tion of her palms. Her dress, this time of blue velvet,
looked a bit rumpled. We were standing at the
coffee-bar, having twenty minutes to wait for the
8.30 to Glasgow.
I looked up at the creosoted roof with its wide
skylight panels and suspended electric lamps. 'At
least it doesn't have pigeons.'
'Can't say herring-gulls are much of an improve-
ment.' She kicked out with one booted foot, send-
ing a hungry, red-eyed bird squawking away. One
end of the station opened to the platforms, the
other to the main street. The arrangement seemed
peculiarly adapted to set up cold but unrefreshing
draughts. Despite its mossy walls and paving, the sta-
tion was more recent than the buildings outside,
most of which pre-dated the Deliverance, if not all
three of the world wars.
I finished my bacon roll, smiled at Merrial - who
was mumbling, half to herself and around mouth-
fuls of her own breakfast, some irritated speculation
about the degenerative evolution of scavenging sea-
birds - and wandered over to the news-stand. There
I stocked up on cigarettes and bought a copy of the
Press and Journal, a newspaper which outdoes even
THE SKY ROAD 107
the West Highland Free Press in its incorrigible paro-
chialism and venerable antiquity. Most of its pages
consisted of small advertisements, to do with fishing,
farming, uranium and petroleum mining and, of
course, Births, Marriages and Deaths. The last of
these could take up half a tall column of small print:
'Dolleen Starholm, peacefully in her sleep, aged 251
years, beloved great-great-grandmother of. . .' fol-
lowed by scores of names; and sometimes (as in this
case) the discreet indication of cult affiliation: 'RIP'
or THS'. More frequent, and more prominent, were
proud affirmation of the orthodox hope: 'Returned
by the Flame' (or the Sky or the Sun or the Sea) 'to
the One'.
I went back to the counter and, while Merrial fin-
ished off her breakfast, scanned the sparse snippets
of national and international news that had man-
aged to wedge their way in among the earth shak-
ingly important football and shinty reports, fishing
disputes and Council debates.
The Congress of Paris had ceremonially opened
its ninety-seventh year of deliberations, and had im-
mediately plunged into bitter controversy about a
proposal to empower the Continental Court to ad-
judicate border problems between cantons and
communes; the apparently more difficult matter of
disagreements between countries having been re-
solved by the Congress long ago, its success had ap-
parently gone to its collective head.
I sighed and turned the page. Another American
republic had voted a contribution from tariff reve-
nue to the spaceship project, which was gratifying
but mysterious - there was even an editorial com-
ment about it, full of sage mutterings about how
their ways were not ours, and that we should not
disdain such assistance, immoral though it might
108 KEN MACLEOD
seem to us. I wasn't too sure; to me, it smelt of steal-
ing money, but the Americans have a much greater
reverence for their governments than people have
in more civilised lands. If offered some loot by an
African king or Asian magnate or South American
cacique, I should hope the International Scientific
Society would politely decline, and this case seemed
little different. But all of this was, at this moment,
quite theoretical, as no such offer, and indeed no
news at all, from Asia or Africa appeared in today's
edition. I rolled it up and decided to leave the na-
tional news until later.
Menial brushed crumbs from her lips and looked
at me with amusement. 'You really look as though
you're paying attention to all that,' she said, picking
up her leather poke. I hitched my canvas satchel on
my shoulder and we strolled to the Glasgow train.
'Well, I do follow the news,' I said, somewhat de-
fensively, as we took our seats, this time facing each
other across a table. 'What's wrong with that?'
Menial shrugged. 'It's so. . . ephemeral,' she
said. 'And unreliable.'
'Compared with what?'
'Don't misunderstand me,' she said. 'I'm sure
this, what is it -' she reached for the paper, and
spread it out ' - Congress here is real, and really
did do what the article says it did. But it is only a
tiny part of the truth, and perhaps not the most
important part of what is going on there in Paris.
Let alone what is going on elsewhere in Paris. So
that, and all the other such pieces give you, really,
a false picture of the world.'
I could have been offended, but was not. 'I'm a
scholar of history, remember?' I said. 'I understand
how newspaper reports, even documents aren't
everything—'
THE SKY ROAD 109
'Oh, you don't want to hear what I think about
historical documentsV
'So what else can you do?'
She frowned at me, puzzled. 'You travel around
and find things out for yourself.'
'Aye, if only we all had the time.'
She touched the tip of my nose with the tip of
her finger. 'It's what tinkers do, and they have all
the time in their lives for it.'
The train pulled out, the Moray Firth in sight at
first, with its kelp fields and fish-farms, and then
nothing to see for a while but the close-packed pines
of Drumossie Wood as the train turned and the en-
gines took the strain of the long, slow ascent to
Slochd.
A couple of hours later, maybe, after Speyside of
the malts and bleak Drumochter, we were in the
long and beautiful glens between Blair Atholl and
Dunkeld. On one side of the line were streams full
of trout and turbines, on the other hillsides buzzing
with the saws and drills of workshops. The train
stopped for five minutes at Dunkeld. A small, old
town of stone, still with its Christian cathedral.
Merrial looked out of the windows, around at the
scene, and sat back with a slight shudder.
'A strange place,' she said, 'with the hills around
it like an ambush.'
'But that's why it's a great place,' I said, and told
her the story of how the Cameronians had held off
the Highland host and saved the Revolution to
which they owed their freedom. She listened with
more interest, even, than my telling of the tale de-
served, and leaned back at the end and said, 'Aye
well, maybe there's some use to history, after all. I'll
never be afraid of these hills again.'
* * *
110 KEN MACLEOD
It was two in the afternoon by the time the train
reached Glasgow's Queen Street Station, and glad
enough we were to get off it. Sometimes two people
who can fascinate each other endlessly when alone
together, and who can spark off each other in con-
vivial company, find themselves inhibited among
strangers who are unignorably in earshot, and find
themselves growing shy and silent and stale. So it
was with us, towards the end of that journey. I
couldn't even find it in my heart to talk about the
Battle of Stirling when we passed through the town.
We both brightened, though, on jumping down
on the platform. The familiar Glasgow railway-
station smell - of currying fish, and curing leaf, and
spark-gapped air, and old iron and wood-alcohol
and hot oil and burnt vanilla - hit my sinuses like a
shot of poteen. Menial, too, seemed invigorated by
it, taking a deep breath of the polluted stench with
a look of satisfaction and nostalgia.
'Ah, it's good to be back,' she said.
I glanced sidelong at her as we walked down the
platform. 'When were you in Glasgow? And how
could I have missed you?'
She smiled and squeezed my hand. 'Oh, I forget.
Ages ago. But the smell brings it back.'
'That and the noise.'
'The what?'
'THE—'
But she was laughing at me.
We crossed the station concourse, agreeing that,
on balance, pigeons were a worse nuisance than sea-
birds (though, as Menial gravely pointed out, better
eating). This comment, and some of the more ap-
petising components of the smell, reminded us that
we were ravenous, so we bought sandwiches and bot-
THE SKY ROAD 111
ties of beer from a stall in the station and carried
them out to George Square.
We sat down on a bench by a grassy knoll under
the statue of the Deliverer.
'Shee that,' Menial said, pointing upwards as she
munched. 'It'sh mean.'
4
What?'
She swallowed. 'The statue. The old city fathers
must have been a bit stingy.'
I looked up. 'No argument about the city fathers,'
I said. They're still tight-fisted. But that statue looks
fine to me.'
'The horse is black,' Menial pointed out. She
tapped the handle of her knife on a fetlock. 'And
cast in bronze. The lady herself is green -just cop-
per. They got out the oxy-acetylene torches and
hacked off the original rider, a king or general or
whatever, and stuck the Deliverer in his place!'
I stood up and paced around it, peering.
'You're right,' I said. 'You can see the joins. I must
have looked at that statue a hundred times, and not
noticed anything wrong with it.' I looked up at the
lady's head. 'And she has a different face from the
one in Canon Town, and they're both different
from any pictures I've seen of the Deliverer.'
'Well, there you go, colha Gree,' she said. 'Some
things a tinker can teach a scholar, eh?'
'Oh aye,' I said. I sat down again. 'Mind you, it
could hardly be just parsimony - it's a fine piece of
work after all, and they've done her hair in gold.'
Ton's gold paint,' she said scornfully. 'And as for
artistry, the breed and the trappings of the horse
are all wrong for the time and the circumstances.'
She was right there, too, when I looked. This was
no steppe horse, bare-back broken, roughly saddled,
such as was shown quite authentically in Canon
112 KEN MACLEOD
Square. Instead, it was a hussar's mount, in elabo-
rate caparison. But I thought then, and still think,
that the representation of the Deliverer herself was
well done. A fine example of the Glasgow style;
which, perhaps, makes the equine bodge appropri-
ate, and part of the artist's point.
We binned our litter and headed for the nearest
tramway stop, in Buchanan Street. The transport sys-
tem is one of Glasgow City Council's proudest pub-
lic works, a more than adequate replacement for the
great Underground circle, which was - it's said -
one of the wonders of the ancient world. Judging
by the remnants of it that here and there have out-
lasted centuries of flooding and subsidence, it is
quite possible to agree that such it must have been.
The tram came along, bell clanging, and we
jumped on and paid our groats and clattered like
children up the spiral steps to the upper deck. The
bell rang again and the tram lurched forward, creak-
ing up Buchanan Street and swaying as it turned the
corner into Sauchiehall.
Glasgow's main drag looked clogged with traffic,
but everything - steam-engine and motor-car and
horse-cart and bicycle alike — made way for the
tram's implacable progress. The pedestrians, at this
time of the day, were mosdy women shopping. But
all of them, whether young lasses just out of school
or mothers with young children or retired ladies at
their leisure, had to pick up their skirts, their pokes
or their weans and run for their lives when the tram
bore down on a crossing. The shops and offices
from recent centuries are built of logs and planks,
and rarely go higher than two storeys. The older,
pre-Deliverance buildings are of stone; some have as
many as five floors. In ancient times there were
much higher buildings, but most of them were
THE SKY ROAD 113
made of concrete, which doesn't last well, and -
agonising though it may be for archaeology - almost
all of their structures have long since been plun-
dered for steel and glass. Their foundations give rec-
tangular patterns to the growth of trees in the
forests around Glasgow: Pollock Fields, Possil Wood,
Partick Thorn.
Farther away, to the west, we could just make out
the haze and smoke from the Glydeside shipyards,
on which most of Glasgow's prosperity depended.
The shipyards were the seedbed of the skills which —
along with Kishorn's deep-water dock, almost unique
on this side of the Atlantic - had made Scotland the
logical site for the launch-platform's construction.
At the top of Sauchiehall there's a new stone
bridge, to replace the original concrete one that has
crumbled away. It carried us over the Eighth Motor
Way and into Woodlands Road, which runs along
beside the Kelvin Woods. (They, and the river that
runs through them, are named after Lord Kelvin,
who invented the thermometer.)
We stepped off the tram at the crest of University
Avenue, and stood for a moment looking at the
main building, a huge and ancient pile called Gil-
morehill. It looks like a piece of religious architec-
ture that has run wild, but it is solely devoted to
secular knowledge, a church of Man.
'It's not as old as it looks,' Menial said, as though
determined not to be impressed. 'That's Victorian
Gothic'
I didn't believe her, but I didn't argue. I had felt
in its chill stone and warm wood the shades of Sco-
tus and Knox and Kelvin, of Watt and Millar and
Ferguson, and no disputed date could shake my
conviction that the place was almost as old as the
114 KEN MACLEOD
nation whose mind it had done so much to shape.
* Whatever,' I said. 'Anyway, the department we're
going to isn't there.'
'Just as well,' Merrial said.
It was actually in one of the small side streets off
University Avenue, all of whose buildings date back
at least to the twentieth century. The trees that line
it are probably as old, gigantic towers of branch and
leaf, taller than the buildings. Their bulk darkened
the street, the leaves of their first fall formed a slip-
pery litter underfoot.
'So we just walk up and knock on the door?' Mer-
rial asked.
'No,' I said. 'I've got a key.'
She glanced down at her leather bag. 'And you're
sure we won't be challenged?'
'Aye, I'm sure,' I said. We'd been over this before.
As a prospective student, with my project already
accepted even if as yet unfunded, I had every right
to be here - in fact, I should have been here more
often, through the summer. So no one should ques-
tion us, or our presence in the old archive. We'd
planned how we'd do the job, but its proximity
seemed to be making Merrial more nervous than I
was.
'All right,' she said.
The key turned smoothly in the oiled lock, and
the tongue clicked back. I pushed the heavy door
aside and we stepped in. I locked it behind us. The
place was silent, and as far as I could tell it was
empty. The hallway was dim and cool, its pale yellow
paint darkened by generations of nicotine, and it
divided after a few metres into a narrower corridor
leading deeper into the Institute and a stairway lead-
ing to the upper floors. The place had a curious
musty odour of old paper and dusty electric light-
THE SKY ROAD 115
bulbs, and a faint whiff of pipe-smoke. I checked the
piles of unopened mail on the long wooden table
at the side. A few notes for me, which a quick check
revealed were refusals of various applications for pa-
tronage. I stuffed them in my jacket pocket and led
the way up two flights of stairs to the library, switch-
ing on the fizzing electric lamps as we went.
Menial wrinkled her nose as I opened the library
door and switched on the lights.
'Old paper/ I said.
She smiled. 'Dead flies.'
I made to close the door after we entered the
room, but Menial touched my arm and shook her
head.
'I couldn't stand it,' she said.
'You're right, me neither.' The still, dead air
made me feel short of breath.
I held her hand, as much for my reassurance as
for hers, as we threaded our way through the maze
of ceiling-high book-cases. Menial, to my surprise,
once or twice tugged to make me pause, while she
scanned the titles and names on cracked and faded
spines with a look of recognition and pleasure.
'The Trial of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trots-
kyites!' she breathed. 'Amazing! Do you know any-
thing about that?'
'It was some kind of public exorcism,' I said, hur-
rying her along. I'd once glanced into that grim gri-
moire myself, and the memory made me slightly
nauseous. 'People claimed they had turned into
rabid dogs who would go out and wreck machinery.
Horrible. What superstitious minds the communists
had.'
Menial chuckled, but shot me an oddly pleased
look.
At the far end of the library the ranks of book-
116 KEN MACLEOD
cases stopped. Several tables and chairs were lined
up there, apparently for study - but no one, to my
knowledge, ever studied at them. The most anyone
could do was to put down a pile of books or docu-
ments there for a quick inspection of their contents
under the reading-lights, before rushing out of the
library. I recalled Menial's comment that people to-
day are more claustrophobic than their ancestors.
Beside these tables was another door, of iron, with
a handle but no lock. The mere thought of the pos-
sibility of that door's having a lock was enough to
give me a cold sweat.
'Here we are,' I said, and added, to make light of
it, 'the dark archive.'
'What's inside it?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I've never been in it.'
She frowned. 'Is it off limits, or what?'
'No, no.' I shook my head. 'It's not forbidden or
anything. Hardly anybody wants to go in.'
'No point in hesitating,' said Merrial. 'Let's get it
over with.'
I turned the handle and pulled the door back. To
fit with my feelings, it should have given off an el-
dritch squeak, but its heavy hinges were well-
lubricated. A couple of times I worked the handle
from the inside. It appeared to be in good order,
but I dragged one of the chairs over and used it to
prop the door open, just in case it closed acciden-
tally.
I switched on the overhead light and stepped with
an assumed air of boldness across the threshold.
The small back room appeared innocent enough. It
had a desk, with a couple of chairs in front of it and
on its top a cluster of boxy, bulky structures like
models of ancient architecture. Aluminium shelves
lined the walls on either side. The air held a differ-
THE SKY ROAD 117
ent, subtler smell, almost like the smell of washed
hair or polished horn, with a sharp note of acetones.
Menial sniffed. 'Like a rotting honeycomb,' she
remarked cheerfully. I fought down a heave.
'Would smoking get rid of the miasma?' I sug-
gested.
*Yes, but it might damage the disks.'
While I was still looking around for anything that
remotely resembled a disc, Menial began rummag-
ing along the shelves. The boxes arrayed there were
translucent, the colour of sheepskin, with dusty,
close-fitting lids. They contained flat black plates
about nine centimetres square and two millimetres
thick. She picked out a few at random, held them
up and shook them slightly. From every one, a sooty
black dust drifted down. Oxidation crystals crusted
the small metal plates at their edges. She shook her
head. 'Hopeless,' she said.
In other, smaller boxes there were smaller, shiny
wafers. These, when she picked them out, simply
crumbled to the touch.
'So much for them,' she said. 'We'll just have to
see if there's anything on the hard drive.' She
pulled up a seat in front of the machines. The larg-
est, before which she sat, had a sort of window-pane
on the front of it. She opened her poke, rummaged
out the clutter on top and carefully extracted her
strange devices. She laid them on the table: the seer-
stone glowing with random rainbow ripples, a small
black box and the frame of lettered levers, all con-
nected by the coils of insulated copper wire.
'Oh, look, that thing there has the same—'
'Don't touch it!'
'All right'
She glanced up at me. 'Sorry to snap. I'm a bit
jumpy.'
118 KEN MACLEOD
'Aye, well, me too.'
'Also I'm in tinker mode.' She smiled. 'Courtesy
doesn't come into it. If you want to help, see if you
can find a power source for this thing while I set up
my system.' She waved a hand vaguely in the dark-
ness under the table.
Suppressing a qualm, I stooped down into that
darkness, and after a moment while my eyes ad-
justed I saw a dusty power-socket, with three holes.
A centimetre-thick cable hung from the back of the
table and ended in a three-pronged plug. Deducing
how plug and socket fitted together was the work of
a moment, as was inserting the one into the other.
The light around me brightened suddenly. Mer-
rial's boot hit my ribs, and she simultaneously ut-
tered an odd imprecation.
'What?'
'Christ, don't do that!'
Another strange prayer. I crawled backwards from
under the table. Menial gave me a glare.
'I thought that was what you wanted me to do,' I
protested.
'Oh.' She thought about it. 'I suppose you could
have taken it that way, yes. I forgive you. Now come
here and sit down.' She patted the seat beside her.
As I got to my feet I noticed what had happened
to the machine, and where the extra light was com-
ing from. The window on the front of the box was
glowing a pearly grey with darker and lighter flecks
swirling through it, like the sky above a port on a
snowy day. I took a step backwards. The tempera-
ture in the room seemed to have dropped a few
kelvins. Now I understood why she'd been making
these invocations. At moments like that even the
most rational person will utter whatever name of the
deity springs to mind.
THE SKY ROAD 119
'It won't bite/ she said.
I sidled forward, keeping a wary eye on the thing,
as one might do towards a dog about whom one had
received just such an assurance. With the hand that
Menial couldn't see, I made the sign of the Horns,
then realised that this was shamefully superstitious
and began instead mentally to recite a few Names
of the One, and of the Prophets: Allah, Buddha,
Christ, Deity, Jordan, Justice .. .
'Did I do that?' I asked.
Khomeini, Krishna, Mercy, Mary, Odin, Necessity,
Nature ...
'When you switched the power on, yes.'
Paine, Providence, Quine, Reason, Yaweh, Zoro-
aster. That should do.
She gazed into my eyes with impish amusement,
and reached forward and stroked my face. The rasp
of my stubble sounded uncannily loud.
'It's all right, mo grdidh,' she said. 'I'm a tinker. I
know what I'm doing. This thing here -' she patted
the top of it' - is just a machine that does the same
thing as the seer-stanes, only not so well. It's no a
deil, ye ken. It's a computer.'
'Aye, I know that. ..'
'Well, start acting as if you believed it,' she said.
'But is it a television?' I shuddered inwardly at nam-
ing that dark instrument of the Possession.
She shook her head. 'No. This here is a keyboard,
and this here is a screen. The screen, or monitor,
works on a similar principle to a television, but it is
not a television. And even if it was, it couldn't do
you any harm.'
Easy enough for her to say that, I thought, but
wisely didn't say.
'Assuming it still works at all,' she added cheer-
120 KEN MACLEOD
fully. 'The chips got fried in the Deliverance, for the
most part.'
(Me neither, but that's what she said.)
She rattled a few keys. The screen's snowstorm
responded not at all.
'Control alt delete,' she said to herself, and hit
three keys simultaneously.
Nothing happened, again.
'Hmm,' she said. She reached forward and prod-
ded a stud on the machine. The screen turned
black.
'So much for that one,' she said. She stood up
and leaned over the table and started looking more
closely at the various boxes.
'Hey!' she said. 'Got it! One of these looks like
it's radiation-hardened!' She reached in among the
boxes and started fiddling dangerously with live ca-
bles, removing a lead from the back of the box we'd
used and sticking it in the back of another one.
What had seemed to be merely the blank front of
that box suddenly lit up, a smoothly shining grey,
revealing itself to be a screen.
'Yess!' said Merrial, punching the air.
By this point I was beginning to get a grip on
myself, though I must admit I almost lost it com-
pletely when Merrial turned around and prodded a
letter on the keyboard and the words 'Demon In-
ternet Software' flashed up on the screen.
Allah, Buddha, Christ. . .
'All right,' Merrial said briskly, as the screen with
the three sinister names disappeared and was re-
placed by a picture with lots of tiny pictures spread
out on it. 'We've got this bugger up and running,
but Christ knows how long it'll stay up.' (She talked
this way, I'd come to notice, with its curious com-
THE SKY ROAD 121
bination of obscure sexual and religious references,
when she was in what she'd called her * tinker
mode'.) 'So what we better do is whip the stuff out
of it ay ess ay pee.'
'Out of it what?'
'As. Soon. As. Possible.'
'Oh, right. Toot sweet.'
'What?'
I waved a hand. 'Let's get on with it, as you say.'
'Yip.'
She carefully uncoiled one of the strands of cop-
per wire, and attached a little peg with a copper pin
to the end. This she inserted in a round hole
(which, she explained, did not fucking have to be
round the fucking back, but fucking was) in the
pediment of the computer.
'Right,' she said. The tip of her tongue between
her lips, she tapped out the words 'Myra Godwin',
the name of the Deliverer, on the key-board. They
simultaneously appeared on the screen and on the
now black seer-stone.
'Go,' she said, hitting another key.
A few seconds passed (tongue between the teeth
again) and the screen and the stone filled with a list
of tides which crept slowly upwards, its top moving
out of sight, and which kept on going for several
minutes.
When the list had stopped its crawl she said, 'OK,
copy,' and rattled at the keyboard again. A picture
of an hourglass appeared on the screen, and the
sand began to run. The seer-stone, meanwhile,
showed a tree, branching and budding and growing
leaves.
After about a minute and a half the sand had all
flowed from the top half of the glass, and the stone
was filled with green. Both displays vanished.
122 KEN MACLEOD
'That's it,' Menial said.
'That's all?'
Tes,' she grinned. 'That's all the files that men-
tion Myra Godwin transferred, from the dark stor-
age to the stane. No bad going, eh?'
'Brilliant,' I said. She stood up, leaned around be-
hind the computer again, disconnected her wire
and wound it quickly around her hand. Then she
poked a few more keys on both keyboards. The
screen went that shining grey again, and the stone
went back to black.
She smiled at me. *You have my permission to
turn the power off.'
We left the small room, and the larger library,
exactly as we had found them, and walked quietly
down the stairs and out of the Institute. When we
were a few metres down the street and away we
hugged each other and yelped.
'We did it!' Menial gloated. 'We actually fucking
did it!'
*Yes, I still can hardly believe it,' I said. I caught
her hand. 'Now what do we do?'
'We look at what we've got,' she said. 'Somewhere
no one will see us, or bother us.'
I knew just the place.
Because it was vacation time there were few students
around, so my landlady was happy to rent me my
usual small room above the book shop on South-
park Avenue for one night. She didn't raise an eye-
brow as she took my five marks and handed over a
bedroom key, even though it was only about half
past four in the afternoon. I suppose she assumed
we wanted to use the room for sex.
She gave us a quick cup of coffee and shared a
smoke, and a couple of months' worth of local gos-
THE SKY ROAD 123
sip, in the back of her kitchen, then waved us up-
stairs with a wink at me. The room had a fairly
generous, though notionally single, bed and a chair
and table and power socket. The window had been
left open, but its only view was of the back yard. Still,
one could look out and see the sky any time one
wanted.
'Perfect,' Merrial said.
She unloaded the seer-stone and its peripheral
pieces again and set them up on the table, running
a small cable from the black box to the wall socket.
The little box began to hum faintly, and at the same
moment a human face loomed out of the dark of
the seer-stone, mouthing distress.
'Ah, fuck that,' Merrial said. She rubbed the stone
with a cuff, and the face fell apart into flecks of
colour. 'Now,' she said, 'let's get on with sorting and
searching. We're looking for stuff from before the
Deliverance, but finding it in this lot won't neces-
sarily be easy. Let's hope the files are date-stamped.'
She sat in the chair, motioning to me to perch on
the table, and started tapping away at her version of
a keyboard. 'Ah, good, we can sort by date.'
The list reappeared in the depths of the glassy
stone, this time with a stack of articles at the top
with a single date of 28 May 2059. Merrial stroked
with her finger gently and slowly along a tiny bar on
the keyboard, then tapped another key. 'Let's see
what this is.'
We peered together into the glass and began to
read.
Bankrupt of any perspective for overcoming the cri-
sis, the ruling elite can only sit and watch as society
disintegrates beneath it Factories fail to fulfil their
obligations, corruption is rife, and the real value
124 KEN MACLEOD
produced in the economy continues to plummet. Many
industrial sectors actually produce negative value:
their output is worth less - in market or any other
terms - than the raw materials they take in; in es-
sence, they are vast organizations for spoiling re-
sources.
In the absence of any genuine move towards a mar-
ket, or —from the other side — any initiative from the
workers, the system can only continue to disintegrate.
'Sounds like 2059 all right/ Menial said. That
was what the Deliverance delivered us from.'
I nodded, cautiously. 'Let's just look further
down ...'
What cannot be ruled out is that the Moscow oli-
garchy could launch some diversionary military ad-
venture, but this too would rapidly develop its own
problems, and intensify those of the centre.
'Damn!' I said.
'What?'
'This isn't 2059, it's more like 1999!'
The invasion of Afghanistan must be seen in this
context.
'No, it's 1979! Well -' I frowned at the date at the
foot of the article ' - actually 1980, but it was written
about the situation in '79. In the Soviet Union.' I
laughed bitterly. 'The reason it's a bit difficult to
tell at first what period she's talking about is that it
was in the Soviet Union that the collapse started,
right there in the 1970s. After the Soviet Union dis-
integrated it just got worse, and spread.'
This much was a fairly well-accepted historical ac-
THE SKY ROAD 125
count, which I'd covered in my undergraduate stud-
ies in Ancient History.
'So why's it dated 2059?' Menial asked. She
stroked the bar and rolled the list down again.
'Hah!' she said. 'This file, and a whole lot of others
by the look of it, were put on to the computer at that
date. Which doesn't mean they were created then.
I don't know if I can extract the original creation
date, either.'
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Maybe this is where I can
help. I should be able to tell the rough date from
the titles of the files, or maybe a quick look at their
contents.'
'There are thousands of files in there,' she
pointed out. 'If dating each of them takes as long
as it did to date that one, we'll be here all night'
I smiled. 'Why should that be a problem?'
It turned out not to be a problem. Although the
bulk of the files had the same date in the 'date'
column of Menial's machine, and she gave up look-
ing for a way to find what she called the 'create-
date', quite a large number of the files had a date
reference of some kind in their titles. These were
apparendy articles from magazines or newspapers,
by Myra Godwin or about her. We quite quickly got
into a way of working that let me identify such files,
and Menial deal with them, copying the date from
the title to another 'date' column. After ten minutes
of this she hit her forehead with the heel of her
hand and cried, 'Stop!'
'What is it?'
'We're wasting our time. I'm wasting our time, I
mean.' She rubbed her hands. 'What we need here
is a wee program, to scan the titles for dates, extract
them, reformat them and then sort by date ...'
126 KEN MACLEOD
'I'll take your word for it,' I said, not having un-
derstood all of her words. She waved me away, with
a look of abstracted concentration on her face.
'This'11 be easy,' she said. 'It'll save us hours.'
I sat on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette, while
her fingers flickered over the small keyboard, mak-
ing a pattering noise like rain on a roof. It struck
me that there seemed to be no discernible differ-
ence between the white logic and the black, but no
doubt this only showed my ignorance.
Tessl' she said. 'No bother.'
She hit a key and sat back. Then she leaned for-
ward again, peering at the stone.
'Oh ffiuck!'
I eyed her warily.
'I used fucking two-digit year-dates. Force of
habit. Fucking thing falls over on the year 2000.'
The pattering started again.
About half an hour later Menial had the files par-
tially ordered by date, and we could dig about in
them with a little more confidence in their rele-
vance to our concerns.
' "Defence Policy Contract (Expiry), Vatican City,
11 December 2046",' Menial read out. 'That looks
interesting.'
She pressed one of her keys and the file, as she put
it, opened: instead of the title glowing a little brighter
among the others, we could see the whole document.
Parts of it were in impenetrable legal language (parts
of it, in fact, were in Latin) but there was enough
there for us to form a good idea of what it was
about.
Menial paused before opening another file, one
labelled 'Mutual Protection/Space Merchants/
2058'.
THE SKY ROAD 127
We looked at each other, both a little pale, each
waiting for the other to speak first.
Menial swallowed hard, and reached for one of
my cigarettes.
'You do know,* she said slowly, 'just what the De-
liverer had to do to make a living, under the Pos-
session?'
'Well...' I could feel my lower lip moving back
and forth over the edge of my teeth, and stopped
it. *Yes. It's one of the aspects of history that histo-
rians tend not to talk about. In popular works, that
is.'
'OhhF Menial let out a held breath in relief. 'You
know about the slave camps, then.'
'What?' For a fleeting instant, I literally saw a
black shadow before my eyes. I pointed at the seer-
stone's script. 'I thought you were talking about the
nuclear blackmail!'
Menial looked puzzled. 'Nuclear blackmail? I
know she got some nuclear weapons from the Pa-
panich, that's right here. What has that to do with
how she made her living?'
'Oh, Reason above!' I clutched my head. 'Let's
get this straight. You think the dirty secret is that she
ran slave camps. I think it's that she trafficked in nu-
clear threats.'
Menial sighed. 'Yes, that's it.' She unfurled her
hand and forearm with parodied politeness. Tou
first.'
'All right' I noticed that my left knee was judder-
ing up and down; I stood up, and paced the floor
as I spoke. *You know about nuclear detenence?'
*Oh, aye,' she said, with a grimace.
'Well, yes, to us the policy of threatening to burn
to death many great cities and their inhabitants
seems wicked, but the ancients didn't see it that way.
128 KEN MACLEOD
In fact, some of them began to see nuclear deter-
rence as a good, which like all goods would be bet-
ter bought and sold by businesses than provided by
governments. The trouble was, all nuclear weapons
were owned by governments, and were impossible
to buy and hard to steal.
'So Myra Godwin and her husband, Georgi Davi-
dov, stole a government. Davidov was a military
man, and he carried out a military coup in a part
of Kazakhstan, in a region which was very unpleas-
ant and barren but which did happen to have a
large stockpile of nuclear weapons. In a way, what
happened was that the soldiers who manned the nu-
clear weapons decided to claim some territory, and
nobody dared gainsay them.
The local people had suffered grievously under
the rule of the Communists. Stalin had starved at
least a million of them in the 1930s. But things had
improved a lot, and after the fall of the Communists
they found themselves worse off under the lairds
and barons and usurers. The real answer to their
problems was not known at the time, or not known
widely enough, and they began to hanker for the
secure if limited life they had known before.
'This was where Myra and Georgi had their stroke
of genius. While Myra was studying here she was a
follower of a man called Trotsky, who had been
killed by Stalin and who became a banner for a dif-
ferent kind of communism, purged of Stalin's
crimes. As if there could be such a thing!'
'What do you mean?' Menial asked, narrow-eyed.
'Oh, come on, you know, communism—' The word
made me physically nauseous, as though dirty hands
were pawing me. 'Everybody minding each other's
business, everybody owned by everybody else, and
that's just the ideal! What could that be but evil? Let
THE SKY ROAD 129
alone the reality, of a small ruling group doing the
minding and the owning!'
'How did that help the Deliverer?'
I shrugged. 'She may have believed it when she
was young. Nobody's perfect. But when the Davidovs
set up their state, they did so in the name of Trotsky,
even though they did not really believe in him any
more. They kept enough communism to keep peo-
ple secure, and enough freedom to let them be
happy and rich.'
Menial's face was set in an interested but carefully
neutral expression.
'And the way they got rich,' I went on, 'was this.
They started selling options to use the nuclear weap-
ons they held. That way, states that had no nuclear
weapons of their own could have nuclear deter-
rence. They were quite open about it, but they had
to stop after the Third World War, when the last
empire consolidated its grip.'
I sighed and shrugged. 'It's a blot on her record,
I'll give you that. But they never actually used them.'
Menial looked a bit shaken. 'So the scholars have
known that all along? Well, I know what Godwin's
people did after they lost their little nuclear threat
business.' She smiled, thin-lipped. 'It seems you
don't'
She opened the other file. This one, which I read
with growing honor, was about a very different con-
tract. It was a monthly report on work done by pris-
oners, guarded by a company called Mutual
Protection, for another company called Space Mer-
chants.
'Prison labour was another good,' Menial said,
'that our Deliverer thought best to supply on the
free market.'
'But that's slavery!'
130 KEN MACLEOD
'Indeed it is,' said Merrial. 'That's why we don't
talk about it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of your
scholars have covered it up too.' Her eyes narrowed.
'Maybe some of the senior tinkers know about this
nuclear business, and all. But they don't talk about
it'
We sat looking at each other, with the sudden
passion of people who have lost something that they
believed in, and have only each other left. It was all
the more bitter because we each had separately
thought we had been told the worst about the great
woman, had smugly thought we were mature
enough to know it and keep it quiet from the gul-
lible populace, and we each had found that we had
our selves been gulled by our own guild; that there
was an even darker tale to tell. My mind was racing,
and I could feel a headache coming on. At the same
time I felt a sense of release, a small deliverance, as
the image of the Deliverer toppled in my mind.
With a short break when we wandered out into the
warm evening for dinner in a fish restaurant by the
Kelvin, we worked through the files. We found plenty
about Myra Godwin's strange career - more than
enough to write a pretty sensational biography - but
nothing about what had happened around the time
of the Deliverance itself. It was after nine when Mer-
rial jumped up and hissed, 'Shit! Shit!'
'What's the matter?'
'I've found a catalogue file. No meaningful tide,
wouldn't you just fucking believe it. And it's got far,
far more entries than we've got files here. We just
got the low-security stuff! The rest is still in the Uni-
versity's dark storage.'
THE SKY ROAD 131
I rubbed my sore eyes, and reached out for Mer-
riaFs hand. 'So what's still there might be worse?'
'You said it. It might even contain the stuff we're
looking for. We have to go back.'
6
LIGHT WEAPONS
L long ago there had been another
country, called the International. It was a country
of the mind, a country of hope, and it
encompassed the world. Until one day, in August
1914, its citizens went to war with each other, and
the world ended. Everything died in that war, God
and Country and International and Civilisation;
died, and went to hell. Everybody died. The
survivors thought they were alive, but they were
not. After August 1914 there had been no living
people in the world - only dead people on leave,
the damned and the demons. The last morally
responsible people in the world had been the
Reichstag fraction of the German Social-
Democratic Party. They had voted the credits for the
Kaiser's war, against every resolution of their past.
They had known the right thing to do, and they
had chosen the wrong. All subsequent history had
been that of the damned, of poor devils struggling
in the hell these men had pitched them into; and
nobody could be judged for how they behaved in
hell.
THE SKY ROAD 133
This thought, with its bleak blend of Christian
and Marxist heresies, had originally been ex-
pounded to her by David Reid, one night many de-
cades ago, when he was very drunk. It had sustained
Myra through many a bad night. At other times -
in the days, and the good nights - it seemed a callow
undergraduate nihilism, shallow and wicked and ab-
surd. But in the bad nights it struck her as profound
and true, and, in its way, life-affirming. If you
thought of people as alive and each having a life to
live, you'd get so depressed at what so many had got
instead, this past century and a half, that on a bad
night you'd be tempted to add your own death to
theirs, and thus make an undetectable increment to
that already unimaginable, unthinkable number.
A number which Myra, on her bad nights, sus-
pected she had already increased quite considera-
bly. Not directly - if she had sinned at all, it had
been a sin of omission - and nobody had ever
blamed her for it, but she blamed herself. If she had
sold the deterrence policy to the German imperial-
ists when they'd needed it, torn up all her existing
contracts and sorted them out later, how many peo-
ple would now be alive who now were dead? On the
bad nights the answer seemed to run into millions.
At other times, on more sober reflection, she reali-
sed she wasn't in that league; she wasn't up there
with the Big Three; there was almost a sort of ado-
lescent self-dramatisation in the pretension; if she
belonged in that company at all it was in the second
or third rank, below the great revolutionaries but
up there with the more destructive of the great im-
perialists, Churchill and Mountbatten and Johnson
and people of that ilk.
Her shoes were kicked off under a chair, the black
crepe and devore dress was across the back of the
134 KEN MACLEOD
chair, the* sable hat was flung in a corner, the black
fur coat was on the floor, the whisky bottle was open
on the table and Leonard Cohen's black lyrics dis-
turbed the smoky air: Manhattan, then Berlin, in-
deed.
Myra was having one of her bad nights.
The late-spring night outside the thin, old cur-
tains was cold, and the central-heating radiator
didn't do much to hold back the chill. The main
room of the flat felt small, almost cramped, like a
student bedsit She had a kitchen, a bathroom, a
bedroom; but most of what defined her life was
crammed into this living-room. The shelves were
lined with books, two or three rows deep, though
she had the entire 2045 edition (the last) of the
Library of Congress, sharing space with its Sterling
search engine on a freebie disk somewhere in the
clutter. Her music, her computer software and hard-
ware, her pictures, all were piled up in similarly
silted layers of technological generations, with the
most recent stuff at the top or on the outside, and
everything back to CDs and PCs and even, at some
pre-Cambrian level, vinyl, in the strata below. She
had, in her eyeband, ready access to any scene on
Earth or off it, but she still had posters on the walls.
Once, these posters had consisted mainly of old
advertisements for the ISTWR's exports. But in re-
cent years, one by one, the tacked-up shots of lift-
offs and payloads, missiles and explosions had been
tugged down in moments of shame and fury, to be
crumpled and binned, and replaced by scenes of
Kazakh nature and tradition. Mountains and mead-
ows, horsemen and peasants, dancers in embroi-
dered costumes - a whole oriental Switzerland of
tourist attractions. Kazakhstan was not doing too
badly, even today. It had moved away from its dis-
THE SKY ROAD 135
astrous, Soviet-era polluting industries and extrac-
tive monocultures, and put its prairies to a more
productive and natural use in cattle-raising. The Ka-
zakh horsemen were back in the saddle.
Myra leaned back and stretched. It was nearly
midnight. She'd had far too much to drink. Her few
hours in the bar with Valentina had been followed
by an hour or two of drinking on her own. She was
so drunk she was lucid, 'fleeing' as Dave used to call
it. Or possibly she was sobering up, smoothly and
gradually, and was in the state where repeated ap-
plications of the hair of the dog were postponing
the inevitable hammer-blow of the hangover. But
drunk or sober, with or without Reid's antinomian
justification, she had to act. She had to reach the
International.
There were two Internationals ('for large values
of two' as Reid had once put it, alluding to the nu-
merous splits): the Second and the Fourth. When
most people talked about the International, they
meant the Second - the successor of the one that
had torn itself apart in 1914, and had painfully reas-
sembled its severed limbs in the course of three
world wars, five world slumps and one successful
world revolution. Even today it was massive: the So-
cialist International's affiliated parties and trade un-
ions and co-operatives and militias had an aggregate
membership in the tens of millions, still.
What Myra meant, and Valentina meant, and
Georgi had meant by the International was a less im-
posing institution, a remnant of a fragment, most of
it embedded in the greater body of the Second, a
splinter travelling slowly through its veins. The
Fourth International's membership was in the low
thousands, scattered around the world - and, as Val-
entina had reminded her, off the world, thanks to
136 KEN MACLEOD
its pioneering efforts at unionising the space rigs
back in the 2020s. It was now almost dormant, a
tenuous network of old comrades who couldn't
quite say goodbye to each other, or to the dreams
of their fervent younger days.
The radical sects of the English Revolution, the
Muggletonians and Gameronians and Fifth Monar-
chy Men, had persisted as dwindling, marginal con-
gregations for centuries after their Kingdom had
failed to come; so it would be, Myra thought, for the
erstwhile partisans of the Fourth. She knew that, but
still she had paid her dues.
Now it was time to get something back for her
money. For a start, she could find out what her com-
rades had done with her country's nukes.
Myra flew through virtual space, drunk in charge of
a data-drive. New View floated before her, its image
filling her eyeband's field. The habitat was a sort of
orbital commune - world socialism, in a very small
world - which had been put together by the left
wing of the space movement, back when such ideas
seemed to matter. The graticule showed it was hun-
dreds of metres across, a circular accretion of hab-
itats, salvaged fuel-tanks, cannibalised spacecraft.
She reached out and turned it about in her datag-
loved hands, mildly amused at the chill, prickly tac-
tile feedback, and peered at the small print of
addresses on the hull until she found the name she
sought.
Logan; whether forename or surname, real name
or party name she didn't know; she'd never heard
the man called anything else. There it was, scribed
on a hull panel from an old McDonnell Douglas
SSTO heavy-lifter. She tapped it and the view
zoomed in, to show a window with the man's face
THE SKY ROAD 137
peering out. It was an engagingly apt interface. Myra
zapped a hailing code, and the face at the window
responded.
4
Oh, hi? Myra Godwin? Just a moment, please.'
The fetch wavered and Logan's real face, subtly dif-
ferent, seamlessly replaced it, pulling back as the
window icon widened to an interior view of an ac-
tually windowless room.
The compartment was full-spectrum strip-lit, the
glowing tubes like shafts of sunlight among inter-
twined vines and branches, cables and tubes. Logan
floated in the centre of the room. His cropped white
hair matched his white stubble. He wore a faded
blue singlet and baggy pants. Around his brow was
a toolkit headband on which a loupe and a light
were mounted; a standard eyeband was shoved
higher up on his forehead. He was bent around the
open back of a control-panel which he had gripped
between his feet and was working on with a hand
laser and a set of jeweller's screwdrivers.
He flipped the loupe up from his eye and grinned
at her.
'Well, Myra, long time no see.' He still had the
London accent, overlaid with a space-settler drawl.
His space fraction had picked up a lot of people she
and Georgi had known in Kazakhstan, tough trade-
union militants blooded in the Nazbarayev years.
'Yeah, I've missed you too, Logan. How's life on
New View?'
Logan gestured with one hand, automatically
making a compensating movement with the other.
'OK. We've got pretty much up to complement
population-wise, near a thousand last time I
checked. We're making a good living, though - got
a lot of products and skills the white settlers need.
And the old Mars project is chugging along.'
138 KEN MACLEOD
You're still doing that?'
Logan turned up his thumb. 'Kitting out the ex-
pedition, bit by bit. No intention of hanging around
here forever — not with the white settlers staking out
the Moon, anyhow. Nobody's even got much scien-
tific interest in Mars any more, 'specially after that
contamination thing came out.'
Myra nodded glumly. It had indeed come as a bit
of a disappointment that Mars had an entire bio-
sphere of busily evolving micro-organisms, of recent
origin; in the 1970s the Soviets had proudly depos-
ited a piece of paper autographed by Leonid Brezh-
nev on the Red Planet, which was now being very
slowly terraformed by the descendants of bacteria
from the General Secretary's sweat.
'So we're gonna go for it,' Logan went on. 'Some
time in the next couple of years, we're moving it
out'
*You're going to move New View?' Myra smiled at
Logan, and at herself - each question so far had
ended on a high note of astonishment.
'Minus a few hundred tons of stuff we won't need,
but basically, yes. Fill her up - well, fill up a few
tanks, I mean - with Lunar polar water, buy a fusion
engine from the white settlers and push off on a
Hohmann orbit. We got enough old spacecraft
lashed into this junk-heap to build landers, then
habitats on the ground.'
*You've got it all worked out, I see,' said Myra.
'Well, good luck to you with that.' The Mars colony
scheme had been pending, Real Soon Now, on Lo-
gan's agenda for as long as she'd known him. 'How-
ever, I've got something a bit more urgent to ask
you. These white settlers of whom you speak, they
aren't by any chance the people I once made a lot
THE SKY ROAD 139
of money out of sticking on top of Protons and
Energias and sending out there?'
'That's the ones,' Logan said. 'And the new lot
coming out on the diamond ships, of course.' He
laughed. 'The colonial bourgeoisie!'
'Well, whatever you want to call them,' said Myra,
'you know they're planning to take charge, through
the ReUN and the battlesats?'
'Oh, sure,' Logan said. 'Everybody knows that.'
He shrugged. 'What can you do? And anyways, what
difference is it gonna make to us?' He flourished
his tiny laser. 'We're safe.'
'No, you're not,' said Myra. She flicked her gaze
upwards, checking the firewall 'ware. It was sound.
'I've just learned - from my Defence Minister, no
less - that / have a clump of city-buster nukes
stashed somewhere in the clutter around you.'
'Is that a problem?' Logan asked. 'Best place for
them, surely.'
She had to admire his cool.
'Somehow I don't think that was why the Inter-
national asked for them to be put there.'
'Ah,' said Logan. 'So you know about that.'
'Yeah,' said Myra. 'Thanks a bunch for not telling
me.'
Logan mumbled something entirely predictable
about need-to-know. Myra cut off his ramble with an
angry chop of her hand.
'Give me a fucking break,' she said, exasperated.
'I can figure that out for myself. The nukes are an
element of the situation, but they're not my main
concern right now. I just thought I should let you
know that I know about them, for the same reason
that you should've told me: for the sake of polite-
ness, if nothing else. OK?'
140 KEN MACLEOD
'Well, yeah, OK,' Logan allowed, grudgingly. 'So
what is your main problem?'
'I was wondering,' said Myra, 'if you'd grabbed
them because you intended to do something about
the coup. Like, you know, stop it'
Logan laughed. 'Me personally?'
'No. The International. And don't tell me you per-
sonally are the only member it's got up there.'
'Oh, no, not at all.' Logan stared at her, obviously
puzzled. 'We got plenty of comrades, I mean New
View is basically ours, but it's been a long time since
the Party had an army, Myra, you know that as well
as I do. We do have a military org, like, but it's just
a . . . a small cadre.'
'Of course I know that. But I also know what a
small military cadre is for. It's so that when you do
need an army you can recruit your soldiers from
other armies. You telling me the space fraction's
done no Party work on the battlesats? In all those
years?'
Logan looked uncomfortable. 'Not exactly, no,
I'm not saying that. We have - well, naturally we
have sympathisers, we get reports -'
'And so do we,' she said. 'Some of them from the
same comrades as you do.' She wasn't entirely cer-
tain of this - need-to-know, again - but it would give
him something to think about. 'Who actually knows
about the nukes?'
'Valentina Kozlova,' said Logan. 'And your ex-
husband, Georgi Davidov.' If Logan noticed Myra's
involuntary start at this news, he gave no sign. 'And
me, obviously. That's it. The only people who know.
Unless there's been a leak.'
'Hmm,' said Myra. 'Reid doesn't seem to know
about them - he knows we have nukes in space, but
he thinks they're all in Earth orbit.' She paused.
THE SKY ROAD 141
'Wait a fucking minute. If you're the only person up
here who knows about them, then the request from
the Party a couple of years ago was in fact a request
from you. You, personally.'
'Well, yeah,' Logan said. He didn't seem bothered
at all. 'In my capacity as Party Secretary for the space
fraction, that is.'
'You took it upon yourself to do that? What the
fuck was on your mind?' God, she thought, there I
go again with the incredulous screech. She added,
in a flat, steady voice, 'Besides, what gave you the
right to interfere in my section, and in my section's
state?'
Logan squirmed, like someone shifting uncom-
fortably in an invisible chair. 'I had a valid instruc-
tion to do it. From the military org.'
'Ah! So there is someone else who knows about
it!'
'Not as such,' said Logan. 'The military org is . . .'
He hesitated.
'Like you said, a small cadre?' Myra prompted.
'In a manner of speaking,' said Logan. He looked
as though he was steeling himself for an admission.
'It's an AI.'
Myra felt her back thump against the back of her
chair - she was literally thrown by this statement.
She took a deep breath.
'Let's scroll this past us again, shall we? Tell me
if I've got this right. Two years ago, at the Sputnik
centenary, Val gets a message from you, asking for
part of our stash of nukes. It's a valid Party request,
she decides I don't need to know, and she blithely
complies. And the reason this happened is because
you got a request from a fucking computer?'
'An AI military expert system,' Logan said pedan-
tically. 'But yeah, that's about the size of it.'
142 KEN MACLEOD
Myra groped blindly for a cigarette, lit it shakily.
'And just how long has the Fourth International
been taking military advice from an AI?' Logan did
some mental arithmetic. 'About forty years/ he
said.
It was no big secret, Myra learned. Just one of those
things she'd never needed to know. The AI had
originated as an economic and logistic planning sys-
tem devised by a Trotskyist software expert in the
British Labour Party. This planning mechanism had
been used by the United Republic of Great Britain,
and inherited by its self-proclaimed successor, the
underground Army of the New Republic, after
Britain had been occupied, and its monarchy re-
stored, by the Yanks in the Third World War. It had
acquired significant upgrades, not all of them in-
tended, during the twenty-year guerilla war that fol-
lowed, and had played some disputed role in the
British national insurrection during the Fall Revo-
lution in 2045. Its central software routines had
been smuggled into space by a refugee from the
New Republic's post-victory consolidation. It had
been expanding its capacities, and its activities, ever
since.
'Most people call it the General,' Logan told her.
'Aces the Turing, no sweat.'
'But what's it doing?' Myra asked. 'If it's such a
shit-hot adviser, why aren't we winning?'
'Depends what you mean by "we",' Logan said.
'And what you mean by "winning".'
Myra had, she realised, no answer to that. Perhaps
the AI adviser had picked up on the Analysis analy-
sis, and agreed that the situation was hopeless.
Logan was looking at her with sympathetic curi-
osity, a sort of reversed mirror-image of the hostile
THE SKY ROAD 143
bafflement she was directing at him. He must have
gone native up there; he'd got used to this situation,
and to this style of work, over the decades, and had
forgotten the common courtesies of even their no-
tional comradeship.
'Anyways,' he was saying, 'you can ask it all that
yourself.' He poked, absently, at the control-panel
between his feet; looked up; said, Tutting you
through.'
Before Myra could so much as open her mouth, Lo-
gan had vanished, and had been replaced by the
military AI. She'd had a mental picture of it, ever
since Logan had first mentioned it: something like
the Jane's software, a VR gizmo of lines and lights.
At best a piece of simulant automation, like Parvus.
He was a young man in sweat-stained camos, sit-
ting casually on a rock in a clearing in temperate
woodland: lichen and birch-bark, sound of water,
birdsong, leaf-shadow, a wisp of woodsmoke. It
looked like he'd paused here, perhaps was consid-
ering setting up a camp. The man looked every inch
the commandante - his long, wavy black hair and
his black stubble and dark eyes projected something
of the glamour of Guevara, the arrogance of Trotsky.
He also reminded Myra, disturbingly, of Georgi -
enough to make her suspect that the image she saw
was keyed to her personality; that it had been pre-
cisely tuned to give her this overwhelming impres-
sion of presence, of charisma.
'Hello,' he said. 'I've wanted to meet you for a
long time, Myra.'
She opened her hands. You could have called.'
'No doubt I would have done, quite soon.' The
entity smiled. 'I prefer that people come to me. It
avoids subsequent misunderstandings. Anyway - I
144 KEN MACLEOD
understand you have two concerns: the nukes at La-
grange, and the space-movement coup. Regarding
the first - the nukes are still under your control.
Your Defence Minister still has the access codes. I re-
quested that the weapons themselves be moved here
for security.' He shrugged, and smiled again. 'They're
all yours. So are the weapons in Earth orbit - which
are, of course, more immediately accessible, and us-
able. This brings me to your other concern — the
coup. It is imminent.'
'How imminent?'
'In the next few days. They'll ram through the
vote on reorganisation of the ReUN, and the new
Security Council will issue orders to seize the battle-
sats. They have the forces to do it.'
He paused, looking at her, or through her. 'But
we have the forces to stop it. I can assure you, Myra,
it's all in hand.'
She shook her head. 'That isn't what our intelli-
gence indicates. I've checked, my Defence and For-
eign ministries have checked. We have agents in the
batdesats, as you must know - hell, some of them
must be in your own military org! If such a thing
exists.' She wished she had read some of those mail-
ings.
'It most certainly does exist,' the General said
firmly. 'And it's been feeding you disinformation.'
What?
The entity stood up and stepped towards her in
its virtual space. It spread its hands and assumed an
apologetic expression, but with a sly conspiratorial
gleam in its eyes.
'Forgive me, Comrade Davidova. This was not
done against you. It was done against our common
enemy: Reid's faction of the space movement.'
'How—' she began, but she saw, she saw.
THE SKY ROAD 145
'I'm telling you this now,* the General said, 'be-
cause today you lost your last disloyal Commissar.
Alexander Sherman has been passing on informa-
tion to Reid for months. He wasn't the first, but he
was the last'
'Who were the others?'
The General moved his hand in a smoothing ges-
ture. T can't tell you that without compromising
current operations. That particular information is of
no further use to you anyway.'
'I suppose not,' Myra concurred reluctantly. She
wished she knew who the traitors were, all the same;
hoped Tatanya and Michael hadn't been among
them. She'd quite liked those two ...
'So you used them - and us - as a conduit for
disinformation?'
The General nodded. 'And for information going
the other way - your updates to Jane's have been
most helpful.'
'Jeez.' Her reactions to this were interestingly
complicated, she thought distantly. On the one
hand she felt sore at having been used, having been
lied to; on the other, she could admire the stage-
craft of the deception. Above all she felt relieved
that the gloomily negative assessments she'd worried
over were all wrong.
Unless the situation was even worse than she'd
thought—
'The situation is better than you think, by far,'
said the General. 'We have our people in place -
the battlesats won't be taken without a struggle,
which in most cases we expect to win.'
'Most cases won't be enough. Even one battlesat-'
'Indeed. Which is where your orbital weaponry
comes in. The lasers, the EMP bursters, the smart
146 KEN MACLEOD
pebbles, the hunter-killers, the kinetic-energy weap-
ons
Myra hadn't known her arsenal was so extensive.
(God, to think that stockpile had once belonged to
the Pope! Well, to the Swiss Guards, anyway - quite
possibly His Holiness had been discreetly left out of
the loop on that one.) She shivered in her wrap,
tugged it around her shoulders, lit another ciga-
rette. She didn't know what to say: she felt her
cheeks burning under the General's increasingly
quizzical regard.
<
What do you want us to do with them?' she asked
at last.
Tm sure you can work that out,' he said. 'I'll be
in touch.'
'But—'
He gave her a smile; heartbreaking, satanic.
4
1 hope I see you again,' he said. He reached out
a hand and made some fine adjustment to the air.
The link went down.
Myra took off her eyeband and rubbed her eyes.
Then she walked unsteadily to the kitchen and
made some tea, and sat drinking it and smoking for
about ten minutes, staring blankly into the virtual
spaces of her mind. She supposed she should do
something, or tell someone, but she couldn't think
what to do, or whom to tell.
Time enough in the morning, she decided.
Her bedroom was small, a couple of metres' clear-
ance on three sides of the double bed giving barely
enough space for a wardrobe and dressing-table.
Over the years the room had accumulated a smoth-
ering snowfall of soft furnishings, needlework and
ornaments; pretty things she'd bought on impulse
and never had the heart to throw out. The process
was a natural selection for an embarrassingly large
THE SKY ROAD 147
collection of grannyish clutter. Now and again - as
now - it infuriated her in its discrepancy with the
rest of her life, her style, her look. And then, on
reflection, she'd figure that the incongruity of the
room's appearance was what made it a place where
she could forget all care, and sleep.
In the morning it seemed like a dream.
All the more so, Myra realised as she struggled up
to consciousness through the layers of sleep and
hangover and tangled, sweat-clammy bedding, be-
cause she had dreamed about the General. She felt
vaguely ashamed about that, embarrassed in front
of her waking self; not because the dream had been
erotic - though it had been - but because it had
been besotted, devoted, servile, like those dreams the
Brits used to have about Royalty. She sat up in the
bed and pushed back the pillow, leaned back and
tried to think about it rationally.
The entity, the military AI, would have had God
only knew how many software generations to evolve
an intimate knowledge of humanity. It had had time
to become what the Japanese called an idoru, a soft-
ware representation that was better than the real
thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human
mind or form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent
anime brats or the simulated stars of pornography
and romance. Sex wasn't the half of it - there were
other codes, other keys, in the semiotics of charm:
the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual hints at
a capacity for violence, the assumed readiness to
command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the
elements that went to make up an image of a man
that men would die for and women would fall for.
So, she told herself, she wasn't such a pathetic
case, after all. Happens to the best of us. As she
148 KEN MACLEOD
reached for her medical kit and clicked out the tab-
lets to fix the hangover, she caught herself smiling
at the memory of the General's smile. Annoyed with
herself again, she got out of bed and padded to the
kitchen in her fluffy slippers and fuzzy nightgown,
and gulped cold water while the coffee percolated.
She added a MoodLift tab to her ReSolve dose and
her daily intake of anti-ageing supplements and
knocked them back all at once. She felt better.
The time was 8 o'clock. She put her contacts in
and flicked on a television tile and watched it while
spooning muesli and yoghurt and listening to the
murmured morning briefing from Parvus. The news,
as usual, was bad, but no worse than usual. No martial
music or ballet on all channels - that was enough to
count as good news. After a coffee and a cigarette she
felt almost human. She supposed she might as well
get up and go to work.
The walk to the government building woke her up
even more, boosted her mood better than any tab.
The air was crisp, the morning sky unexpectedly col-
ourful, reds and oranges and yellows shading to
green at the horizon. She noticed people staring up
at the sky.
Its colours were changing visibly, flowing - sud-
denly she realised she was looking at an aurora,
thousands of miles south of where aurorae should
be seen. As she stopped and looked up, open-
mouthed, the sky brightened for a few seconds from
some great illumination below the horizon.
She ran. She sprinted through the streets, barged
through the doors, yelled at Security and bounded
up the stairs. As she strode into her office her ear-
piece pinged, and a babble of tinny voices con-
tended for her attention. She sat heavily on the edge
THE SKY ROAD 149
of her desk and flipped down her eyeband, keyed
up the news.
The tanks were rolling, all around the world.
Without taking her eyes off the newsfeeds, Myra
slid across her desk and lowered herself into her
chair. She rattled out commands on the armrest key-
pads, transforming the office's walls into screens for
an emergency command-centre. The first thing she
did was secure the building; then she hit the emer-
gency call for Sovnarkom. The thrown fetches of An-
drei, Denis and Valentina sprang to attention on the
screens - whether their physical bodies were in their
offices, on their way in or still in bed didn't matter,
as long as their eyebands were online.
Myra glanced around their virtual presences.
'OK, comrades, this is the big one,' she said.
'First, is everything clear with us?'
It was unlikely that the ISTWR's tiny Workers' Mi-
litia and tinier People's Army would have joined the
coup, but more unlikely things were happening be-
fore her eyes every few seconds. (A night-time am-
phibious landing at South Street Seaport! Tanks in
Pennsylvania Avenue! Attack helicopters shelling
Westminster Bridge!)
'We're sound,' said Denis. Even his fetch looked
drawn and hung-over. 'So's Kazakhstan, they're stay-
ing out of this. Army's on alert, of course. Baikonur
cosmodrome's well under government control. So's
the airstrip at Yubileine. Almaty's mobilised, militia
on the streets, but they're loyal.'
You hope, Myra thought The neat thing about a
military coup was that mobilisation against it could
quite easily become part of it, as the lines of com-
mand writhed and broke and reconnected.
'Good, great. North-eastern front? Val, you
awake?'
150 KEN MACLEOD
'Yeah, I'm with you. No moves from the Sheenisov
so far.' Valentina patched in a satellite feed, up-
dated by the second: the steppe was still.
'What about Mutual Protection here?'
'Haven't moved from the camp - and the camp's
quiet'
Myra relaxed a little. 'Looks like our immediate
surroundings are secure, then. Any word from orbit,
Val?'
Valentina shook her head. 'All comms are very
flaky, can't get anything coherent from the settle-
ments, the factories, the battlesats—'
'That's impossible!' She thought about how it
might be possible. 'Oh my God, die sky - '
'About ten minutes ago,' Andrei announced,
from some glassy trance, 'somebody nuked the
Heaviside Layer. Half a dozen bursts - not much
EMP, but quite enough of that and of charged par-
ticles to scramble radio signals for a good few
hours.'
'So how are we getting even the news?' Myra de-
manded.
'Cable,' said Andrei. 'Fibre-optics aren't affected.
And some stuff's getting through by laser, obviously,
like Val's spysat downlink. Should increase as people
switch, or improvise. But for the moment it's dust
in everybody's eyes.'
'Didn't know the space movement had orbital
nukes,' Denis said. 'In fact, didn't know anybody but
us had any serious nukes.'
That was a point. Nuclear disarmament had been
the only universally popular, and (almost) univer-
sally successful, policy of the US/UN after the Third
World War. Even Myra, at the time, had not re-
sented or regretted the confiscation of the ISTWR's
complement, along with all the rest. Only by sheer
THE SKY ROAD 151
accident had an independent stockpile survived, in
the hands of a politically untouchable institution
that counted its supporters in billions, its age in mil-
lennia and its policy in centuries. All other strategic
nuclear weapons had been dismantled. There were
thousands of batdefield tactical nukes still around,
of course, but nobody'd ever worried much about
them: the consequences of their use had never been
shown live on television.
(The images went through her mind, again, and
the names of cities: Kiev, Frankfurt, Berlin. She
shook her head with a shudder, shutting them out.)
Valentina was giving her a hard stare. 'They
weren't ours, were they?'
'Not as far as I know,' Myra said. 'Unless you hap-
pened to turn over the access codes to somebody
else, eh?'
Valentina shook her head, thin-lipped. 'No.
Never.'
'Right, so much for that theory,' Myra said briskly,
to assure Val that she wasn't under any suspicion.
'Andrei, any ideas?'
'Excuse me,' said Andrei. 'I'm still trying to get
through the front door.'
'Oh, fuck!' Myra tabbed a code to let him in.
'Thanks ... OK, I think the nukes were from the
tWside, against the coup.'
'And where did they get them?'
'What I think is that the UN hung on to some
nukes for itself, the secret stayed with some inner
cadre of bureaucrats who made it through the Rev-
olution and the purges, and they put it at the dis-
posal of the current Secretary General.'
'Makes sense, I suppose,' said Denis. 'What I'd
do.'
'What's the politics of this, Andrei?' Myra asked.
152 KEN MACLEOD
'We were so sure they'd wait for the ReUN vote—'
she stopped and laughed. Trotsky himself had used
just such a stratagem. 'Have the coup before the
vote - I wonder where they got that idea. Still, it
kind of undermines the appeal to legitimacy.'
She still had one eye on the virtual screens of the
cable news. 'Ah, wait, something coming in—'
They sat in silence as the presenter read out a
communique from a large group of small govern-
ments calling themselves the Assembly Majority Al-
liance. The gist of it was that the present Security
Council had violated the Revised Charter of 2046 by
planning to use nuclear weapons in space; and a call
for immediate action to depose the conspirators
and usurpers. The forces of the Alliance govern-
ments and of Mutual Protection were offered for
immediate, co-ordinated action to that end. A swift
resolution of the emergency was anticipated. The
population was urged to remain calm and stay away
from work for the day.
'God, that is so cynical,' Val said. 'They must have
had dozens of back-dated statements, prepared for
every contingency, so they could claim to be acting
to prevent whatever the Security Council decided to
do.'
'Yes, yes,' Myra said. 'All SOP for a coup. And a
diversion, anyway. It's in space that the real battles
are being fought. Maybe right at this moment! The
whole thing will be decided at the speed of light.
Come on, let's get into command mode.'
The others nodded, fell silent, turned to the
screens and started pulling in all available data and
throwing analysis software at it. After a minute or
two they'd begun to mesh as a team in their com-
mon virtual workspace. Information flashed back
and forth between their personal networks, the gov-
THE SKY ROAD 153
eminent network, the Jane's system, the newsfeeds,
and field reports from their own troops and agents.
The big picture became as clear as the situation
it revealed was chaotic. Myra clocked through most
of the world's significant capitals: Beijing, Pyong-
yang, Tokyo, Vladivostok, Seattle, LA, Washington
DC, New York, London, Paris, New Berlin, Danzig,
Moscow. All of them reported military strikes of one
kind or another, but they all had the aspect of
putsches - short-term grabs of public buildings or ur-
ban strongholds, which could be held more by the
reluctance of the government forces to reduce them
than by the strength of their occupiers. It all had a
suspiciously diversionary look about it.
All of the committed technophobe governments,
from the Khmer Vertes rulers of Bangkok, through
the Islamic Republicans of Arabia to the White Na-
tionalists of Dallas, had their forces on full alert and
their media screaming imprecations against the en-
emies of God, Man or Gaia (depending on local
ideological taste); but Myra judged them well aware
that they were not, themselves, immediate targets -
it was the more liberal governments, those who com-
promised between the pro-tech and anti-tech forces,
which were taking the fire.
The more serious action was taking place in the
imbricated global hinterland of enclaves and mini-
states and company countries; along their fractal
borderlines the local defence forces were massed
and mobilised, in a posture that was aggressive in
the Assembly Majority Alliance statelets, generally
defensive in the rest. Meanwhile, in the shadowy
lands beyond and behind even these anarchic poli-
ties, the forests and plains and badlands and shanty
towns brisded as the Green neo-barbarians, the mar-
154 KEN MACLEOD
ginals and tribals awoke to the unlooked-for oppor-
tunities of this new day.
Jane's Market Forces registered unexpected shifts in
the balance of power; minor skirmishes could have
major effects, putting troops and tactics and weap-
ons to the test in new conditions, or in real rather
than simulated combat. Not much blood was being
shed, but fortunes were being made and lost, alli-
ances and antagonisms updated; the process had its
own gory fascination. Myra felt she could sit and
look at it for hours.
But this was Earth, this was not where it was at.
The battles here, real or virtual, were fundamentally
a diversion, and she was duly being diverted. She
turned her attention determinedly skyward.
With VaTs well-practised help she spun a neon
orrery of near-Earth space, separating out the rele-
vant threads from the skeins of commercial and mil-
itary orbits. The planet itself appeared as a
transparent globe, etched with political and geo-
graphical outlines, clouded with weather patterns,
cross-hatched with confrontations, pin-pricked with
flashpoints. Again its intricate patterns compelled
her attention; again, she turned away.
Their own space-borne materiel - nuclear and
kinetic-energy weapons - were depicted as black
rods and cones, deep in the evergrowing ring of
spacejunk that tracked the main orbital thorough-
fares.
'Anything coming through yet from the battle-
sats?'
'Some,' said Val, sounding distracted. 'I'm pulling
in laser comms via various ground stations. Shit, this
is tricky - hold it, hold it. . . ah!'
The battlesat locations lit up, one by one; those
with which communication had been established
THE SKY ROAD 155
blinked invitingly. Myra zoomed in on one of them.
A classic von Braun space station, with a rotating
tubular ring joined by thinner tubular spokes to an
inner ring surrounding the contra-rotating spin-
compensated axial tower. The living-quarters and
hydroponics were around the ring, in the fake grav-
ity of the spin; the laser-cannon and rocket-racks
and particle-beam weapons and military command-
centre were in the free-fall hub. The whole enor-
mous mandala had a camp Nazi grandeur, spoiled
only by the ungainly arrays of solar panels it had
sprouted while its nuclear reactor had run down.
It was one of dozens in various orbits. Space De-
fense had enforced the Pax Americana of the US/
UN Imperium, a twenty-year Reich between the
Third World War and the Fall Revolution. In that
revolution the battlesats had passed into the hands
of their personnel - soldiers' Soviets in space - and,
ever since, they'd sought a role to replace their lost
empire. Everything from power-beam transmission
to asteroid defence had been tried, to little profit.
The stations survived on a trickle of subsidy - or
'user fees' - from the similarly diminished UN, paid
mainly to prevent the battlesats' going rogue out of
sheer desperation.
Now the forces of the coup were offering them a
new empire, one a lot more justifiable and enforce-
able than the old.
'So what's the score with this one?' Myra asked.
'Still loyal,' replied Val. 'They just reported in to
say they weren't going with the Alliance.'
'Any way of checking that?'
'Don't know, I'm hailing them - ah! they're let-
ting us in.'
'I'll go,' said Myra, 'you stay with the big picture.'
With a clunky, disorienting transition, she found
156 KEN MACLEOD
herself standing in a real-time representation of the
battlesat's bridge. It was about fifteen metres across,
and crowded. The interior matched the exterior's
style: banks of flashing lights among chrome and
black surfaces; a cluttered overgrowth of retrofitted
modern kit among a profusion of plants, like in a
civilian space settlement. The layout was optimised
for free-fall, with the crew-members strapped into
seats and couches at unexpected angles to each
other. In this section of the shaft there were actual
windows, through which she could see the great
wheel turn in the sunlight, and the Earth's swirling
clouds below. She blinked, and overprinted the real
view with its software image.
The crew were wearing eyebands, and some of
them could see Myra's fetch in their own virtual pal-
impsests of the scene - but they spared her no more
than a glance. Another spectral presence had all
their attention.
The General sat on a window sill, surveying the
bridge with narrowed eyes. He'd been saying some-
thing; his words seemed to hang in the air, resonat-
ing in the circuits of the display. He interrupted
himself and turned to face her.
'Ah, Comrade Davidova - thanks for coming.'
'I wasn't aware I'd been asked,' she said.
'Oh, you were,' the construct said. 'This is, as they
say, no accident'
Myra nodded. No doubt it was indeed no accident
that the first battlesat to allow her into its internal
systems was the one in which the General was ad-
dressing his troops.
He waved a hand. 'Welcome to a quick emer-
gency session of the military org's local cell.' He
grinned. 'Which is pretty much the command of
this station.' The watching crew-members gave her
THE SKY ROAD 157
longer looks now; some of them even smiled.
'We need your help,' the General told her flatly.
'Nice display,' he added. 'May I?'
He reached over, thumb and forefinger pinching
into her translucent globe, and with frightening in-
souciance overrode all her protocols and relocated
her virtual view of the Earth and near-Earth space
into the centre of the bridge.
She stared at the spinning shapes, fuming. He
shouldn't have been able to do that—
'We still hold most of the battlesats.' A quick
sharp look. 'That is to say, the anti-coup forces do,
whatever their other alignments. But the struggle is
still in the balance. We have about a sixth of the
battle-sats securely on our side, the enemy likewise,
and the others undecided.'
Myra was momentarily stunned. Despite what the
General had said to her earlier, she'd had no idea,
no expectation that the military org's penetration of
Space Defense was so thorough - it must have taken
years of work. But the General gave her no time to
question or congratulate.
'Here, here and here.' He stabbed a forefinger at
three battlesats, whose footprints between them cov-
ered most of the planet. 'These are in enemy hands.
We can't hit them from the battlesats we hold, be-
cause that would risk a spasm of retaliation. But we
need to hit them fast, to warn any others who are
about to go over to the enemy. Take them out.'
He ran a finger lightly around the republic's or-
bital caches of smart pebbles, lasers, KE weapons.
T can't,' Myra said. T don't have the skills, I don't
have the automation. None of us do.'
The General snapped his fingers. 'The keys, Com-
rade, the keys. That's all I need. The access codes.'
'Let me consult my Defence Minister,' said Myra,
158 KEN MACLEOD
and backed out hastily. It was a relief - even with
the sudden, swallowed surge of cyberspace sickness
that it brought on - to find herself back in her of-
fice, looking at screens.
'Val—' she began.
'I got that/ said Valentina. 'Kept half an eye on
you with a partial piggyback. Who is that guy?'
Myra looked sidelong at her. 'Good for you,' she
said. That was the head of the FI military org. An
AI. Our very own electric Trotsky.'
Tuck your mother,' said Val, in Russian.
'Right. We gonna give it the codes?'
'Up to you,' said Val. You're the PM.'
'What,' said Myra through clenched teeth, 'would
you advise?'
Val licked her lips. The others were either point-
edly ignoring them or concentrating on their own
areas.
'Well, hell. Go with the military adviser, I'd say.
Give it the codes.'
'Will that work? Do we really have munitions up
there that can down battlesats?'
'Hard to say,' said Valentina. 'Ancient, never
combat-tested, poorly maintained - but so are the
battlesats! In theory, yes, they can overwhelm a bat-
tlesat's defences.'
Myra was trying to think fast. It struck her that the
battlesats themselves might be a diversion — old and
powerful, but inflexible and vulnerable: an orbiting
Maginot line. Perhaps the General was fighting the
last war, and winning it, while the real battles raged
elsewhere.
She hesitated, then decided.
'Give me the codes for the smart-pebble bombs,'
she said. Val zapped them across; Myra tabbed back
to the battlesat and passed them to the General. He
THE SKY ROAD 159
was waiting for her, with puzzled impatience.
"Thank you/ he said heavily, then disappeared.
Myra looked around at the now frantically active
crew, gave them an awkward, cheery wave, and
dropped back to her own command-centre.
That was quick.' Valentina pointed at the display.
Already, some of their orbital weapons had been ac-
tivated. Myra devoutly hoped that what she was see-
ing as a representation wasn't appearing on the
enemy's real-time monitors. In three places a cloud
of sharp objects had burst out of cover and were
moving in the same orbital paths as the three enemy
battlesats, but in the opposite direction. They were
due to collide with the battlesats in ten, eighteen
and twenty-seven minutes.
What happened next was over in less than a sec-
ond - a twinkle of laser paths in the void. The action
replay followed automatically, patiendy repeating
the results for the slow rods and cones and nerves
of the human eye.
Myra watched the battlesats' deep-space radar
beams brush the oncoming KE volleys; saw their
targeting-radar lock on. Her laser-platform drones
responded to that detection with needles of light,
stabbing to blind the battlesats - which had, in the
momentary meantime, released a cloud of chaff to
block that very manoeuvre. Then the battlesats
struck back, with a speed still bewildering even in
slow motion. Each one projected a thousand laser
pulses, flashing like a fencer's swift sword, slicing up
the KE weapons and their laser-platform escorts.
'Wow!' she said, admiring despite herself.
'Yeah, that's some defence system,' said Valentina.
'Not standard issue for a battlesat, I'll tell you that.'
Myra zoomed the view. Each attack cloud was still
there, as a much larger cloud of much smaller ob-
160 KEN MACLEOD
jects. They would bombard the battlesats, sure
enough, they'd even do some damage, but it would
be more like a sand-blasting than a shelling.
The time was 09.25. Forty minutes had passed
since the Heaviside nukes. The disruption they'd
caused was easing off; radio comms were still hay-
wire, but more and more centres were coming back
on-line via patches and work-arounds. The outcome
of this first serious exchange was already being an-
alysed. Myra cast a quick glance at Jane's. The coup's
stock was fluctuating wildly.
'Shit—'
She was about to transfer her workspace to the
battlesat again but the General beat her to it. He -
or it - suddenly appeared in the command-centre,
as a recognisable if not very solid figure. Andrei and
Denis, by this time evidently having been brought
up to speed by Val, didn't react to the apparition
with more than open-mouthed astonishment.
'Too bad,' the General said, staring sadly at the
display. 'These defences are portable, not fitted to
the station but brought in by the conspirators.'
'Any other battlesats have them?'
A sketch of a shrug. 'We don't. Maybe they're al-
ready being deployed among the waverers. Mutual
Protection nanofactures, is my guess.'
Better than a guess, Myra reckoned.
*You want another strike?'
'No. Only one thing for it now. Nuke 'em.'
Myra glanced at Valentina. 'Wait. Give us a first-
cut sim, Val.'
Valentina ran down the locations of their orbital
nuclear weapons and launched a simulation of an
immediate strike, in the light of the new informa-
tion about the battlesats' capabilities. Stopped. Ran
it again; and again; all in a few seconds, but a waste
THE SKY ROAD 161
of time nonetheless. The answer was obvious. The
nukes could get close enough to the battlesats to
take them out - but near-Earth space was a lot more
crowded than it had been when the doctrine of that
deployment had first been developed. There was no
way to avoid thousands of innocent casualties and
quadrillions of dollars' worth of damage to space
habitats and industries.
'It's worse than that,' Valentina pointed out. The
direct effect of the explosions and the EMP would
be just the beginning - there's every possibility that
the debris would set off an ablation cascade - each
collision producing more debris, until in a matter
of days you'd have stripped the sky.'
The ablation cascade was a known nightmare, one
of the deadliest threats to space habitation, or even
exploration. Myra had seen discussions and calcu-
lations to suggest that a full-scale cascade would sur-
round the Earth with rings of debris which could
make space travel unfeasibly dangerous for centu-
ries ...
The General had a look which indicated that he
was weighing this in the balance. She could just see
it now, that calculation - even with a cascade, it was
possible that the new diamond ships could dodge
and dogfight through the debris - the barrier might
not be impenetrable after all, and meanwhile ...
Torget it,' Myra said. 'We aren't going to use the
nukes.' Her fingers were working away, codes were
flashing past her eyes - she was trying to find the
channel the General's fetch had ridden in on.
Something in her tone told the General there
would be no argument. Instead, he turned to the
others and said, quite pleasantly, 'The comrade is
not thinking objectively. Are you willing to relieve
her of her responsibilities?'
162 KEN MACLEOD
'No,' they told him, in gratifying unison.
'Very well.' He smiled at them, as if to say he was
sorry, but it had been worth a try.
'And you can fuck right off,' said Myra. She tapped
her forefinger, triumphantly, on an input-channel
key, and tuned him right out.
7
THE CLAIMANT BAR
O ut we went into the summer dusk.
Moths sought the sun in street-lamps, baffled. The
few quiet roads between the house and the
Institute were crowded now, with local residents
taking advantage of the slack season in bars normally
jammed with students. Lads strutting their tight
dark trousers, lasses swaying their big bright skirts.
We must have looked a less happy couple, harried
and hurrying.
A few lights burnt in the Institute, one of them
the light in the corridor. As we stepped in and
closed the door, the smell of pipe-smoke was
stronger than before, and familiar.
'Someone's around,' Menial whispered.
*Yes,' I replied, 'it's—'
Right on cue, an office door down the corridor
opened and Anders Gantry stepped out. A small
man with strong arms and a beer-barrel of a belly,
hair curling grey like the smoke from his insepara-
ble pipe. His shirt was merely grubby - his wife
managed to impose fresh linen on him every week
164 KEN MACLEOD
or so - but his jacket had not been cleaned in years.
It smelled like it had been used to beat down fires,
which it had.
He was the best historical scholar in the Univer-
sity, and quite possibly in the whole British Isles; and
the kindest and most modest man I'd ever met.
'Ah, hello, Clovis,' he boomed. 'How good to see
you!' He strode up and shook hands. 'And who's
your friend?'
'Menial - Dr. Anders Gantry,' I said.
He held her hand and inclined his head over her
knuckles. 'Charmed.' He looked at her in a vaguely
puzzled way for a moment, then turned to me.
'Now, colha Gree, what can I do for you?'
Gantry had agreed to supervise my project; it was
a persistent irritant to my conscience that I hadn't
seen or written to him all summer.
'Oh, nothing at the moment, Dr. Gantry. I've
been doing a fair bit of preliminary research up
North, and I've about finished the standard refer-
ences.' I rubbed my ear, uneasily remembering the
dust on the books. 'And I thought I'd take the op-
portunity of a wee visit to Glasgow to drop by the
library.'
'That's very commendable,' he said. I was unsure
of the exact level of irony in his voice, but it was
there. 'We've rather missed you around here.'
'He works very hard,' Menial put in. 'The space-
launch platform project is on a tight schedule.'
'Oh, so that's where you are. Kishorn. Hmm.
Good money to be made up there, I hear. And you,
miss?'
'I have an office job there,' Menial said blandly.
She shot me a smile. 'That's how I know he works
hard. He's saving up money to live on next year.'
'Well, I suppose there are ways and ways of pre-
THE SKY ROAD 165
paring for a project,' said Gantry, in a more indul-
gent tone. 'No luck with patronage yet, I take it?'
'None so far, no.'
He clapped me around the shoulders. 'Perhaps
you should try to extract some research money from
the space scientists,' he said. 'Our great Deliverer
had much to do with spaceflight herself. There
might still be lessons in her life story, eh?'
Menial's face froze and I felt my knees turning
to rubber.
'Now that's a thought,' I said, as calmly as possi-
ble.
Gantry guffawed. 'Aye, you might even fool them
into thinking that!' he said. 'Good luck if you do.
Now that you're getting stuck in, Clovis, I have
something to show you.' He grinned, revealing his
teeth, yellow as a dog's. 'It's in the library.'
With that he turned away and bounded up the
stairs. I followed, mouthing and gesturing helpless-
ness to Menial. To my relief, she seemed more
amused than alarmed.
By the time we arrived at the open door of the
library he'd vanished into the shadows.
'What are we going to do?' I whispered to Menial.
'If he stays around, you keep him busy,' she said.
'I'll get the goods.'
I was about to tell her how unlikely she was to get
away with that when Gantry came puffing up, carry-
ing a load of cardboard folders that reached from
his clasped hands at his belt to his uppermost chin.
'Here we are,' he said, lowering the tottering
stack on to a table. He sneezed. 'Filthy with dust,
I'm afraid.' He wiped his nose and hands on an
even dirtier handkerchief. 'But it's time you had a
look at it: Myra Godwin's personal archive.'
'That really is amazing,' I said. My voice sounded
166 KEN MACLEOD
like a twelve-year-old boy seeing a girl naked for the
first time. I picked them up and put them down,
one by one. Eight altogether: bulging cardboard
wallets ordered by decade, from the 1970s to the
2050s.
I hardly dared to breathe on them as I opened
the first one and looked at the document on the
top of the pile, a shoddily cyclostyled, rusty-stapled
bundle of pages with the odd title Building a revo-
lutionary party in capitalist America. Published as a fra-
ternal courtesy to the cosmic current,
'Why haven't I seen these before?' I asked.
Gantry shuffled uncomfortably. He glanced at
Menial, rubbed his chin and said, 'Am I right in
thinking you're a tinker?'
'You're right, I am that,' Merrial said, without hes-
itation.
Gantry smiled, looking relieved. 'Urn, well. Be-
tween ourselves and all that. Scholars and tinkers
both know, I'm sure, that we have to be . . . discreet,
about the Deliverer's . . . more discreditable deeds
and, ah, youthful follies. So, although previous
biographers have seen these documents, we don't
tend to show them to undergraduates. What I
hope, Clovis, is that you'll see a way to go beyond
the, um, shall we say hagiographic treatments of
the past, without. ..' He paused, sucking at his
lower lip. 'Ah, well, no need to spell it out.V
4
Of course not,' I said.
I looked at the master scholar with what I'm sure
must have been an expression of gratifying respect.
'Shall we have a look through them now?'
Gantry stepped back and threw up his hands in
mock horror. 'No, no! Can't have me looking over
your shoulder at the raw material, Clovis. Unaided
original work, and all that. This is yours, and there's
THE SKY ROAD 167
a thesis in there if ever I saw one. No, it's time I was
off and left you to it.' He hesitated. 'Ah, I shouldn't
need to tell you, colha Gree, but not a word about
this, or a single page of it, outside, all right?'
I had a brief, intense tussle with my conscience,
which neatly tripped me up and jumped on me.
'Nothing for the vulgar, of course,' I said carefully.
'But in principle I could, well, show it to or discuss
it with other scholars?'
'Goes without saying,' Gantry confirmed jovially.
He tapped the side of his nose. 'If you can find any-
one you'd trust not to claim it as their own.' He
winked at Menial. 'Untrustworthy bunch, these
scholars, I think you'll find.' He punched me, play-
fully as he thought, in the ribs. 'Confidence, man,
confidence! I'm sure you have the wit to understand
and explicate this lot yourself, and it'll make your
name, you mark my words!'
'Thank you,' I said, after a painful intake of
breath. 'Well. . . I think I'll make a start right now.'
'Yes, indeed. Splendid idea. Don't stay up too
late.' His complicitous grin made it obvious that he
thought it unlikely that we'd stay up too late. 'Best
be off then,' he said, as though to himself, then
backed to the door and turned away.
'Good night to you, sir!' Menial called out after
him.
'Good night,' came faintly back from the stairwell.
Menial let out a long breath.
'What a strange little man,' she said, in the man-
ner of someone who has just encountered one of
the Wee Folk.
'He's not entirely typical of scholars,' I said.
'I should hope not,' Menial said. 'Wouldn't want
you turning into something like that'
'Heaven forbid,' I said, adding loyally, 'but he's a
168 KEN MACLEOD
fine man for all his funny ways/ I looked down at
the stack of folders. 'Maybe it would be a good idea,'
I said slowly, 'if you were to do your thing with the
computer, and I could stay here, just in case he
comes back.'
'Oh, and leave me to face the deils all on my
own?' Merrial mocked, then laughed, relenting.
'Aye, that is not a bad idea. If he or anyone else
comes in, keep them busy. I'll not be long, and I'll
be fine.'
'What about this security barrier?'
She waved a hand and made a rude noise. Taugh!
This wee gadget here has routines that can roast
security barriers over a firewall and eat them for
breakfast.'
Considering how she'd had to program some-
thing a lot simpler than that to sort out the dates, I
doubted her, but supposed that was the black logic
for you.
She smiled and slipped away; after an anxious
minute of listening, I heard the sound of the inner
door being opened and the scrape of a chair being
dragged across the floor and propped against it. I
relaxed a little and turned again to the files - to the
paper files, I mentally corrected myself, for the first
time making the connection between 'files' in Mer-
rial 's and, I presumed, tinkers' usage, and my own.
I was eager to get into the early decades, but I
knew that would be somewhat self-indulgent, and
that I would have plenty of time for that It was the
later years, closer to the time of the Deliverance,
that were hidden from history. I picked up the
folder for the final decade, the 2050s, and was about
to open it when I heard Merrial scream.
I don't remember getting to the door of the dark
archive. I only remember standing there, my for-
THE SKY ROAD 169
ward momentum arrested by a shock of dread that
stopped me like a sparrow hitting a window. The
file folder, absurdly enough, was still in my hands,
and I held up that heavy mass of flimsy paper and
fragile cardboard like a weapon - or a shield.
Merrial too was holding a weapon - the chair
she'd been sitting on, and had evidently just sprung
out of. In front of her, and above the computer, in
a lattice of ruby light, stood the figure of a man. He
was a tall man, and stout with it, his antique garb of
cream-coloured jacket and trousers flapping and his
shock of white hair streaming in the same invisible
gale that had blown his hat away down some long
corridor whose diminishing perspective carried it
far beyond the walls of the room. His face was red
and wrathful, his fist shaking, his mouth shouting
something we couldn't hear.
Holding the chair above her head, her forearm
in front of her eyes, chanting some arcane abraca-
dabra, Merrial advanced like one facing into a fire,
and seized her seer-stone and machinery from the
table. Its wire, yanked from its inconveniently placed
socket, lashed back like a snapped fishing-line. The
litde peg at the end, now bent like a fishhook, flew
towards me and rapped against the file-folder. Mer-
rial whirled around at the same moment, and saw
me. She gave me a look worth dying for, and then
a calm smile.
'Time to go,' she said. She let the chair clatter
down, and turned again to face the silently scream-
ing entity she'd aroused. As she backed away from
the thing, it vanished. A mechanism somewhere in
the computer whirred, then stopped. A light on its
face flickered, briefly, then went out.
All the lights went out. From downstairs we faindy
heard an indignant yell. I could hear Merrial stuff-
170 KEN MACLEOD
ing her apparatus back in its sack. She bumped into
me, still walking backwards.
Holding hands as though on a precipice, we made
our way through the library's suffocating dark. I
could smell the dry ancient papers, the friable glue
and frayed thread and leather of the bindings. From
those fibres the ancients could have resurrected lost
species of trees and breeds of cattle, I thought
madly. Pity they hadn't.
After a long minute our eyes began to adjust to
the faint light that filtered in past window-blinds,
and from other parts of the building. We walked
with more confidence through the maze towards the
door. On the ground floor of the building we could
hear Gantry blundering and banging about.
Then, behind us, I heard a stealthy step. Menial
heard it too and froze, her hand in mine suddenly
damp. Another step, and the sound of something
dragging. I almost broke into a screeching run.
'It's all right,' Menial said, her voice startlingly
loud. 'It's a sound-projection -just another thing to
scare us off.'
Behind us, a low, deep laugh.
'Steady,' said Menial.
My thigh hit the edge of the table by the door.
'Just a second,' I said. I let go of her hand, grabbed
one more file-folder, put it in my other hand and
then caught Menial's hand again.
We reached the library door, slammed it behind
us and descended the stairs as fast as we safely could,
or faster. Then we lost all caution and simply fled,
rushing headlong past Gantry's angry and puzzled
face, lurid in the small flame of the pipe-lighter he
held above his head, and out into the night.
Night it was - for hundreds of metres around, all
the power was off. We stopped running when we
THE SKY ROAD 171
reached the first functioning street-lamps, on Great
Western Road.
I looked at Menial's face, shiny with sweat, yellow
in the sodium puddle.
4
What in the name of Reason was that?'
Merrial shook her head. 'My mouth's dry,' she
croaked. 'I need a drink.'
My feet led me unerringly to the nearest bar, the
Claimant. It was quiet that evening, and Merrial was
able to grab a corner seat while I bought a couple
of pints and a brace of whiskies. By the empty fire-
place a fiddler played and a woman sang, an aching
Gaelic threnody of loss.
Merrial knocked back her whisky in one deft swal-
low, and summer returned to her face.
'Jesus!' she swore. 'I needed that. Give me a cig-
arette.'
I complied, gazing at her while lighting it, glanc-
ing covertly around while I lit my own. The pub,
which I'd patronised throughout my student years,
was a friendly and comfortable place, though its wall
decorations could chill you a bit if you pondered on
them: framed reproductions of ancient posters and
notices and regulations about 'actively seeking em-
ployment' and 'receiving benefit'. It was something
to do with living on public assistance, which is what
many quite hale and able folk, known as claimants,
had had to resort to in the days of the Possession,
when land was owned by lairds and capital by usu-
rers.
The usual two old geezers were recalling their first
couple of centuries in voices raised to cope with the
slight hearing impairment that comes with age; a
gang of lads around a big table were gambling for
pennies, and several pairs of other lovers were in-
172 KEN MACLEOD
tent only on each other; and the singer's song
floated high notes over them all.
"You were about to say?' I said. My own voice was
shakier than Menial's had been at any point in the
whole incident. At the same time I felt giddy with
relief at our escape, and a strange exciting mixture
of dread and exaltation at the sure knowledge that
my life was henceforth unpredictable.
'I wasn't,' Menial said, 'but I'll tell you anyway.
That thing we saw was the deil that guards the files.
But,' she added brightly, 'blowing fuses for several
blocks around was the worst it could do.'
'Hey, that's comforting.'
*Yes, it is,' she said, in a very definite tone. 'Better
that than an electric shock that burns your hands
or a fire that brings down the whole building. Or—'
'What?'
'I've heard of worse. Ones that attack your mind
through your eyes.'
'And there you were laughing at the very idea,
back at the yard.'
'Aye, well,' she said. 'It was just me that had to
face them. No sense in getting you worried.'
'Oh, thanks.'
She took my hand. 'No, you were brave in there.'
'Ach, not a bit of it,' I agreed.
'So, after all, we didn't get much,' I said, returning
to our table with refilled glasses about two minutes
later. Outside, I could hear a growing commotion
of militia rattles and whistles and fire-brigade bells.
Somewhere across the street, a vehicle with a flash-
ing light trundled slowly past.
Menial looked up from riffling through the fold-
ers.
'Well, you got the 2050s and the 1990s,' she said.
THE SKY ROAD 173
That's something. What /got —' she patted her bag,
grinning * - was a whole lot more. Maybe everything,
I don't know yet'
I put the glasses down very carefully.
'The ... um, barrier .. . didn't work, then?'
'Up to a point. Like I said, my machine, and the
logic on it, are stronger than the other one. It just
couldn't stop that thing from doing what it kept
warning it would do. You can steal a bone from a
dog if you ignore the barks and don't mind the
bites.' In a less smug tone, she added, 'But it all
depends on how much I pulled out before I had
to ...'
Tull out!'
'Yes.'
'So what do we do now?' I looked down at the
folders. 'I suppose I'll have to try and square things
with Dr. Gantry.' Confused thoughts fought in my
mind, like those programs Menial talked about.
One sequence of impulses made me think through
a scheme of grovelling apology and covering up and
smoothing over. Another made me realize that I was
almost certainly in very deep trouble with the Uni-
versity authorities, and had quite possibly affronted
Gantry in ways that he might find hard to forgive.
'Oh, and how are you going to do that?' Merrial
asked. 'I reckon he won't be too pleased about your
running off with this lot.'
'That he won't,' I said gloomily. 'But I could al-
ways say I grabbed them to save them, or something,
and that I'll return them in a few days. After photo-
copying them, of course. No, it's the other thing
that'll have him pissed off. Heaven knows what dam-
age that thing did - I doubt it was just a power cut.
More like blown fuses all over the place, maybe
worse. That'll be looked into, and not just by the
174 KEN MACLEOD
University. And he's going to want to know who you
are and what we were up to.'
'Hmm.' Menial blew out a thin stream of smoke,
observing it as though it were a divination. 'Well,
seeing as he knows my name, and where I work. ..
tell you what, colha Gree. Assume he does make a
fuss, or somebody else asks questions. What I do not
want getting out is that this has anything to do with
the ship, or with ... my folk. What we can say, and
with some truth, is that you were led by excess of
zeal to poke around in . . . the dark place. That you
inveigled me into helping you. That you're very
sorry, you got your fingers burned, and you won't
do it again. And that of course the files you took
will not be seen by anyone outside the community
of scholars. Their photocopies, now, they might be
seen, but you need say nothing of that.'
I had been thinking of counting Menial as an
honorary scholar in my own version of that bit of
casuistry, but hers would do at a pinch. My two con-
flicting programs meshed: I was in trouble, yes, but
I could get out of it, by the aforementioned grov-
elling and covering up.
The clock above the bar showed the time was a
quarter past ten.
'I doubt Gantry's still around,' I said. 'And I don't
know where he lives, or his phone number, if he has
one. I suppose the best thing to do is see him in the
morning, before we leave.' I took my return ticket
from my pocket. 'Train leaves at forty minutes be-
fore noon. I'll be round to see him at nine, and try
and straighten things out.'
Menial nodded. 'Sound plan,' she said. She
cocked an ear. 'Things seem to be quietening down,
but I don't think wandering around back there
would be a good idea right now.'
THE SKY ROAD 175
'D'you want to go back and check over what we've
got?'
'Dhia, no! I've looked at enough of that for one
day. I want to stay here and drink with you, and
maybe dance with you - if a wee bit of siller can
make that fiddler change his tune - and then go
back to the lodging and test the strength of that bed
with you.'
That is not what we should have done, I grant
you; but are you surprised at all that it is what we
did?
I sat on the steps outside the Institute, in the still,
chill morning under the shadows of the great trees,
and looked at my watch. Ten to nine. I sighed and
lit another cigarette. A couple of hundred metres
away a pneumatic drill started hammering. Brightly
painted trestles and crossbeams and piles of broken
tarmac indicated that some similar work had been
done already during the night.
The path of power, indeed. One reason why it's
called that is that electronic computation is inextri-
cably and unpredictably linked to electrical power
generation, and can disrupt it in expensive and dan-
gerous ways. I had an unpleasant suspicion that the
cost of all this was, one way or another, going to
meander through some long system of City Council
and University Senate accountancy, and arrive at my
feet.
'Good morning, Clovis.' I looked up at Gantry.
He had his pipe in one hand and a key in the other.
'Come on in.'
His office had a window that occupied most of
one wall, giving a soothing view of a weed-choked
back yard, and bookcases on the others. Every ver-
tical surface in the room was stained slightly yellow,
176 KEN MACLEOD
and every horizontal surface was under a fine layer
of tobacco ash. I wiped ineffectually at the wooden
chair in front of his desk while he sat down on the
leather one behind it.
He regarded me for a moment, blinking; ran his
fingers through his short hair; sighed and began re-
filling his pipe.
'Well, colha Gree,' he said, after a minute of in-
timidating silence, 'you have no idea how much my
respect for you has increased by your coming here.
When I saw you a moment ago, stubbing out your
cigarette on the pavement, I thought, "Now, there's
a man who knows to do the decent thing." Consid-
erable improvement on your blue funk last night;
considerable.'
I cleared my throat, vaguely thinking that what-
ever the doctors may say, there must be something
harmful in a habit which makes your lungs feel so
rough in the morning. 'Aye, well, Dr. Gantry, it
wasn't yourself I was afraid of.'
'Oh,' he said dryly, 'and what was it then, hmm?'
Without meaning to, I found my gaze drifting up-
ward. 'It was, uh, the demon internet software that
I'm afraid I and my friend, um, accidentally in-
voked.'
Gantry lit his pipe and sent out a cloud of smoke.
'Yes, I had gathered that. And what on earth pos-
sessed you - so to speak - to poke around in the
dark storage when I'd just given you more than
enough material for years of study?'
I met his gaze again. 'It was my idea,' I said. 'Call
it — excess of zeal. I got the idea before you gave me
the papers, of course, but even after that I thought we
might as well go through with it I'm afraid I was —
rather blinded by the lust for knowledge.'
'And by another kind of lust, I shouldn't wonder,'
THE SKY ROAD 177
Gantry said. 'This friend of yours, she's more than
that, am I right?'
There seemed no point in denying it, so I didn't.
'All right,' he said. He jabbed his pipe-stem at me,
thumbed the stubble on his chin, and gnawed at his
lower lip for a moment. 'All right. First of all, let me
say that the University administration has a job to
do which is different from the self-administration of
the academic community. It has to maintain the
physical fabric of the place, and its supplies and serv-
ices and so forth, and with the best will in the world
I can't interfere with any measures of investigation
and discipline which it may see fit to take in this un-
fortunate matter. You appreciate that, don't you?'
*Yes, of course.'
Tine. Well. . . as to any academic repercussions,
there I can speak up for you, I can ... refrain from
volunteering information about how the demonic
outbreak took place. But I can't lie on your behalf,
old chap. I'll do my best for you, because I think it
would be a shame to throw away someone with so
much promise over what, as you say, was excess of
scholarly zeal. Very understandable temptation, and
all that. Some of the Senatus might well think to
themselves, "Been there, done that - young once
myself - fingers burnt - learned his lesson - say no
more about it," and all that sort of thing.'
I relaxed a little on the hard chair. I'd been fid-
dling with a cigarette for a while, unsure if I had
permission to smoke; Gantry leaned over with his
lighter, absently almost taking my eyebrows off with
its kerosene flare.
'Thank you.'
'However,' he went on, leaning back in his own
chair, 'there are some wider issues.' He waved his
pipe about, vaguely indicating the surrounding
178 KEN MACLEOD
shelves of hard-won knowledge. 'We British are be-
ginning to get the hang of this civilisation game.
When the Romans left, there wasn't a public library
or a flush toilet or a decent road or a postman to
be seen for a thousand years. When the American
empire fell, I think we can honestly say we did a
damn sight better, and indeed better than most. We
lost the electronic libraries, of course, and a great
deal of knowledge, but the infrastructure of civilis-
ation pulled through the troubled times reasonably
intact. In some respects, even improved. A great
deal of that we owe to the very fact that the elec-
tronic records were lost - and along with them the
chains of usury and rent, and the other... dark
powers which held the world in what they even then
had the gall to call "The NetV
He stood up and ambled along to a corner and
leaned his elbow on a shelf. 'What we have instead
of the net is the tinkers.' He waved his hands again.
'And telephony and telegraphy and libraries and so
forth, of course, but that's beside the point. The
tinkers look after our computation, which even with
the path of light most of us are ... unwilling to do,
because of what happened in the past, but are grate-
ful there's somebody to do it. This makes them ...
not quite a pariah people, but definitely a slightly
stigmatised occupation. And that very stigma, you
see, paradoxically ensures - or gives some assurance
of - the purity of their product. It keeps the two
paths, the light and the dark, separate. You see what
I'm driving at?'
'No,' I said. 'I'm afraid I don't'
'Oh.' He looked a little disappointed at my slow-
ness on the uptake. 'Well, not to put too fine a point
on it, it's one thing for scholars to risk their own
bodies or souls with the dark storage. Not done, so
THE SKY ROAD 179
to speak, but between you and me and the gatepost,
it is done. It's quite another for a tinker to do it.
Could contaminate the seer-stones, y'see. Bad busi-
ness.'
He stalked over and stared at me. The upshot,
my friend, is that you had better get your tinker
girlfriend back here with whatever she took, and get
those file-folders you borrowed back here with it, if
you want to have this episode overlooked. Clear?'
Yes, but—'
'No "buts", Clovis. You don't have much time. Get
out and get back before anyone else notices, that's
the ticket'
'I'll do what I can,' I said, truthfully enough, and
left.
As I hurried back to the lodging I kept trying to
think what the hell we could do. I'd been hoping
to hang on to the paper files for at least a week,
which should give me enough time to see if there
was anything of urgent significance in them. There
was no way, however, that Menial could 'return'
whatever computer files she had managed to re-
trieve. She could pretend to delete them from her
seer-stone's memory, but I doubted if that would
fool Gantry. He would want the stone itself, and she
was most unlikely to give it to him.
The landlady let me in, because I'd left the out-
side door key with Menial. I gave her a forced smile
and ran up the stairs, and knocked on the door of
the room where I'd left Menial drowsing. No reply
came, so I quietly opened the door.
Menial wasn't there. Nor was anything that be-
longed to her. Nor were the two file-folders. I
looked around, bewildered for a moment, and then
remembered what Menial had said about photocop-
ying the documents. I felt weak with relief. I gath-
180 KEN MACLEOD
ered up my own gear, checked again that there was
nothing of ours left in the room, and went down-
stairs.
' Aye,' said the landlady, 'the lassie went out a wee
while after you did. She left the key wi' me.'
'Did she ask about photocopying shops around
here?'
'No. But there's only one, just around the corner.
You cannae miss it.'
'Aw, thanks!'
I rushed out again and along the street and
around the corner. The shop was there, sure
enough, but Merrial wasn't. Nobody answering to
her - fairly unmistakable - description had called.
I wandered down Great Western Road in a sort
of daze, and stopped at the parapet of the bridge
over the Kelvin. The other bridge, which we'd
crossed on the tram, was a few hundred metres up-
stream; the ruins of an Underground station,
boarded-off and covered with grim warnings, was on
the far bank. The riverside fish restaurant, where
we'd eaten last night, sent forth smells of deep-fried
batter. The river swirled along, the ash of my anx-
ious cigarette not disturbing the smallest of its
ripples.
She could not have just gone off with the goods;
I was loyal enough to her to be confident in her
loyalty to me, and did not even consider - except
momentarily, hypothetically - that she'd simply used
me to get at the information she sought. The most
drastic remaining possibility was that she had some-
how been got at herself, and had left under some
urgent summons, or duress. But the landlady would
surely have noticed any such thing, so it couldn't
have happened in the lodging.
Between there and the copy-shop, then. I formed
THE SKY ROAD 181
a wild scheme of pacing the pavement, searching for
a clue; of questioning passers-by. It seemed melo-
dramatic.
More likely by far, I told myself, was that she'd
simply gone somewhere for some reason of her own.
She had her own return ticket She'd expect me to
have the sense to meet her at the station. I could
picture us laughing over the misunderstanding,
even if some frantic calls would have to be made to
Gantry.
Or even, she could have gone to another copy-
shop!
A militiaman strolled past, his glance registering
me casually. I stayed where I was until he was out of
sight, well aware that heading off at once would only
look odd; and also aware that staring with a worried
expression over a parapet at a twenty-metre drop
into a river might make the least suspicious militia-
man interested.
By then, naturally, I was wondering if she'd been
arrested, for unauthorised access to the University,
necromancy, or just on general principles; but then
again, if she had been, it was not my worry on any-
thing but a personal level: as a tinker, she'd have
access to a good lawyer, just as much as I would, as
a scholar.
So the end of my agitated thinking, and a look at
my watch, which showed that the time was a quarter
past ten, was to decide to go to the station and wait
for her.
The train was due to leave at eleven-twenty. At five
past eleven I put down my empty coffee-cup,
stubbed out my cigarette and strode over to the pub-
lic telegraph. There I tapped out a message: GAN-
TRY UNIV HIST INST REGRET DELAY IN FILE
182 KEN MACLEOD
RETURN STOP WILL CALL FROM CARRON
STOP RESPECTS CLOVIS.
I was on the point of hitting the transmit key
when I smelled die scent and sweat of Menial be-
hind me. Then she leaned past my cheek and said,
in a warm, amused voice, 'Very loyal of you, to him
and to me.'
I turned and grabbed her in my arms. 'Where the
hell have you been?'
'Just fire off that message,' she said. 'I'll tell you
on the train.' She was grinning at me, and I felt all
worries fade as I hugged her properly, then stepped
back to hold her shoulder at arm's length as though
to make doubly sure she was there. Her poke looked
even larger and heavier than before.
'You've got the paper files?'
Yes,' she said, hefting the bag. 'Come on.'
I transmitted the message, and we dashed hand
in hand down the platform. The train wasn't heavily
used, and we found a compartment - half a carriage
- to ourselves and swung down on to the seats and
faced each other across the table, laughing.
'Well,' I said. 'Tell me about it. You had me a wee
bit worried, I have to admit'
She curled her fingers across the back of my
hand. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But I thought it seemed
like a good idea to disappear. That way, if Gantry
or anyone else leaned on you to give the files or the,
you know, other files back, you could honesdy say
you couldn't, you really wouldn't know where I was
and would look genuinely flummoxed, say if they
went so far as to come back to our room with you.'
'Oh, right. I was genuinely flummoxed, I'll give
you that. But if anyone was with me they could have
made the same guess as I did, and come to the sta-
tion.'
THE SKY ROAD 183
She shrugged. Td have kept out of sight.' She
combed her fingers through a hanging fall of hair,
smiling coyly. Tm no bad at that.'
'And caught the train at the last second?'
'Or something.' She didn't seem interested in
raking over speculative contingencies. 'Anyway,
we're here, and we've got the goods. Nothing Gan-
try can do to get them off us now.'
'Aye. Still, I'll have to wire him from Carron, re-
assure him they're in safe keeping.'
'Like you said. So it's all square.'
The train began to move. I looked out at the ap-
parently shifting station and platform, gliding into
the past in relative motion, then looked back at her.
'No,' I said. 'It isn't as straightforward as that.'
She listened to my account of what Gantry had
said about the tinkers and the dark storage. When
I'd finished she shook her head slowly.
'You should have just covered up about my being
a tinker,' she said.
That was a shock. 'How could I?' I protested.
'He'd figured it already, and it would be easy
enough to check. I didn't want to lie to him. Espe-
cially not lie and get found out as soon as he picked
up a phone.'
Her mouth thinned. 'I suppose not. Fair enough.
Your man's trust matters in the long run. And
maybe even being evasive would've confirmed his
suspicion.' She looked as if a weight had settled on
her shoulders at that moment.
'I would have been evasive - Truth help me, I
would have lied if you'd asked me!'
'I couldn't do that,' she said. 'Ach, this is so com-
plicated!'
'Hey, it's all right,' I said. 'We'll think of some-
thing. I'll string Gantry some kind of line, give us
184 KEN MACLEOD
time to check out the files, and we'll have them back
in a, week. Take next Monday off too if I have to.'
Merrial's eyes suddenly brimmed. She blinked
hard.
'Dhia, I hope it's that easy!' She sighed. 'I wish I
could tell you more right now.' She shook her head.
'But I can't'
'Why not?'
'Oh, mo chridhel I'm a tinker, and tinkers have to
mind their tongues. Even if - especially if - their
tongues are spending time in other mouths!'
'So you have secrets of your craft,' I said dryly,
'which you have to keep. That's all right with me.'
She looked as if she were about to say something
urgent, and then all she said was, 'I shouldn't worry
so much. It'll probably all turn out all right'
'Yes, sure,' I said, pretending to agree with her.
'Oh, well. Shall we have a look at the files, then?'
'OK,' she said, pulling them out 'Tell you what.
You can look through the early one, and I'll look
through the late. That'll increase the chances that
either of us will find something we can understand.'
'Fair enough,' I said.
I opened the folder from the 1990s and flipped
impatiently through thoroughly dull and worthy
stuff about medical charity, and some fascinatingly
improbable economic statistics from Kazakhstan.
Towards the end I found something more personal:
pages ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, appar-
ently a diary. I pored over the Deliverer's scrawl:
Thurs Jul 16 98. Trawl of NYC's remaining left
bookshops - nostalgia, I guess. Picked up Against the
Current in St. Mark's - trendy place, left pubns mar-
ginalised, seems apt. The old Critique clique still
banging on - Suzi W in AtC, etc. At least they're
THE SKY ROAD 185
loyal - unlike moi, huh. Then trekked over to Revo
Bks - Avakian's lot, madder than ever. They have a
dummy electric chair in the shop for their Mumia
campaign. Flipped through old debates on SU etc.
Depressing thought 'Marxism is a load of crap' kept
coming to mind. Then Unity Books on W 23d.
Couldn't bear going to Pathfinder. After my little
adventure, not sure I want to face the Fourth In-
ternational cdes either. Or they me. Agh.
Fri Jul 17 98. Hot humid afternoon, rainstorm later.
Met M on Staten Isl ferry. Leaned on the rail and
looked at old Liberty thro near fog. M seems to
know I'm telling the old gang about his approaches.
Thing is he doesn't seem to mind. (Girl with pink
hair on the ferry. Swear same girl was in Boston.
Am I being followed or getting paranoid?)
I couldn't make head nor tail of this, and turned
over to the last of the entries.
Thurs Dec 17 98. Almaty again. Hotel lounge TV
tuned permanently to CNN. Green light of city fall-
ing in the night. Hospital filling up. Fucking Yanks.
Here I am trying to help development, there they
are trying to roll it back.
After that, nothing but a stain and an angry scrib-
ble, where the pen had dug into and torn the page.
Perhaps she'd reached the end of that notebook, or
stopped keeping a diary. I leafed through the rest
of the papers, with an oppressive feeling that seeing
through their present opacity would take even
longer than I'd thought. Then an idly turned page
brought me to a stop.
It was a photocopy of an old article she'd written,
186 KEN MACLEOD
but it was a small advertisement accidentally in-
cluded at its margin that caught my eye. It was for
a public meeting on 'Fifty Years of the Fourth In-
ternational' and it had in one corner a symbol
which was identical to the monogram on Menial's
pendant. It was all I could do not to knock my fore-
head or cry out at my own stupidity. What I'd
thought were the letters 'G' and 'T' were in fact the
hammer and sickle of the communist symbol, and
the meaning of the '4' was self-evident. I'd missed
the connection just because the symbol faced in the
opposite direction to the one on the Soviet flag.
The sinister significance of the hammer and
sickle made me feel slightly nauseous; the implica-
tion of that same symbol appearing across such a
gulf of time induced a certain giddiness.
I closed the file and looked up, and found myself
meeting Menial's equally baffled eyes.
'It's all either not very interesting, or completely
fucking incomprehensible,1 she said.
'Same here,' I said. 'Let's leave it'
All that long afternoon, we talked about other
things.
Batdes, mostly, as I recall. The train pulled into
the station at Carron Town on the dot of six. The
sun was still high, the late afternoon still warm.
Once again tired and jaded by our journey, Menial
and I left the train with an access of energy and a
surge of hunger. Menial led the way straight to The
Carronade, and we settled into a dark corner of the
strangely polished-smelling bar with plates of
farmed trout and fresh-picked peas and new pota-
toes, accompanied with a shared jug of beer.
'I can't wait to get back to your place/ I said, 'get
a bit of privacy, and get my face right down into ...
the files.'
THE SKY ROAD 187
She laughed. 'Aye, it'll be great to get a good look
at them at last, without having to look over our
shoulders.'
But as she said it she was looking over my shoul-
der, as she had done every minute or so all through
the meal. She had her back to the wall, I had my
back to the bar. The pub was beginning to fill up
with people from the project, in for a quick drink
on their way home or to their lodgings. As yet I'd
heard no voices I recognised.
'You seem a wee bit on edge,' I said.
'Aye, well, like I said on the train . . .'
Tergal?'
Tes.'
'You're expecting to meet him here?' I asked, re-
membering that we were in this bar on her - albeit
welcome - suggestion.
She opened her hands. 'Maybe. Depends.'
'On what?' I piled up our empty plates and lit a
cigarette.
'Och, on how they want to play it,' she said,
sounding unaccustomedly bitter.
'Secrets or no secrets,' I said, trying to keep my
tone light, 'you're going to have to let me in on this,
sooner or later. I'm getting thoroughly tired of see-
ing you looking worried.'
'I don't have to do anything!' she flared. 'And you
don't have to see me looking like anything!'
I said nothing, staring at her, shocked and an-
noyed but already forgiving her; she'd been under
a lot of tension, for reasons I knew about and rea-
sons I knew I didn't.
'Ach,' she said, gentle again, 'I didn't mean that,
colha Gree. You've not been taught as I have, to be
hard.'
At that I had to smile; she seemed more vulner-
188 KEN MACLEOD
able than hard, at that moment. Her eyes widened.
I heard a footstep behind us, and then Fergal swung
uninvited on to the bench beside me.
'Hello,' Menial said, not warmly. Her glance re-
turned to me.
'Oh, hi,' I said. He looked at our drinks. 'My
round, I think.' He reached back over his shoulder
and snapped his fingers; most people wouldn't have
gotten away with that, but he did. In half a minute
the barmaid was laying another full jug on the table.
'So, Menial,' he said quietly, 'you got it?'
'We did,' said Menial. 'As far as I can tell. I
checked through it all this morning, and it's the
whole archive.'
'And where did you do that?' I butted in, a little
indignantly.
'Kelvin Wood,' Menial said, giving me a disarm-
ingly unabashed grin. 'In the bushes.'
'So that's what you were up to.'
Menial nodded, with a flash of her eyebrows. Fer-
gal looked at her, then at me, as though to remind
us that he had more important things on his mind.
Tine,' I said.
'That's good news,' Fergal said, to Menial. He
laughed briefly. 'To put it mildly, eh?'
'Aye,' she said. 'It is that'
'Anyway, Clovis,' Fergal said, 'you'll appreciate
that the information you've helped to retrieve needs
to be looked at with an expert eye. Rather urgently,
in fact, considering how long it may take.'
'Of course,' I said. 'Any chance that I could take
a look at it first, just glance through it?'
He shook his head. 'Sorry, Clovis. You have no
idea - no offence - of how much is there. It's an
incredible quantity of not very well organised infor-
mation. In the time it would take for you to make
THE SKY ROAD 189
sense of any of it, we could be searching for infor-
mation we know how to interpret. Every hour might
count'
'Just a minute!' I said, dismayed and indignant.
'Nobody mentioned anything about this. I want to
get a look at them too, and not have them disappear
into—'
'Some tinker hideaway?' Fergal raised his eye-
brows. 'It won't be like that, I assure you. You have
my word that we won't keep them long - weeks at
the most - and that you'll get to see them and
search them at your leisure as soon as we've fin-
ished.'
'But,' I said, 'how will I know they haven't been
changed - even accidentally? Because I have to be
able to rely on it'
Merrial was looking desperately uncomfortable.
She gave Fergal a quick, hot glare and leaned closer
to me across the table.
'Think about it, man,' she said quietly. 'This stuff
is all illicit anyway - you could not exactly cite it in
footnotes, could you? You can only use it to find
leads to material you can refer to. So you'll just have
to trust us - trust me - that the information won't
be tampered with.'
'All right,' I said reluctantly.
'Good man!' He drained his glass and stood up.
'Thanks for your help.' Fergal reached out a hand
across the table. Merrial was already emptying her
personal clutter out of the leather bag. She tight-
ened its thong and passed it over; Fergal had caught
it while I was still gazing, puzzled, at Merrial's ac-
tions.
'Wait!' I said. 'The paper files are still in there.
You can't take them!'
Fergal raised his eyebrows. 'Why not?'
190 KEN MACLEOD
'These papers belong to the University.'
I'm afraid they don't/ said Fergal, sounding re-
gretful. 'They belong to us.'
I looked frantically at Menial, who only gave a
small, sad nod.
'Who the fuck is this "us"?' I demanded, though
I already suspected the answer. 'Come on, I can give
you photocopies if you must.'
'Not good enough, old chap.'
'Then give me them back.'
'Sorry,' said Fergal. 'I can't.'
I shifted on my feet, moved my elbow; all by re-
flex. Fergal's eyes narrowed.
'Don't,' he said very quietly, 'even think of mess-
ing with me.'
I was actually thinking of yelling out and calling
on the others in the bar, some of whom had their
eye on this confrontation. But something in Fergal's
stance and glance suggested that the only outcome
of such a brawl would be his escape after inflicting
some severe damage on our side, starting with me.
And whichever side Merrial came in on, or even if
she tried to stay out of it, she was likely to get hurt.
My honour wasn't at stake in preventing Fergal's
departure with the papers - it would be at stake in
getting them back - and for now I had no right to
risk life and limb of myself or others over it.
'Take it, tinker,' I said. 'I can bide.'
He smiled, without condescension.
'I hope I see you again,' he said, and was out the
door.
I looked over at a few curious, tense faces at the
bar, shrugged and returned to the table, where Mer-
rial was shakily lighting one of my cigarettes.
'Some explanation might be in order,' I said, as
T H E S K Y RO A D 191
casually as I could manage. One of my knees was
vibrating.
Menial took a long breath and a long draw with
it
* Sorry,' she said. 'I can't, really.'
'But look,' I said. 'Why didn't you just tell me to
hide the files, or say we'd put them back—'
I was getting exasperated and confused, and then
the penny, finally, dropped.
'You agree with him!' I said. *You actually agree
that he has some kind of a right to those papers, and
to see the files first, and that nobody else can so
much as look at them without his sufferance. In-
cluding me.'
She looked levelly back at me.
'And you're not going to tell me why.'
A small shake of her head.
'And you knew all along this could happen.'
A smaller nod.
'All right,' I said. There were still two half-litres
in the jug; I poured for both of us, and lit a cigarette
myself, leaning forward into Menial's smoke, almost
into the tent of her hair. 'All right.' The heel of my
hand was rubbing beneath my eye; irritated with my-
self, I stopped doing that and fiddled with the cig-
arette instead. The sound of the laughter and
conversation at the bar was like the noise of a burn
over a rock, washing over and hiding our talk. We
could say anything.
'I'm really at a loss,' I said. 'I can't believe you
just set me up, but unless you tell me what's really
going on—'
'I told you,' she said. 'I can't. Can't you trust me
on that?'
'Oh, I can trust you on that all right,' I said. 'But
if I don't get those files back like I promised, no-
192 KEN MACLEOD
body at the University will ever trust me again.'
She looked as tense, as torn, as I felt.
Tm very sorry about that,' she said. 'But there's
nothing I can do about it'
'Come on,' I said. 'There must be. Hell, if I get
the files back, I can give your lot copies of all the
files. Isn't that worth more to them than just what
they've got?'
'You don't understand,' Menial said. 'Now that
we know about the other files, we're going to have
to get them all. Like Fergal said, they're ours.'
'Ours', indeed! I was unwilling, or unready, to
challenge her about the society to which that might
refer. I spread my hands. *You can't expect me to
accept that without a damn good reason, which
you're not giving me.'
'I've told you. I can't. So why don't we just forget
about all this?'
'Menial,' I pleaded, dismayed at the depths of her
lack of understanding, 'these files are part of my
work, my whole career depends on them. So,
please—'
I reached out, touching her hair.
Her eyes glinted.
'Oh, fuck off.' she told me, not quite a yell but
loud and emphatic enough to turn heads.
'I'll do that,' I replied, and rose and stalked out.
I glanced back from the door, and saw only the top
of her head, and the forward fall of her hair, and
her hands over her face. The door swung shut be-
hind me.
8
WESTERN APPROACHES
I t's over,' Valentina was saying.
'What's over?' Myra asked. She shook her head,
looking around her office. Val and Andrei and
Denis were all there, perched on desks or window
sills. The command-centre screens had vanished like
a dream. Parvus hovered on the edge of her vision,
looking as though about to speak.
'The putsch,' Valentina explained.
'Just like that?'
Myra stared, blinking through options presented
by Parvus. The personal had its own analysis, and it
was busy agreeing with Valentina. The battlesats
seized by the space movement were enough to
guard their beleaguered enclaves and launch sites,
but not to tilt the balance of world power in their
favour. The Security Council nations retained their
control over the ReUN, but the battlesats that had
resisted the coup had done so in their own name,
not that of the ReUN. They remained dangerously
autonomous.
At ground level all sorts of local balances had
194 KEN MACLEOD
been tilted, almost entirely by the rapid re-
evaluations of the real weight on the various sides
that the bloody flurries of actual combat had in-
duced. Disputes had been resolved or reopened, en-
tire armies had mobilised or disbanded on the
strength of the gigantic shadows thrown on the
screens of analysis by the small engagements in the
field.
'God,' said Myra disgustedly. 'This is so decadent/
It reminded her of the Renaissance mercenaries
that Machiavelli had moaned about in the Discourses,
working out who would have won if they'd fought
and abiding by that decision like gentlemen, while
omitting the bloody business of actual battle. 'No-
body wants a real fight, they'd rather follow the
sims. Talk about the pornography of violence.
Wankers.'
'It's worse than that,' Denis said coarsely. 'We're
fucked.' He threw a projection of a time-slice from
Jane's and laser-pointed the relevant areas. 'Look.'
The ISTWR's military profile and general credi-
bility was no longer something that cautious strate-
gists, estimating from past actions and present
rumour, rated highly. It was negligible.
'We've been found out,' said Denis Gubanov. 'In
exactly the wrong way. They must have always reck-
oned with at least the possibility that we had nukes.
Mutual Protection - or Reid, anyway - knew we had
them. Point is, we didn't use them, so it's assumed
we either don't have them or don't have the stom-
ach to use them. We've gone from being Upper
Volta with nukes to being Upper Volta without. And
the weapons we did use didn't work.'
'They worked -' Valentina began, rather defen-
sively.
'Huh!' Myra snorted. 'They worked just fine, only
THE SKY ROAD 195
they didn't destroy the targets. Yeah, I can see that
doing our deterrence posture a power of good.'
The hotline phone - a solid, old-fashioned, un-
ambiguous red phone on Myra's desk - began to
ring. She looked at it doubtfully for a moment, then
shrugged and picked it up.
'Myra Godwin-Davidova.'
Pause.
'Hello, Myra. Dave here.'
She gave him a moment of nonplussed silence.
'Myra? It's David Reid:
Tes. Hello,' she said. 'What do you want now?'
There was a second's delay in his reply.
'What do you want, is more like it.' Even over the
crackly laser-to-landline link, she could hear his
fury. 'You had the whole situation in the balance,
you know that? You had the fucking casting vote,
Chairman Davidova! You had the nuclear option,
and you threw it away! I'd almost rather you had
used your goddamn nukes against us - at least that
way the Security Council would have had control,
and would've had to take responsibility. There'd be
some chance of an end to the chaos, which is all we
really wanted. As it is you've turned what should've
been the endgame into another fucking stalemate.'
'I don't see how that makes you any worse off.'
She heard a knocking noise and realised after a
moment that he was banging something on his
head.
'It's made us all worse off! It's like entropy, Myra,
can't you see that? Everybody's climbed up a few
flights, escalated, that's the fucking word for it. We're
all higher up but relatively we're no better placed,
and we've lost energy, wasted work in the process.
And you know the only people who'll gain from
that? The marginals, the fucking barb, that's who.
196 KEN MACLEOD
Including your local godless communists.'
'It's you who should have thought of that. Before
you launched your bloody coup.'
Reid took a deep breath, a long sigh down the
wire.
'Yeah, you're right. It is my fault. Didn't expect a
counter-coup, that's all.'
'What counter-coup?'
Again the odd delay.
'Don't play the innocent. Somebody's taken over
most of the battle-sats, and it sure wasn't my lot. Nor
the UN's, come to that.'
'You don't know who it was?'
'No. So who was it? You must know.'
Myra thought about this. Ah, hell, he'd find out
anyway.
'The Fourth International,' she told him. 'Space
fraction, mil org.'
A second ticked past, then she heard Reid's loud
laugh. 'Ha-ha-ha! OK, Myra, be like that. I'll find
out anyway. Meanwhile, take a look at the north-
eastern border, and see if it all still seems so funny.
I'm well out of it - I'm on a shuttle for Lagrange.
Bye.'
He closed the connection in some manner that
sounded like slamming down the receiver on an old-
fashioned phone, with an impact that made her
wince.
Before she could look at the north-eastern bor-
der, Parvus stepped into frame and raised a hand.
Myra gestured to the others to wait.
'Yes?'
The stout phantom waved his hands expansively.
'Ah, Myra, I have had to move fast on your invest-
ments. I received the hot inside tip -' he laid a yel-
THE SKY ROAD 197
lowed finger to his ruddy nose * - that Mutual
Protection are liquidating their assets.'
'What!' Myra had by this time got so used to 'as-
sets' being a euphemism for 'nukes' that she almost
ducked under the desk. Her startled gaze raced
down the latest news bulletin - nothing.
'Oh, you mean financially.'
'Of course financially. When the last war starts I
will tell you straight. No, Mutual Protection are sell-
ing up, pulling out.'
'Pulling out from where?'
'From here. From Kazakhstan.' He looked at her
sadly, almost sympathetically. 'From Earth.'
Over the next few days it became clear that the main
gainers from the brief lurch into actual violence
were the marginals, who took their own advantage
of the distraction - and Mutual Protection's hasty
liquidation - to expand their domains in country
after country; and the Sheenisov.
They made a push along the pass at Zaysan, to
the south-east. Kazakhstani long-range bombers
pounded the Sino-Soviet combat drones - devices
of unsetding and diverse appearance, combinations
of almost Soviet mechanical clunkiness with quasi-
organic nanotech sheen. Their wrecks, or corpses,
littered the roads and hillsides outside Buran. Any
functioning components had a disturbing tendency
to reassemble. The Kazakhstani bombing-runs
stopped as supplies of bombs began to run out.
Sheenisov spetsnatz teams - casting hologram feints,
radar ghosts, sonic body-doubles - skirmished
among the wreckage and dug in at the furthest limit
of their advance. Meanwhile, a tank-borne human
army, or horde, was outflanking the Altay Moun-
tains at the northern end of the range: rolling south
198 KEN MACLEOD
and west from the Katun basin, and down the road
and railway from Barnaul, unopposed. By the end
of the fourth day after the coup attempt they'd
crossed Kazakhstan's northern border, and paused.
The oblys council in Semipalatinsk - evidendy soft-
ened by intimidation or subversion - invited them
in, and they cheerfully accepted the invitation. They
rode in like liberators, welcomed by cheering
crowds, and settled down with every appearance of
being there to stay.
The red phone rang again.
'Chingiz Suleimanyov,' the caller identified him-
self. The current President of Kazakhstan; his nick-
name of 'Genghis President' was not quite fair. 'I
have a proposal for your government, Madame Dav-
idova, and for you personally. . .'
The following morning Myra got up and dressed,
and packed. She had most of her luggage sent on
to the airport. She loaded stacks of old files, in for-
mats going back all the way through floppy disks to
actual paper, into a couple of crates, sealed and
diplomatic-bagged and sent off to another destina-
tion. Then she began stripping her flat, with a kind
of rage at herself. She commandeered some kids
from the militia to take the stuff down the stairs -
physically, she wasn't up to that, and she knew it.
The bedroom's contents went first, all the cush-
ions and throws, the tatting and trim, the lacework
and lacquer and lapis lazuli - out, all of it, into big
black plastic sacks that went straight to the nearest
craft-market stall for a derisory sum. Let them make
their own way again, let them travel the circuits like
trade-goods, like cowrie shells and crated Marlboros,
back to the Camden Locks and Greenwich Villages
of the world. The posters on the walls went next, to
THE SKY ROAD 199
another stall, for other collectors. The vinyl records
and the compact discs - that was what they were
called, she thought with a smile, as she hefted their
stacked bulk - to a third.
And then the books. That did hurt, but she went
on with it; grimly, grimily hauling them down from
their shelves, sorting and stacking. Again and again
tempted to sift, to stray; now and again lost in a
book, or in the reminiscences it provoked. Blink,
knuckle the eye, slam the covers shut, sneeze out
the dust, move on. Her eyes reddened, her fingers
blackened and her shoulders ached.
Most of the books, too, went to the bazaar. The
remainder she had loaded in the back of a small
truck. She washed herself and looked around the
echoing emptiness of her flat. It was still habitable;
it was a place to which she could return; but in it
nothing of herself remained.
She shoved her 2045 Library of Congress and her
other libraries and concert halls, art galleries and
archives into the top of her overnight bag, and dis-
tributed her knives and pistols about her belts and
pockets. The lads who'd lugged her stuff to the mar-
ket came back one by one, with sheaves of money.
She peeled off more than enough to pay them, one
by one.
The truck with the books went ahead of her, well
ahead, as she hefted her overnight bag and herself
on to the horse, and rode out for the last time to
the camp.
'Open up!'
Myra yelled, rattling the iron gate. The truck had
parked itself in front, waiting with robotic patience
for the obstacle to clear. Any electronic pleas it had
made had evidently been ignored.
200 KEN MACLEOD
Myra could see why. There wasn't much left of
the camp but the fence, and away to one side - too
far away to be useful for her - she could see men
taking it apart with wire-cutters and rolling it up in
great bales and wheels. Nothing but grass and road-
way stretched ahead of her for a few hundred me-
tres. Where the huts had been she could see only
clumps of dark material on the steppe, with men
and women wandering around and children racing
about. The factories were not gone, but they were
visibly shrivelling, as though their construction were
being run in reverse.
She flipped down her eyeband, upped the gain,
gazed at the scene. Nobody'd heard her shouts.
Damn. She eased her old New Vietcong knock-off
Glock from its holster, steadied and soothed the
horse, and fired not into the air but carefully at a
tussock a few tens of metres distant. The mare shied
and the bullet ricocheted anyway, but the shot got
the result she wanted. A figure detached itself from
the milling crowd and marched towards her. Kim
Nok-Yung, carrying a rifle.
'Hi, Myra.' He couldn't stop smiling. He tapped
a code into the lock's plate. The gate creaked open,
and he left it open. Myra led the horse through, and
the truck followed, then kept pace beside her. Nok-
Yung hopped on the running-board and hung on
with one hand, flourishing the rifle triumphantly
with the other, as if he was riding a tank into a lib-
erated capital.
Isn't this great!'
She got caught up in his enthusiasm.
'Yes, it's wonderful. I'm so glad it's over, Nok-
Yung.'
They passed one of the factories, vanishing before
their eyes, crumbling back from its edges into curi-
THE SKY ROAD 201
ously ordered dust, dust that trickled like columns
of ants along paths on the remaining machinery, or
on the grass. Some of the dust heaped itself up into
blocky stacks that hardened into colour-coded
cubes, inert, from which the wind blew not a speck.
Other lines of dust coalesced into glassy spheroids,
obsidian-black or crystal-clear, that lay in the tall
grass like gleaming pebbles and stones and boul-
ders.
'Control components, computers and so on,'
Nok-Yung indicated. 'The cubes are construction
material.'
'Will anyone collect them, I wonder?'
The Korean laughed. 'We'll take some of the con-
trol parts with us - they might be valuable, where
we're going.'
'Oh?'
He glanced sidelong at her, almost apologetic.
'Semipalatinsk,' he said. 'To the Sheenisov.'
Myra restrained herself from reining in the horse.
'What? Why, for God's sake?' She waved an arm,
wildly, around and behind. 'You can stay with us -
you're welcome here, in our republic or anywhere
in Kazakhstan. Hey, man, Baikonur will take you on,
think of that!'
He shook his head. 'Some of the prisoners will
setde here, of course. But I and Se-Ha and the oth-
ers, we are going to the Sheenisov. Some of us have
friends and family with them already. There is no
other place for us. Even with Mutual Protection -'
he turned aside and spat on the grass '- gone, we
still have the debts, and the black-lists. No work to
be had back home but debt-bondage. Among the
Sheenisov we will be free.' He grinned, no longer
apologetic but feral. 'And there is work to be done
there - work for us. They are the future.'
202 KEN MACLEOD
'But you don't know anything about what they're
really like. Just because they call themselves com-
munists doesn't mean they're nice - you should
know that!'
Nok-Yung laughed harshly. 'They have no Great
Leader or Dear Leader, you can love it or leave it,
and we're going to try it'
By this time they had reached the edge of the
crowd. Myra reined in the horse and signalled the
truck to stop. Nok-Yung jumped off the running-
board. What had seemed from a distance like aim-
less wandering resolved itself into people moving
about purposefully, retrieving and stacking their
possessions from the self-disassembling huts. Most of
them ignored her arrival. Myra was not surprised or
put out. The benefits of her oversight were easy
enough to overlook, and the camp committee itself
was not a popular body among the prisoners,
elected though it was. Like a company union, it had
partially represented the interests of the labourers,
while often enough relaying the will of the owners.
She noticed Shin Se-Ha, dapper in a sadly dated
sarariman suit which he'd probably worn for the first
and last time at his trial, but which for now signified
his new freedom. He carried a small case through
the scooting children and trudging adults. By now
other vehicles and beasts were trundling or plod-
ding into view, summoned by phones restored to
their proper owners.
Myra stood, fondling the mare's neck, quieting it,
as the Japanese mathematician picked his way to-
wards her. She tried to search her memory of what
he'd been sent down for: misuse of company re-
sources or some such pretext - he'd run refine-
ments of Otoh's neo-Marxian capital-reproduction
schemata, primed with empirical data, on the uni-
THE SKY ROAD 203
versity's computers. The real reason was his results,
which he'd indiscreetly spread-sheeted around: the
sinister algebra of the Otoh equations added up to
complete breakdown in two more business-cycles.
That had been one boom and one slump ago.
'Hello, Myra,' he said. He put the case down.
Probably contained all he owned, he was that sort
of guy. Frightening, in his way.
'Hi, Se-Ha. Nok-Yung tells me you're going -' she
nodded forward ' - East'
'I am. Sorry if you do not approve.'
Very direct! The sun shone in her face like an
interrogation-lamp and the wind made a constant
white noise. It was a time for telling the truth or
facing worse ordeals.
'Whether I approve or not is not the point,' she
said. 'You're free, and I have no say in what you do.
But I should warn you that the Kazakhstani Republic
will resist the Sheenisov, and so will I. We will not
be rolled over. I would be sorry to be on the op-
posite side to you in a battle, but—'
She shrugged.
'I would be sorry too,' said Shin. 'But "so it goes",
ah-soT
l
Ah-so indeed,' she smiled, and suddenly realised
how Reid had been able to keep up his no-hard-
feelings enmities for so long. 'Meanwhile, I have
something for you.' She waved a hand at the truck.
'This, and everything in it.' She tossed him the
truck's control-panel, which he deftly caught. 'Go
on, have a look.5
Doors clicked open, banged shut. He came back.
He caught her hand; he bowed over it, as though
about to kiss her knuckles, and stepped back.
T am in your debt,' he said, stiffly. Then he
spread his hands, looking Western and abashed
204 KEN MACLEOD
rather than Eastern and indebted. 'What can I say,
Myra? You're very kind.'
'Ah, don't be silly, my friend,' she said. *You and
Nok-Yung and the others made my work here a lot
more rewarding than it would otherwise have been.
I owe you it, if anything.' She shared with him a
conspiratorial chuckle. 'And a library of revolution-
ary theory might just come in handy where you're
going, eh?'
Tes. I don't know if I can take the responsibility.'
He shook his head, thinking about it. 'There are
books and documents in that van which have never
been scanned in,'
Myra patted a pocket. 'Not even in the 2045 Li-
brary of Congress?'
'Not even that!' He seemed to find the thought
awesome, a violation of the order of nature. It gave
pause even to Myra's resolution, as half a lifetime's
easy assumption that everything was archived, that
every jot and tittle lived unchanged in silicon
heaven, was suddenly confronted with the reality
that some thoughts might only face eternity in the
frail ark of woodpulp, and that she was responsible
for them. Her commitment rallied.
'Oh, well. I should have read them by now, and
if not, it's too late for me.'
The bustle around them was increasing. Vehicles
were whining, horses and camels were whinnying
and spitting. Some children, even some adults, were
in tears at leaving this place, which for all its duress
had not imposed any too severe privation, and
which was familiar. Some folk were assiduously pick-
ing up the glassy stones, whether as talismans or as
trade-trinkets Myra couldn't tell. The thousands of
former prisoners were dispersing to all the round
horizon.
THE SKY ROAD 205
Half a dozen other men were converging on
where she stood, gathering around, talking in Ko-
rean or Japanese, smiling at her and climbing into
the back of the truck. Nok-Yung came up and shook
hands.
'We'll keep in touch.'
There was so much to say, so much that could not
be said.
'We'll meet again/ Myra said. 'All the best, guys.
Good luck with the commies.'
'Hah!' Nok-Yung raised a clenched fist and
grinned at her. 'You'll be with us some day, Myra,
you'll see. Goodbye, and thanks!'
He threw his bag in the truck and sprang into the
driving-seat, then laughed as Shin Se-Ha climbed
through the opposite door and flourished the
control-panel under his nose. Still shouting and wav-
ing, the men drove off, bumping across the steppe,
resolutely north-east.
Myra watched them out of sight and then
mounted her horse and rode back to the town. Only
once did she look behind, and saw that there was
nothing left to see.
The airport of the capital of the International Sci-
entific and Technical Workers' Republic had only
one terminal building. It was a big, open-plan space,
dotted with franchises. They'd never bothered with
Customs, or Immigration Control. Between the
floor-to-ceiling windows - with their charming views
of steppe, runway, apartment-blocks, gantries and
more steppe - hung equally gigantic posters of Trot-
sky, Korolev, Kapitsa, Gagarin and Guevara. The
idea, many years ago, had been to make the con-
course look Communist: a bit of macho swagger.
Right now it had the look of a place about to fall to
206 KEN MACLEOD
the commies, rather to Myra's disgust. Crowded with
people sitting on too much luggage, their expres-
sions flickering between impatience and resignation
with every change on the departure screens. For
heaven's sake, thought Myra - Semipalatinsk was a
hundred miles away, they were over-reacting.
Her own flight's departure-time was not for an-
other hour. She confirmed her booking at the
check-in, made sure her luggage was on board, and
declined the offer of waiting in the first-class lounge.
Instead she made her way to the old Nkafe fran-
chise, and sat down with a coffee and a cigarette, to
rest her feet and indulge in a little nostalgia.
In the good old days before the Third World War
she'd sipped many a coffee here, with many a man
on the other side of the table. Always a different
man, and almost never one that she'd liked: ugly,
jowly military men for the most part, jet-lagged and
stubbled, in creased dress uniforms heavily medal-
lioned; or diplomats or biznesmen, sleek and shaven
and cologned in silk suits. And always, hanging
around a few metres away, outside the glowering
ring of bodyguards, would be the photographers
and reporters, there to record the closing of the
deal. The ISTWR had never gone for secret diplo-
macy - openness was the whole point of tradable
nuclear deterrence.
It had worked fine, until the nuclear war.
The Germans had launched the War of European
Integration without a nuke to call their own. This
hadn't been an oversight - it had been essential to
the element of surprise. Once their first wave of
tanks was safely over the Polish border they'd made
Myra a very generous offer for some of her tradable
nuclear deterrence. Myra's frantic ringing around
her clients had found no one willing to deal: not
THE SKY ROAD 207
for any amount of money, on the entirely rational
basis that the Third World War was not a good time
to sell. Myra had considered cutting them out and
selling the Germans the option anyway, but her busi-
ness loyalty had got the better of her. It had also
got the better of the German occupiers of Kiev, and
the German civilians of Frankfurt and Berlin. She
still felt guilty about that.
For want of company, she flipped down her eye-
band and summoned Parvus. For a laugh, she sat
his virtual image in the seat across the table from
her. The construct triangulated his apparent posi-
tion, saw the joke and smiled.
'What can I do for you, Myra?'
Tell me what you think of the General.' She
wasn't bothered by appearing to talk to empty air;
she wasn't the only person in that cafe area con-
sulting a familiar or a fetch.
'That is a tricky one,' said Parvus. He ran his fin-
gers through his thatch, rummaged in his crumpled
jacket for cigarettes. Lit up and relaxed; the addic-
tive personality was part of the package, an aspect
of how the thing hung together. 'There are of
course rumours —' dismissive smoketrail ' - that the
FI has long had access to a rogue AI. Or the other
way round, according to its opponents.' Parvus
showed his teeth. 'It goes back to when AIs of that
sophistication were rare - before the Revolution, or
the Singularity.'
'This is the Singularity?' It was Myra's turn to wave
a cigarette. 'Not like you'd notice.'
'It's one of these things you don't notice, when
you're in the middle of it,' agreed Parvus. 'Like the
mass extinction event that's going on around us
right now.'
'But that's slow, that's the point. The Singularity's
208 KEN MACLEOD
supposed to be fast on something more than a ge-
ological scale.'
'It was.'
'Oh.' She wasn't sure she wanted to take this dis-
cussion any further. 'Anyway, back to the General,
and what you make of him.'
'Ah, yes. Well. Very dangerous, in my opinion. His
use of face and voice is remarkably effective at get-
ting under the skin of. . . people with skin. Count
yourself lucky he can't use pheromones, at least not
over the net'
*You're impervious to his charm yourself, I take
it'
'Yes,' Parvus sighed. 'Fortunately for me, I lack
self-awareness.'
Myra was still gaping at her familiar's unexpected
remark — surely ironic, though she wasn't sure on
what level - when Parvus's place was occupied by a
Kazakh man with smooth clothes and a lined face.
He had a distracting small child in tow, and a si-
lently accusing puffy-eyed woman behind him. The
woman took another chair, held the squirming tod-
dler in her lap.
Myra blinked Parvus out of her sight, vaguely hop-
ing that the AI wasn't offended, raised her eyeband
and smiled at the man and his family. His returning
smile was forced.
'Good morning, Madame President. Why are you
leaving us?'
Myra looked around. Nobody else seemed to have
noticed her. The cult of personality was another
strategic omission from their socialist democracy.
Just as well - she didn't want to be mobbed on her
departure. 'I'm not leaving you,' she said earnestly,
leaning forward and speaking as though confiden-
tially. Her mission had not yet been publicly an-
THE SKY ROAD 209
nounced, but she had no objection to starting a
truthful rumour in advance. Only the details were
sensitive, and at that level secrecy was pointless - she
was confident that her full itinerary was already cir-
culating the nets, buried among hundreds of spu-
rious versions, all of equally authoritative
provenance. I'm going to the West, to get help.
Economic and military assistance.'
The man looked sceptical. 'Against the Sheeni-
sov? But we haven't a chance, against them. We have
no defensible borders.'
'No, but Kazakhstan has - and it's on behalf of
Kazakhstan that I'm going.'
Tor Chingiz?' The man's face brightened; he
glanced at his wife, as though to cheer her up. 'So
we are going to drive the Reds out of Semey?'
'We can't bomb Semey,' Myra said, repeating ex-
actly President Suleimanyov's words to her. 'But we
can hold the pass east of Lake Zaysan, and we can
stop any further advance in the north-east. If we get
help soon. The SSU forces are unlikely to try any-
thing for some weeks, because they're stretched.
And they don't like frontal fighting. As long as the
Kazakhstani Republic stays hostile to them, they
won't come in.' She grinned encouragingly. 'And I
can be sure our own republic will stay hostile.'
She was not sure at all. There was enough social
discontent, understandable enough, in her redun-
dant workers' state for the Sino-Soviets to work on.
No doubt the first agitators were already drifting in,
among the first refugees from Semipalatinsk. But
the man took her words to heart.
Tes,' he said, adding, 'if Allah wills. But we are
leaving, with all we have.'
'I can't blame you,' Myra said. T wish you well. I
210 KEN MACLEOD
hope you see your way clear to come back, when
things are more .. . settled.'
'Perhaps.' The man shrugged, the woman smiled
thinly, the child suddenly bawled. They departed,
looking up disconsolately at the screens, leaving
Myra depressed.
The man had looked like a small trader, one of
the large middle class raised by the republic's mixed
economy. Despite all the devils it painted on its
walls, the ISTWR had always stood more for a per-
manent NEP than a permanent revolution: only its
defence and space industries were state-owned, and
apart from the welfare system everything else (which
in GNP terms didn't add up to much, she had to
admit) was more or less laissez-faire. She wondered
what the family had to fear from the Sheenisov, who
by all accounts would have left their property and
piety alone. In a way it was not surprising: the
Sheenisov had made their advances by bluff and in-
timidation, by looking and sounding more radical
and communistic than they actually were, and their
absence from the comms net left a great blank
screen for the most sinister speculations to play on.
So perhaps this kind of unwarranted fear was the
price of their progress.
Well, she would make them pay a higher price, in
a harder currency. She drained her coffee and
headed for the departure lounge.
At Almaty she picked up her documents, diplomatic
passport and line-of-credit card in a snazzy Samson-
ite Diplock handed over by a courier, and on the
flight to Izmir she sifted through them. The papers
were literally for her eyes only, being coated with a
polarising film tuned to her eyeband which in turn
was tuned to her. Even so, and even sitting in the
THE SKY ROAD 211
company class section at the front of the jet, alone
apart from the flight-attendant, Myra felt the im-
pulse to hunch over the papers, and wrap her wrist
and elbow around their corners like a kid in class
trying not to be copycatted.
Suleimanyov had struck a bold deal with the
ISTWR, and with her. It was a deal which had been
proposed by Georgi Davidov, who'd died before
he'd been ready to return with it. Myra's lips tight-
ened whenever she thought of that; her suspicions
stirred and were not soothed back to sleep. He'd
had the contracts drawn up in the briefcase that was
found with his body in the hotel room. The terms
were simple, a straightforward offer of economic
union and military alliance. Kazakhstan would take
over the ISTWR's residual social responsibilities, as-
similating all of its inhabitants who wished to be-
come Kazakhstani citizens, subsidising the rest. It
would provide for the smaller state's conventional
defence, leaving to its People's Army and Workers'
Militia the only functions for which they were actu-
ally fitted - internal security and border patrols,
principally the guarding of the spaceport and air-
port. In return, Myra's government would integrate
its space-borne weapons, including the nukes, into
the greater republic's defence forces. They would
retain ultimate operational control - there was no
way Suleimanyov could expect them to surrender
that - but for all public and diplomatic and military
purposes, they'd work together under one com-
mand. At a stroke Kazakhstan would have a military
force commensurate with its land area rather than
its population.
This new Great Power could then negotiate assis-
tance from the West. It could stand as a solid bul-
wark - possibly even an entering wedge - against
212 KEN MACLEOD
the Sheenisov, which the inchoate regimes of the
Former Union and warlorded China could not. The
nuclear weapons would be their bargaining counter.
Useless themselves - in any but the shortest term -
against the Sheenisov, they could be made available
to the US or UN in exchange for the hardware and
orbital back-up and even, at the outside, troop de-
ployments that could hold back this new Red tide.
Myra, as the oldest available politician, with the
longest experience and the widest range of Western
knowledge and contacts, would make the initial ap-
proaches. In a way she would be going back to her
old business of selling nuclear deterrence policies;
the only difference being that there was, now, only
one logical customer. And because it would be an
arduous job, on a tight schedule, they were going
to give her a week's break before she started, and a
lot of money. She was to use that time and money
to get young again.
Rejuvenation was something she should have
done long ago. Now, thinking it over, she found it
difficult to disentangle her reasons for procrastinat-
ing. It wasn't that the process was unaffordable, or
even obscenely privileged - many of her own citi-
zens and employees had made a trip to some West-
ern clinic. Dodgy black-market strains of the
relevant nanoware circulated wherever health serv-
ices existed at all, and patches for their shortcom-
ings were a widespread and legitimate trade. But
Myra'd never gotten around to it, partly because she
had been satisfied with her present condition - at-
tractive enough to pull interesting and interested
men, fit enough for her work and her undemanding
exercise routines, but in no way good enough to
fool anyone that she was actually young, once they
THE SKY ROAD 213
saw more of her than her face, or saw her face close
up.
Another aspect, she realised, was a certain patri-
otic stubbornness, of the kind that kept her driv-
ing her ancient Skoda Traverser. She didn't want
to buy youth from ... not so much the West as ...
the new breed, the post-nanotech generation. She
^vanted to muddle along with the fixes that had
worked for her so far: the Swiss collagen jabs, the
British circulatory-system microbots, the Georgian
bacteriophage immune-system back-ups, the Viet-
namese phytochemical neural regenerators, the
American telomere hack. . . all assembled in a post-
Soviet package deal that the health services of the
Former Union and the communistans had been
doling out for decades.
The Kazakhstani President had taken about thirty
seconds to persuade her that it was her personal
right and patriotic duty to go for the full works, the
one-shot nanotech silver bullet for death. Freed
from the burden of responsibility for the ISTWR,
given a mission on which even history might some
day smile, that legitimacy somehow legitimised her
selfish stab at immortality.
But still, memento mori, when her mind drifted the
words came back.
Death follows me.
She thought that death had caught her several times
over the next few hours. The journey from Izmir's
airport, Adnan Menderes, to Olu Deniz on the Ae-
gean coast was terrifying, even in the armoured
limo. It wasn't just the hairpin bends, the appalling
driving, the precipitous drops and - after nightfall -
the way the headlamp beams swung out into empty
black space. It was all that, and the dead men.
214 KEN MACLEOD
The car had just laboured up an incline, over-
taking a couple of coaches with centimetres to spare
between the booming metal of the coaches on one
side, and a tyre-width away from the drop on the
other, and two seconds to get out of the way of an
oncoming truck. In the crook of the bend, a stand
of pine a little away from the main forest; three
bloodied men hanging from the branches, by the
neck, dead. The mind retained from the sight a
shocking impression of absences: at the faces, at the
ends of limbs, at the crotch. Blink and you'd miss
it.
Myra yelped. The driver's gaze met hers in the
mirror. The crinkles around his eyes deepened to a
smile.
'Greek partisans.'
He started telling her the story, of how Izmir had
once been Smyrna before Kemal liberated the na-
tion, and had - only thirty-five years ago — been
Smyrna again, and the airport had been named af-
ter the Greek fascist Grivas rather than the Turkish
democrat Menderes, and how the Greeks had be-
gun to re-colonise, and how the New Turks had
risen to again drive out the Hellenic chauvinist
pawns of imperialism, and . . . and so on. Myra lis-
tened intently to the long, winding tale of nation-
alist grievance; it distracted her, it kept her mind off
all but the worst of the roadside attractions and the
most heart-stopping turns in the road. This was a
place where the small wars were real, with no sim-
ulations played and no quarter given.
Why had Suleimanyov booked her into a clinic
here, of all places? She knew the answer had some-
thing to do with the complex diplomacy of the rest
of her journey - the Turkish Federation was as usual
in dispute with the Russians, who were backing the
THE SKY ROAD 215
Bulgars and Serbs and Greeks, and most of the US
successor regimes were backing Turkey, and Ka-
zakhstan's on-again-off-again relations with the rest
of the Former Union were currently in 'off' mode,
so. . .
But still.
At last, in the darkness, she saw that they were
heading down a long incline, towards the bottom of
a valley that opened to the sea. Lights dotted along
the roadside and along the sides of the valley in-
creased in frequency to a cluster behind the beach,
beyond which were the lights of ships. As the road
levelled out the driver turned left, then right
through a big iron gate which opened for them.
Concrete walls topped with coils of razor wire, a
short gravelled drive. She stepped out and looked
around. She could see a swimming-pool with a bar,
and multilevel apartments. The driver handed her
luggage to a couple of lads in jeans and polo-shirts.
She tipped the driver, checked in, followed the guys
to her room, dumped her gear, tipped the lads and
made her way down the stairs and over slippery tiles
to the bar, where she ordered a Pils. She sank it in
seconds. After the air-conditioned interior of the car
the heat was horrendous.
She was on to her third lager and fourth cigarette
when a small, dark woman in a white lab-coat
strolled over to her.
'Madame Davidova?' She stuck out a hand. 'Dr.
Selina Masoud.'
'Hi. Pleased to meet you. You're looking after
me?'
*Yes.' Dr. Masoud clicked a tablet out of a dispen-
sary. 'Swallow this. Wash it down with—'
Myra swallowed. Dr. Masoud smiled. She had
curly hair and pretty white teeth. 'Something non-
216 KEN MACLEOD
alcoholic, I was going to say. But it's all right — it'll
just make you sleepy, now, that's all.'
Tine,' said Myra, covering a yawn. 'I'm tired al-
ready. Smoke?'
Thank you.' The doctor took her cigarette and
flipped a gold lighter, slipped it back into her
pocket, inhaled gratefully. 'Ah . . . I needed that.'
She sat up on the stool beside Myra, ordered a
Coke.
'So when do I go for treatment?' Myra asked.
Dr. Masoud flashed her brows. 'That was your
treatment,' she said. 'You stay a week in case there
are any complications, any bad reactions. There
won't be. Slightly feverish is normal.'
'Oh,' said Myra. It seemed something of an anti-
climax. 'So what should I do?'
'Relax. Drink a lot - mainly non-alcoholic, to
avoid dehydration. If you want to help the process
along, smoke and sunbathe as much as you can.
Both are carcinogenic, and they denature collagen
too, you know—'
She said it as though relaying a recent and con-
troversial discovery.
*Yes,' said Myra. 'And?'
'They catalyse the telomerase reactions.'
She smiled, downed the Coke, hopped off the tall
seat. 'I must go. Enjoy your stay.'
The muezzin's taped cock-crow cry from the mina-
ret's tannoy woke her before eight. She lay for a
while enjoying the coolness of the room, and the
fast-growing light. The room was, compared with
her own, refreshingly uncluttered: painted and fur-
nished in shades of white, the crisp straight lines of
the decor and fabrics jiggled here and there with a
twiddle of eyelet or a tuft of lace, as though the
THE SKY ROAD 217
white ambience wavered between clinical and bri-
dal, undecided whether it signified a hospital or a
hotel. Not a bad honeymoon destination, Myra
guessed - she'd noticed plenty of young, loud cou-
ples at the bar the previous evening, though she
couldn't help wondering if the implications of stay-
ing together for ever might not strike home a litde
too hard, too soon, in a place like this.
By the pool she sat on a lounger and rubbed sun-
cream on her limbs and torso. Her hands were as
claw-like (but supple), her muscles as stringy (but
strong), her skin as mottled (but taut) as they had
all been for forty years.
On her left, behind the clinic's main buildings, the
ground rose as a farmed foothill to a high, barren
cliff. Across the kilometre or so of valley bottom, it
faced a lower cliff, which sprouted scrub and trees.
Overhead, the sky was deep blue. Paragliders, their
canopies shaped like brighdy coloured nail-parings,
drifted by, from a higher range far behind the high
cliff, to the beach a mile or so distant. Cicadas
whirred like small electrical devices. The rest of the
people here seemed to be either young, getting
their fix, or old like her, getting their rewind.
For two days, it was great. The sun rose above the
cliff on the left, set behind the cliff on the right,
regular as clockwork. In the evenings the barren
cliffs looked red and martian, and the clinic like a
Moon colony, a little artificial environment over
which the gravity-defying paragliders swooped. Myra
spent her days in sunshine and swimming and not
dying. It was better than heaven. She rolled over and
let the sun bake her back.
Big bare feet stopped in front of her face, in a
spreading stain of water on the concrete tiles. Her
gaze tracked up hairy brown legs, wet stretched
218 KEN MACLEOD
trunks, hairy brown chest, to a face. Beaky nose,
bright brown eyes, dark red-brown strandy hair
swept back. The man smiled down at her, nodded
unconsciously to himself.
'Myra Godwin?'
'Yeah?' like, what's it to you?
He squatted. Big, white, irregular teeth.
Jason Nikolaides,' he introduced himself. 'I've
been asked to speak to you.'
She felt slightly befuddled.
You're Greek?'
He laughed. 'Oh no. Not for generations. Amer-
ican.' He bowed slightly. Drops of water fell from
his hair. 'CIA. We have a few things to talk about'
Myra rolled over, swung her legs round, sat up-
right. Fumbled a cigarette. She looked at him, eyes
screwed up against the sunlight and the smoke. She
sighed.
'It's been a long time,' she said.
9
THE SICKLE'S SANG
I looked back at the pub door, shook my
head, and then walked along the side of the square
and turned a corner to the street where I lodged. I
went to my lodging, ran upstairs and dumped my
bag, then downstairs and out again.
Without taking thought, I turned right, in the op-
posite direction from the station and the square. I
crossed a pedestrian bridge over the railway and
walked along the road out of the town, past the
flood-plain of the Carron River and along the south-
ern shore of the Carron Loch. The railway line was
on my right, between the road and the sea. The sun
was lowering ahead of me, but not yet shining into
my eyes. On my left the wooded hills shouldered up.
I walked past the hamlet and glen of Attadale, and
on beside and beneath the slope of Cam nan Io-
mairean.
I'd walked about five kilometres before I stopped,
walked over the railway line and sat down on a rock
on the shore at Immer. The tide was high and the
loch was still; I could hear clear across it the fiddler
220 KEN MACLEOD
playing at some revel in the wood at Strome Car-
ronach. The Torridonian hills, their rocks older
than life, older than the light from the visible stars,
loomed black behind the hills of Strome.
In all that walk I'd met no one, and encountered
few vehicles. The whole landscape seemed to shut
me out, and to remind me that I was a stranger
here, excluded from everything but God's terrible
love. A couple of hundred metres away, a man with
a scythe was working the long grass of a meadow, as
his ancestors had done and his descendants, no
doubt, would do. Menial had, on Saturday up in the
hills, recited a bit of tinker doggerel that meant
more to her than it did to me:
The hammer rang in factory The
sickle sang in field The farmer
proved refractory The hammer made
the sickle yield.
No hammer, no factory had stopped this man's
scythe; its rhythmic swing slashed the grass as
though the centuries had never been.
Then the man laid it carefully aside, and jumped
to the seat of his tractor, and its methane-engine's
fart scared the birds as he lowered the baler and set
about raking up the hay.
I laughed at myself, and stood up, and walked
back to the town.
She'd left, the barmaid told me, shortly after our
quarrel. I thanked the girl, avoided my mates and
headed for the tinker estate.
'She isna here.'
I turned from my futile chapping on Menial's
white door. A small boy in shorts and shirt, both too
THE SKY ROAD 221
big for him, regarded me solemnly from the path.
I stepped over.
'Do you know where she went?'
He was very clean, as far as I could see in the low
sunlight, except for a red and evidently sticky stain
on his chin, furred with fluff. I resisted the urge to
spit on my finger and wipe it.
'I canna say,' he told me, with artless guile.
'Well, can you take me to somebody who can?'
As he shook his head I became aware of the
crunching of gravel around me and realised that I
need not look far. A dozen tinkers, young and old,
male and female, seemed to drift in from
nowhere. They gathered in a loose semi-circle
around me, none closer than three metres away.
Some of their faces Fd seen on my previous visits
to the camp; others were altogether strangers to
me. All of them were dressed in that mixture of
simplicity and artifice which I was beginning to re-
cognise as a peculiarity of tinker garb; it was as
though the rest of us wore the cast-off finery of
some reduced aristocracy, while the tinkers alone
cut their own elegant cloth.
Tm looking for Menial,' I said, boldly enough;
in the silence my voice sounded as startling and thin
as a curlew's in a field.
'Aye, we know that,' said a young man. 'But you'll
not find her here.'
'And I know that,' I retorted. 'So where can I find
her?'
He shrugged. Somebody tittered. Finally, and as
though with sympathy, an older man added, 'That's
for her to say. If she disna want you to find her, it's no
for us to help you do it. If she does, you'll find her
soon enough.'
'So you do know where she is?' I sounded, even
222 KEN MACLEOD
to myself, pathetically hopeful. The only response
was more shrugs and a giggle.
'There's someone else I want to see,' I said. 'Fer-
gal.'
'Oh,' said the older man, with a pretence at puz-
zlement, 'there are a lot of men by that name. You
wouldn't happen to know his surname, would you?'
You know damn well who I mean,' I said. 'Let
him know I want to see him.'
Everyone took a step closer. The semi-circle
became a close-packed horseshoe of people who
began to move so that the open end was in the
direction of the road. I had never thought of the
tinkers as intimidating to one of the settled folk -
more usually it's the other way round - but I felt
intimidated at that moment, possibly because of
their greater numbers. I decided to give way with as
good a grace as I could, rather than make them
make good on the implied - or perhaps imagined -
threat. So I kept my distance as they continued to
move forward.
'Ah, you'd best be off,' said the young man.
'I reckon so,' I said. 'Good night to you all.'
I turned on my heel and stalked off with as much
dignity as I could muster. A stone bounced on the
paved road as I reached it, but I didn't look back,
or quicken my pace. Inwardly I was boiling with
shame at having been, twice in one evening, faced
down by tinkers. I was determined, however, that no
one among my friends and acquaintances should
know about this - not because of the embarrassment
to myself, but because they might feel obliged to
engage in some collective counter-intimidation of
their own.
It was not a busy night on the square, and I didn't
feel like meeting people and talking. In fact I felt
THE SKY ROAD 223
like doing some solitary drinking. I bought a bottle
of whisky in The Carronade, for a mark, and ducked
out without greeting anyone with more than a wave.
Back at my room I found an envelope pushed under
the door. It contained a telegram, which I unfolded
and read in the ruddy sunset light by the window.
'CLOVIS C/O CATHERINE FARFARER MAIN
ST CARRON STOP AM V CONCERNED RE MISS-
ING FILES REQUEST RETURN BY SEALED POST
TOMORROW TUESDAY OTHERWISE HANDS
TIED RE POSS DISCIPLINARY ACTION ALSO IN-
VESTIGATION IMMINENT STOP YOURS AYE
GANTRY/
On my walk along the shore I had concluded that
I was a fool to walk out on Menial, whatever the
provocation; and now I felt this even more bitterly.
She had warned me at the beginning that loving her
would not always make me happy, and she had been
right about that. Learning that she could be a mem-
ber of a secret society made her refusal of confi-
dence more understandable, even as the basis of
that society filled me with dismay. My historical er-
udition had not disabused me of the vulgar view:
that the communists had, in their blundering,
bloody way, done much to fight the Possession, but
that the final victory had not been theirs, and we
could thank Providence that there was not a com-
munist left on Earth. I could not bring myself to
believe that Menial really, in her heart, espoused
that evil creed.
Any more than the Deliverer had. Perhaps Mer-
rial, and even the other tinkers in the society, used
its rituals and phrases for their own purposes, just
as the Deliverer had exploited it to found her re-
public.
224 KEN MACLEOD
On that happier thought I drank a dram or two
and fell asleep on the bed.
The following morning Catherine Farfarer, the
landlady, handed me two telegrams. One was from
the Disciplinary Sub-Committee of the University
Senate, suspending me from membership of the
University sine die, withdrawing all rights and privi-
leges other than representation at a University
court, just before the beginning of the academic
year. The other was from Gantry, expressing his sym-
pathy and saying that he would APPL THIS
OUTRGS DECN.
And it was outrageous - in effect I was being pun-
ished before trial, because my chances of sponsor-
ship or patronage were now nonexistent. Even if I
were cleared, I would lose at least part of the first
year of my project, which as good as meant losing
it all. I wired Gantry back, thanking him; but I held
little hope that he could do much to help, or that
I, with my stubborn closed mouth, deserved it.
Not to my surprise, Menial was not at work. I got
through most of my dangerous day in the arc-lit
dark of the platform leg without incident, and was
just cleaning my tools (and everyone else's) at a
quarter past four when Angus Grizzlyback loomed
out of the dim scaffolding and sat down at the crate.
'Clovis,' he said. I looked up. He scratched the
back of his head with one hand, and looked away
from me and at a piece of paper he held in the
other.
'Something wrong?'
Even then, the thought that leapt on me was that
he was the unwilling bearer of bad tidings about my
parents, or some such family matter.
THE SKY ROAD 225
'Aye, I'm afraid so,' he said. 'I'm going to have to
let you go. Pay you off.'
'What for?' I asked, simultaneously relieved and
shaken.
'Nothing you've done here,' he assured me. 'It's
much against my own inclination, Clovis; for all I've
slagged you off you're no bad at what you do, and
you're a sound man, but—' He shrugged, and
looked down at the paper again. 'It's the Society.
They've withdrawn your clearance to work on the
project.' He looked up at me sharply, a question in
his eyes. 'Some trouble you've got into at the Uni-
versity.'
I put the tools down on the rough table and
clasped my oily hands to my head. 'How can they
do that?' I asked, but I knew the answer. The Uni-
versity had fingered me to the Society - of which it
was, of course, a part - as a risk to the project's
security. It all made sense, unjust though it seemed.
You can appeal, you know,' Angus said. 'I'll back
you up.'
I swallowed bile. 'Thanks,' I said. 'I'll bear that in
mind. Of course I'll appeal it'
The only reason I could think of to appeal it was
that not doing so would seem like an admission of
guilt - and, indeed, I was guilty of plenty, none of
which I'd want brought out in a work tribunal. Con-
fident though I was that nothing I'd done could en-
danger the project, others might not regard being
madly in love with a stranger as a sound basis for
this conviction.
'Ach, well, I'll set the machinery in motion,' An-
gus said. 'I'll tell Jondo and he'll take it up with the
union.' He forced a grin. 'Have you back in no
time.'
'Thanks, Angus,' I said.
226 KEN MACLEOD
'But right now,' he went on, 'I'll have to ask you
to leave straight away. It says here I should escort
you off the premises, but I'll not do that.'
I was very grateful indeed that he trusted me as
far as the gate; but as I turned and looked back on
my way out of the yard, I noticed his tiny figure on
the outside of the platform, and realised that he'd
discreetly watched my every step.
I took an early and almost empty bus back to Carron
Town, and went to my room. The whisky bottle, at
that moment, felt like my only friend. By morning,
it would seem false; we'd have had a severe falling-
out, but we'd both know it was only a matter of time
before we'd make up. I knew all this perfectly well
as I sat under the skylight and tipped myself a gen-
erous measure of the malt. Its fortifying fire rushed
through my nerves, and I could contemplate my un-
ravelling life with a degree of detachment.
I thought about what I'd lost, and what I hadn't,
and determined that what I had left was enough to
win me back the rest, if only I could think of a way.
So, instead of settling down to some sad solitary
drinking, I cleaned up and shaved and changed and
went over to The Carronade.
The doors of the pub, heavy with glass and brass,
swung shut behind me. After the sunshine the light
seemed low. As I walked to the bar my eyes adjusted.
At that time, about half past five, it was almost
empty. The barmaid was the same girl who'd served
us on Monday evening. She was a local girl, tall and
thin, with long fair hair bundled up, and strong
arms from pulling the pumps. Her name, as I
learned in a few minutes of chat as I leaned idly on
the bar, sipping at a half-litre of pale ale, wasjeanna
THE SKY ROAD 227
Benymead. She'd grown up on a farm up the glen
a bit, at Achnashellach.
Carron Town, before the project had started, was
a place where everybody knew everything about
everybody else, or at least talked as though they did.
Jeanna's knowledge of my meeting with, and parting
from, Menial was elaborate enough to suggest that
local gossip was fast catching up with the influx.
'That tinker who was in here—' I said, trying to
steer her away from her obvious probing of my side
of the story.
'Oh, aye, Fergal.'
*You know him?'
She shrugged and made a mouth. 'To see. He
drops in now and again. Bit of an arrogant sod, but
he stands his round.'
'Any idea where he works?'
'Aye, in the old power-station up at Lochluichart.
It's no' a power-station any more, you understand.
But folk still call it that.'
'So what is it now?'
She grimaced. 'Not a place you'd like to go to.
It's said the tinkers make their seer-stones there. I've
heard tell it feels ... haunted. A creepy place. Mind
you, I've never met anyone who'd been there. Or
who'd want to,' she added pointedly.
'Anyone who wasn't a tinker, you mean,' I said.
'Presumably Fergal has mentioned he's been there.'
She shook her head, frowning. 'He's never said a
word about it, even when he's drunk. Not that he's
drunk often! He can hold his drink, that one.'
'So how do you know that's where he works?'
'Ah, I don't know,' she said, as though impatient
to be off the subject. 'It's just — you know - what
people say.'
I was about to try to get more than that out of
228 KEN MACLEOD
her when another voice joined our conversation.
'Is this you back on the pull, Clovis, so soon after
the quarrel with your last lassie?' My workmate
Druin sounded amused. I turned and grinned back
at him as the barmaid poured him a half-litre. Druin
was a local man, married and in his thirties, his wes-
kit showing bare brown arms still oil-stained from
his day's work, and scarred from years of work be-
fore it too.
That's not it at all,' I said. 'I thought better of it,
as who wouldn't? But she's not to be seen. So I'm
trying to find out more about the tinkers.'
He laughed. 'You're a character. The reading
makes you funny in the head.' He said this not as
an insult but as a charitable explanation. 'Mind
you,' he added, 'that's a girl I wouldn't walk out on
myself.'
I asked Jeanna for another half-litre and, noticing
a temptingly cheap bottle, said, 'Oh, and a couple
of shots of the Talisker, please.'
Druin raised his glass. 'Thanks, mate.' He took a
sip of the Talisker and asked, 'What's this about you
getting the sack?'
'Some trouble with the University,' I said. 'I bor-
rowed some papers, and found I had little choice
but to let Fergal take them. The ISS seems to have
taken it as a sign I'm not to be trusted. I take that
as an insult.'
'As well you might.' He looked at me curiously.
*You don't seem too bothered about it, though.'
I made a twist of my lips, turned my hand over.
'Aye, I'm bothered, but there's no sense letting
something like that get to you. I'll appeal it, Jondo's
going to take it up. It'll get sorted out. I'm more
worried about why Menial isn't at work.'
'Ah,' he said. 'She isna taking the day off, or sus-
THE SKY ROAD 229
pended or anything like that. She's finished her
contract.'
'How d'you know that?'
He tapped the side of his nose. 'Jondo told me,
because naturally he asked Admin if she'd been
chucked out as well.'
I sighed. 'I suppose that's a relief, in a way. But
she said nothing about it to me, even before.'
Druin nodded. 'Aye, they're a close-mouthed lot,
the tinkers. So, what is it you wanted to know about
them?'
'Well, we sort of take them for granted, right?
Some people do one kind of work, and nobody else
knows much about it. How did that start? Why can't
just anybody follow the path of light? How do peo-
ple become tinkers in the first place?'
Druin looked at Jeanna, and then at his drinks.
He scratched his chin. Jeanna unaccountably
blushed a little, and held her hand over a giggle.
'That's a lot of questions,' Druin said. 'To answer
your last one first, most people who become tinkers
are born into it. They're tinkers because their par-
ents were tinkers.'
'Aye,' I said, 'but look at the tinkers. They're not
an inbred people, whatever else they may be. So
they must get new recruits, so to speak, but I've
never heard of such.'
Jeanna's giggle broke through. She turned away
and moved down to the other end of the bar. Druin
glanced after her and back at me, smirking.
'Well,' he said carefully, 'it is rumoured that those
of the settled people who become tinkers do so
through sexual intercourse.' He laughed at the look
on my face. You might have been well on the way
to becoming one yourself, I gather.'
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'That's ridiculous.'
230 K E N M A C LE O D
Druin shook his head. 'It's no ridiculous,' he said
firmly. 'You think about it. A tinker won't settle
down without ceasing to be a tinker, and damn few
do that. So if you want to be with a tinker, you have
to become a tinker yourself. And wander off, and
never be seen again, often as not. The tinkers don't
stay in the one place more than one or two year, if
that.'
'All right,' I said, 'I can see there might be some-
thing in that' My mind was turning over a lot of
possible implications, none of which I was in any
mood to share with Druin. 'What about the other
questions?'
He shrugged. 'As to why they and only they do
what they do? I've given that some thought myself,
and the only thing I can say is, it goes back to the
Deliverance, and it works fine. What more can you
say?'
'Oh, plenty,' I said. 'Like whether it's the best way
of doing things.'
'Aye, well, like I said. It works.' He leaned closer.
'Here's a bit of tinker cant I picked up: "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it." Sound advice, wherever it comes
from.'
He drained his mug and knocked back the
whisky, then grinned and clapped my shoulder. 'I
can see I've given you a lot to think about, but I
haven't the time to talk any more. I'm off. Home to
the wife and the tea, then out on the hills with the
rifle.'
As he slid off the stool and stood up he gave me
a canny look and asked, 'You happen to fancy com-
ing along, Clovis?'
'Deer hunting?' Suddenly it felt like something I
desperately needed to do to get my head clear. My
THE SKY ROAD 231
first inquiries had already given me far too much
new information to assimilate.
'Sure,' I said. Thanks.'
'Great, well, come along for your tea as well.'
'Oh, I couldn't, your wife's not expecting any—'
*Ach, man, if you saw how much she tries to make
me eat, you'd come along out of sheer sympathy.
Nah, you'll be welcome.'
'Thanks a lot. See you, Jeanna.'
Druin's wife's name was Arrianne. A calm, solid,
dark woman who took my arrival entirely in her
stride. We sat around a heavy table in the living-
room, under a loud-ticking ancient clock, with the
two children: a boy of about fourteen called Ham-
ish, already working at the fish-farm, and a girl of
six called Ailey, who unfussily helped her mother to
serve the dinner.
The dinner - or 'tea' as they called it - consisted
of fresh mackerel, limpets boiled in salt water, new
potatoes and carrots and fresh-picked peas. I had to
stop at the third helping, but Druin and Hamish
went right on through it. This kind of feeding didn't
seem to have put an ounce of fat on either of them;
Arrianne insisted that I looked undernourished,
and she may have been right.
After the woman and the girl had cleared away
the plates Druin stood up and reverently lifted two
rifles down from a rack on the wall. He pushed one
across the table to me.
*You know how to handle this?'
Single-shot, bolt-action, scope. I demonstrated my
familiarity and safety to Druin's satisfaction.
'Has a hell of a kick,' he warned, passing me a
half-dozen shells. 'Still, you'll no get more than one
shot in even if we're lucky.'
232 KEN MACLEOD
He said goodbye, and I said thanks to his family,
and then he led me out the back and to the side of
the house where his pick-up truck was parked. We
racked the rifles on the back and climbed into the
cab. The seats were leather, the dashboard hard-
wood and stainless steel, all lovingly polished.
Tusion engine,' he said proudly as he turned the
key and got an instant low thrum in response.
'Eighty years old, and not a thing wrong with it.
Been in the family that long. None of your wood-
alcohol or methane stinks for us.'
The vehicle purred into the main street and on
to the road past New Kelso. Druin caught me cran-
ing my neck to look over at the tinker estate, and
laughed.
'Ach, you'll find her,' he said.
He turned right at the junction, up the glen. The
evening traffic surge had eased off and we made
good progress at about forty kilometres an hour.
'Where are we heading?' I asked, as he slowed for
the main street of Achnashellach. A small herd of
Highland cattle were being walked through the
town, for God knows what reason.
4
Ah, you'll see when we get there.' He looked at
me sideways. 'You can smoke if you want, just make
sure the ash goes out the window, and the butt goes
in the ashtray.' He hit the horn. 'Ah, move yer fuck-
ing arse,' he advised a hairy beast, which looked
back at him as though it had heard, tossed its horns
and plodded obliviously in front of us for a further
couple of minutes.
Clear of the obstruction he speeded up for
the long, slowly rising road to Achnasheen, which
we passed through about twenty minutes later. The
streets of that town climbed high into the forested
THE SKY ROAD 233
hills, and its greenhouses across the floor of the
glen.
'In my grandfather's day this was all a fucking
bog, the way he tells it/ Druin remarked. 'The sta-
tion, and the hotel, and fuck all else. Aye, we've got
the land back and no mistake, just like the Brahan
Seer said.'
'Who?'
'Och, some prophet from the old time, he said
the people would come back to the glens. The Nos-
tradamus of the North!' He laughed. 'They say he
looked at the future through a hole in a stone, and
that very stone is at the bottom of a loch some-
where.'
'A seer-stone?'
Druin guffawed. 'You've got tinkers on the brain,
Glovis! The Seer lived and died long before even
computers. Which he did not foresee. No, it was an
ordinary wee stone with a hole in it that he looked
through.'
'Do you believe that?'
'I don't think there was anything special about
the stone,' Druin said. 'But there may have been
something special to the eye or the brain behind it.'
'The second sight?' I said sceptically.
'I don't know about that,' said Druin. 'The Bra-
han Seer saw the future in his imagination, and so
do we all.' He chuckled. 'He was just better at it
than most.'
Druin stopped at a wee place called Dark, and,
leaving the truck parked off the road, led me up
through the pines on the left.
'No smoking,' he said quietly. 'And no talking ei-
ther. '
I nodded, concentrating on heaving myself and
the increasingly heavy rifle up the slope. The thick
234 KEN MACLEOD
needle-carpet made for slow, if silent, progress. I
had a bit of difficulty keeping up with Druin, and
decided then and there that smoking was indeed
unhealthy. At the same time, I was feeling a tension
that only a smoke could relieve. Something in
Drum's manner, and something about our location,
was bothering me, but I couldn't think what. We
climbed steadily, away from the road and up the hill.
Druin reached the top of the ridge ahead of me,
and there paused, hands on one knee, while I
caught up. He pointed down through a gap in the
trees to where the other side of the ridge sloped
back to the road. Looking down, I could see the
road, the railway line and a long, narrow loch.
Loch Luichart. I recognised the place with a sud-
den jolt at remembering that this was where — as
Jeanna had told me - Fergal worked and the tinkers
made their strange stone computers. The old power-
station, at which Druin was pointing, was a large,
dark, block-shaped building at the foot of the slope
below us.
'What's this about?' I asked Druin, as quietly as I
could.
He grinned at me and began walking slowly up
the ridge.
'Thought you might want to hunt more than
deer,' he said. You're after your man Fergal, and
your lassie Menial. Down there might not a bad
place to look.'
I gasped, and not with the exertion of keeping up
with him. 'We can't just march in there!'
'Why not?' he grunted. 'But anyway, we won't just
"march in".' He stopped, and took a few paces off
to the right, into a clump of bushes. 'Ah, here it is.'
He'd arrived at a cylindrical structure of weath-
ered, creeper-covered ceramic, about a metre high
THE SKY ROAD 235
and a metre across. As I approached he leapt up on
top of it and began scraping away the overgrowth
with the side of his boot. In a moment he'd exposed
a rusty hatch.
Not so rusty it didn't open, though. I looked in
and saw a series of rungs disappearing into the
blackness. Druin dropped a pebble in and cocked
his ear.
'It's only about twenty metres deep,' he told me.
'Good grief, man, you're not talking about going
down there, are you?'
'Aye, I am that,' he said. 'It's safe enough, so long
as you hang on/
'But do you know what's at the bottom?' I looked
at him suspiciously. 'And how do you know about
this, anyway?'
Druin sighed theatrically. 'What's at the bottom
is a tunnel - I don't know if it's part of the original
hydro-station or something that got added later.
This whole hill has been tunnelled and mined; it
was used as an underground base by the British
army, and by the Republicans during the civil war
before the First World Revolution - changed hands
a few times, I think. As to how I know about it—'
He laughed. 'There's a map and a diagram of it all
in the museum at Jean town! Mind you, I guess the
tinkers will have made yon diagram out of date, one
way or the other.'
'Looks pretty dark,' I said.
'Ach, there'll be some kind of lighting down
there. And I've got a torch.'
'Was this on your mind all along?'
'Aye,' he admitted. 'But I didn't want to tell you
beforehand, in case you got cold feet from worrying
about it before we even got here. As it is, I'm just
beginning to wonder if I was right in thinking you
236 KEN MACLEOD
had a spirit of adventure. You've done nothing but
raise objections this past five minutes. Do you want
to go after this woman, or no?'
'Of course I do,' I said, stung into action - as he
no doubt intended - by his hint at cowardice. I
slung the rifle across my back and scrambled up and
set my feet on the rungs as I lowered myself in.
'You'll be coming too, will you?'
Til be right above you,' Druin said.
For the next couple of minutes I concentrated
entirely on descending the laddered steps. The
rungs looked rust-free, as did their bolts - in fact,
the metal and the ceramic of the shaft were both
unknown to me. But I could not be sure that every
rung had survived the centuries, so I tested each
one before putting my full weight on it. The slung
rifle made it even more awkward. One upward
glance confirmed that Druin was following. Above
him the hatch was visible as a small, bright hole.
After what seemed a long time my foot encoun-
tered empty air where a rung should have been. Af-
ter a moment of fright I lowered the foot further,
cautiously, and touched a floor. I grunted with relief
and stepped down and away from the ladder, still
taking care where I placed my feet. Druin com-
pleted his descent a moment later and we stood to-
gether in dark and silence.
On the descent my eyes had adapted to the di-
minishing light and even here, at the bottom of the
shaft, it was not entirely dark. I became aware, with-
out quite knowing why, that we were indeed in a
tunnel and that it sloped fairly sharply. Looking
around, I could see a brighter area lower down. I
peered at Druin and gestured in that direction. The
pale oval of his face made a bobbing motion which
THE SKY ROAD 237
I interpreted as a nod. Together we turned and
headed down the slope.
After a few steps I stubbed my toe on something
hard. 'Damn,' I muttered, pulling up short. Druin
bumped into my back and we both swayed danger-
ously.
Tuck this for a game of soldiers,' said Druin. He
undipped the torch from his belt and switched it
on. A powerful beam of white light illuminated the
tunnel in front of us. It revealed that the floor was
indeed littered with obstacles - oddly shaped seer-
stones of various sizes. It also revealed that the tun-
nel was full of people.
Druin yelped a curse and brought his rifle to bear
in a surprisingly smooth and swift movement. The
torch-beam wavered hardly at all. I was still stiff with
shock; the instant I recovered from it I looked over
my shoulder and saw more figures crowding behind
us, dim in the backwash of the torch's light. One
such figure was apparently in the act of reaching out
for me - I struck wildly at his arm, and almost fell
over because my fist passed right through it. Druin
whirled around at the same moment, and the torch-
beam cast my shadow grotesquely on the figures be-
fore me. They responded neither to the shadow nor
the light. Druin let out his breath in a gusty gasp,
then laughed.
'They're just hollows, man!'
'Ah.' I stood looking at them in amazement. 'Aye,
like the tinkers scare children with at fairs.'
'That's it. God, they had me scared enough.'
'No wonder Jeanna said the place was haunted.'
'She said that, did she now?' Druin pondered. 'I'll
have another chat with yon lassie sometime. Anyway.
Let's go on. Keep the voice down a bit though.'
Neither of us had spoken loudly at all, but the
238 KEN MACLEOD
slightest sound seemed magnified by the tunnel's
acoustics. We turned again and walked on, the pool
of light from Drum's torch enabling us to avoid the
stones on the floor, and almost to ignore the ap-
paritions they cast. Almost - for the still faces of the
men and women depicted in this intangible statuary
were caught in a moment of anguish and alarm,
which, as they repeatedly loomed out of the dark
and passed us - or passed through us - was enough
to inspire, in me at least, a creeping sensation of
disquiet. They looked uncannily like the lost souls,
the damned of the Christian and Mohammadan su-
perstitions, and it would have taken a stouter faith
in Reason than mine to have walked that dark path
unshaken. Irrational as it may be, I drew some com-
fort from the fact - known to any child old enough
not to be frightened by the 'ghost tent' at a fair -
that hollows have no existence outside the light, and
that, therefore, there was not an unseen crowd of
them in the darkness behind us.
Presently we passed beyond their eerie company,
and closer to the source of light at the end of the
tunnel (an expression whose full force I for the first
time appreciated). The air smelt damper, and at the
same time fresher. We had reached the foot of the
slope; the rocky floor of the tunnel here was flat.
Druin switched off his torch and we proceeded very
slowly and silently for the remaining few metres.
The reason for the light's vagueness turned out to
be a sharp bend in the tunnel; we crept around it,
keeping close to the outer side of the crook, rifles
gripped (though not, I recalled at that very mo-
ment, loaded).
I nudged Druin and, taking a shell from my
pocket, made to put it in the rifle. He shook his
head, firmly, and I desisted, reassuring myself with
THE SKY ROAD 239
the reflection that the pistols on our belts were
ready for immediate use. We rounded the bend and
found ourselves looking out at a brightly lit space of
great size - at least twenty metres across, I guessed,
and ten high. The lighting came from overhead pan-
els, and seemed like sunlight. The walls curved over
to the ceiling, all stone; a cavern then, and not a nat-
ural one. Its full length was not obvious from where
we stood, at one corner of it.
It contained row upon row of stone troughs, con-
nected with stepped open pipes through which riv-
ulets of water trickled; some arranged to feed the
troughs, others to carry away waste - or so I guessed,
from the fact that no channel that came out of a
trough went into another. I could make out half a
dozen people working there, moving from trough
to trough, making undetectable adjustments to the
flow or sifting some powdery material in. They
looked like hydroponic gardeners, and I thought at
first glance that they were following this familiar
trade, possibly for some recondite component of the
tinkers' food-supply. Then I noticed the contents of
the troughs farther to my right, and - as I quickly
realised - of more mature growth. They were grow-
ing seer-stones - I could distinctly see the larger
ones lined up, five to a trough.
1
'Well, well, said Druin, as though thinking, as I
was: so that's how it's done! He slung his rifle on his
shoulder, glanced at me and shrugged.
'No point in creeping about now,' he said.
With that he marched boldly out into the light.
10
FORGET BABYLON
T hey made their way back from the
ossuary, ducking under arches and through
hammered holes in the walls, into the church.
Beneath pocked, defaced Orthodox murals a
Turkish woman sold silver and jade and crochet.
They ignored her gestured pitch, stepped outside,
stalked past more stalls. Across the hollow from
the hilltop where the church stood, a hillside of
streets of empty, roofless stone houses fought the
slow green entropy of birch and bramble. The light
was blinding, the heat choking, the silence intense.
The cicadas broke it, the birds, the skitter of a
lizard.
Jason wandered around to the front of the
church, traced a date in coloured pebbles on the
paving.
4912,' he said. That's when they finished it. How
proud of it they must have been. Ten years later,
they left. Voluntary population exchange, hah.'
Myra squatted in the sunlight, swigged Evian,
sucked Marlboro. 'Worse things have happened
since.' The dry, ancient ribs and femurs in the os-
THE SKY ROAD 241
suary hadn't disturbed her as much as the fresh bod-
ies she'd seen the evening she arrived.
'No doubt.' Jason shrugged. 'But you know, this
place, it makes me feel like I'm a Greek, for the first
time in my life. Even a goddamn Christian.' He
glanced at the hawkers a few tens of metres away,
hunkered down beside her and spoke in a low, ear-
nest voice. 'As in, you know, Western. It's a different
culture. They don't like us.'
Myra stared at him, shocked. Karmilassos, or
Kaya, or Kayakoi, or whatever it was called (the
Turks shamelessly called it 'the Greek ghost village')
oppressed her too, but the CIA agent seemed to be
drawing entirely the wrong moral from it.
This is what nationalism does,' she said. 'And
what that kind of thinking does. No, thank you. I
don't buy it.'
Jason looked somewhat hurt. He tilted his hat
back and started skinning up a joint. His age - he
claimed, and she believed, though who could now
be sure? - was twenty-four. The last time she'd been
seriously hassled by the CIA had been just over sixty
years earlier. There was something awesome about
a man following up a file so much older than he
was.
(Last time: the man from the Agency had talked to
her over lattes in a Starbuck's off Harvard Square,
in July 1998 when she was touting for medical aid
to Kazakhstan's fall-out victims; the campaign's
poster child had a cleft palate. A surgeon she'd met
had set up the contact; someone who'd worked at
the consulate in Almaty, he'd said, but she wasn't
fooled. She brought a tape-recorder, discreet in the
pocket of her blouse. She expected someone who
looked like a Mormon, a Man In Black. He was
242 KEN MACLEOD
young, dark, bright; blueberry T-shirt, baggy camos.
Called himself Mike.
They chatted about Britain. Mike was interested
in Ulster. The Orangemen were marching at Drum-
cree. Myra told him nothing he didn't know; he
knew more about her than she did, casually name-
dropping demos she'd been on in the seventies as
he idly turned the foreign news pages of the Boston
Globe. They took their coffees outside, sat on a low
wall while Myra had a smoke.
Mike nodded at the clenched black fist of a faded
black power mural high on a wall on the other side
of the street, above the map shop on the corner. 'All
that's over,' he said. 'No more arguments about the
politics, Myra. All of the line-ups are new, now. We
aren't asking you to betray anyone, or anything. Just
share information. We have mutual interests. You're
going to a dangerous place, after all.' (Ah, there it
was, the threat.) 'You never know when the right con-
tacts might be crucial.'
'Indeed,' she said. She was staring abstractedly at
a teenage girl with pink hair, sure she'd seen her
before. She shook her head. 'I'll bear it in mind,'
she said. 'Here's my mobile number.'
Mike gave her his, and went away. That night
Myra phoned her tape of the whole conversation
through to the office of one of the local sections of
the FI, and to a reporter on Mother Jones. The jour-
nalist was dubious, the local cadres - after a quick,
panicky consultation - told her to play along.
Two weeks later she was in New York, and met
Mike again, leaning on the rail of the Staten Island
ferry. The last round trip of a day which had been
humid, and was now hazy. Commuters dozed on the
benches, tourists posed for pictures of themselves
with the Statue of Liberty or the towers of Manhat-
THE SKY ROAD 243
tan, the apparat of capital, looming in the back-
ground. She agreed to liaise with the consulate
when she got back; and in the years that followed,
she did, now and then, as she and Georgi clawed
their way up the structures of post-Soviet Kazakhs-
tan, through revolutions and counter-revolutions.
Mainly she reported on people who were as much
her enemies as they were the CIA's; smugglers of
drugs and people and arms, dealers in corruption
and mineral concessions and resource looting. She
told the FI about every such encounter, and nothing
came of it, and it all faded out. After the Fall Rev-
olution a lot of files were opened. Myra had idly run
searches on her own name and code-names in them,
and found that most of the individuals and compa-
nies she'd shopped to the CIA were working for the
CIA.
But they still had her down as an asset, the bas-
tards, after all those years and changes.
And the girl with pink hair had been on the
Staten Island ferry, too. She never did figure that
out, and in the end put it down to coincidence.)
Jason passed her the joint, and they smoked it to-
gether as they ambled down the steep, rocky path
through neglected olive-trees to the foot of the hill,
where they'd left their hired jeep. The dingy litde
settlement there had consisted of newly built con-
crete houses, and a few of the stolen stone houses
in the first street of the long-emptied Greek town.
All of them had been gutted years ago, the Turkish
families living there slaughtered by Greek partisans
in the last war. The blue-and-white ceramic eyes —
for good luck, against the evil eye - above the doors
were cracked, the timbers blackened. Myra ground
the roach into charcoal ashes that still lay inches
244 KEN MACLEOD
deep. She didn't feel high, just focused, her sight
enhanced as if by a VR overlay. She could see why
this land was worth fighting over.
Jason got into the driver's seat as Myra climbed
in the other side. He looked at her sympathetically,
as though half-sorry for having brought her here.
'Sometimes God is just,' he said.
'Yeah. In a very Old Testament way.'
Jason started up the engine and swung the jeep
around on to the narrow road to Hisaronu. The
road climbed, scraping trees, edging precipices.
Pine and rock and dry gullies - it was like a hot day
in Scodand. Myra remembered a day with David
Reid, by a river between Dunkeld and Blair Atholl,
that had felt just like this. He had talked about de-
population and forced migration in biblical terms
as well, she recalled.
'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,' she heard herself say.
'What?'
'That thing from the Bible. You know, about the
king of Babylon? "Thou art weighed in the balances,
and found wanting." '
'I'm aware of the source,'Jason said, keeping his
eyes on the road. 'It's the relevance that kind of
escapes me.'
'It's the way I feel,' Myra said. She stuck her hand
in the air above the windscreen, feeling the cool
rush between her fingers.
'That's how you feel about yourself? That's bad.'
'No,' she told him. 'About the fucking world.'
'That's worse.'
She laughed, her spirits lifting.
'Anyway,' Jason went on, 'it's just the rejuve talk-
ing. People get like that.'
'You would know, huh?'
'Not personally. With me, it's just stabilising,
THE SKY ROAD 245
right? With you -' he smirked sidelong at her ' - it's
got a lot of work to do.'
Thanks/
'It makes you feel strange. Euphoric and judge-
mental/
'Yeah, that's me all right!'
It was the fifth day since she'd swallowed the sur-
gery. The nanomachines had differentiated and
proliferated inside her, spreading out through her
circulation like an army of sappers, tearing down
and rebuilding. She felt their waste heat like a fever,
burning her up. Her moods swung from normal to
high, she didn't have depressions any more, it was
like a biological Keynesianism, except that in the
long run she was not going to be dead. She was not
immortal, not really - who could tell? The best guess
was centuries and in that time something else would
come along - but she felt immortal, she felt like
people did in their twenties before their cells started
running down and their neurons began to die, no
wonder she could remember the seventies so vividly,
no wonder she was getting so arrogant!
Sex with Jason had been a foregone conclusion,
from about the second she saw him. He was an im-
perialist agent, a strategic enemy even if a tactical
ally, and she didn't care, she wanted to seduce him
and subvert him herself, turn tricks learned in a life-
time that would curl his toes and grey his dark-
copper hair. If he had any inhibitions or revulsion
from her still-aged body they had been dissolved in
the first evening's first bottle of raki. She'd sucked
him rigid, fucked him raw, taught him much and
told him little.
The little she told him was about Georgi, and the
circumstances of Georgi's death. For reasons which
Jason didn't spell out, but which Myra suspected
246 KEN MACLEOD
had 'Agency asset - poss future use?' scribbled in
their margins, the CIA was conducting its own in-
vestigation into that death which had been so de-
niably convenient for somebody.
In the early hours of the mornings, when he
thought she was asleep, he would go out to her
room's tiny balcony and talk for a long time on the
phone. She pretended not to notice and didn't
object, instead using these times in murmured
pillow-talk on her own, using the eyeband to consult
Parvus and to listen to v-mail from her Sovnarkom
colleagues about the situation back home. It wasn't
good.
Denis Gubanov, in particular, was glum. His sum-
maries of popular attitudes - derived from agents'
reports and readers' letters to Kapitsa Pravda - in-
dicated what to Myra was a surprising groundswell
of opposition to the whole deal with Kazakhstan. All
unnoticed, a thick scrub of patriotism had grown up
over the years on her tiny republic's thin, infertile
soil. Its independence had come to matter to its
citizens, far more than it ever had to her. Each night
she looked at shots of the growing daily picket
outside the government building: red flags, yellow-
and-black trefoil flags, pictures of Trotsky. She'd
sigh, turn over and pretend to be asleep when Jason
came back.
At Hisaronu, a pleasant small town scattered across
a hilltop surrounded by higher, distant mountains,
they stopped at a pavement cafe on the main street.
They drank Amstel and ate Iskander kebabs, under
a striped plastic awning. When they were smoking,
and sipping muddy coffee, Myra leaned forward
across the table and clasped Jason's hand, letting
their fingers intertwine.
THE SKY ROAD 247
'What do you want from me?' she asked.
He clasped back.
'Apart from what I've got?'
'Yeah.'
He disentangled his fingers from hers and pulled
from his pocket and unfolded a Mercator projection
world-map, furred at the creases. He elbowed aside
his drink and a plastic ketchup bottle and spread
the map out on the metal table.
She pointed. 'We're here.' She dusted off her
hands and made as if to rise. 'Glad to be of help.'
'Sit,' he said, laughing. 'Look.'
She sat down again. 'Who else is looking? If
you're about to give me a briefing, wouldn't VR be
better?'
Jason waved his hands and looked around. Tour-
ists and soldiers and locals ambled along the noon-
day street. 'Nobody's looking.' He combed his
fingers through his hair. 'And you'll have noticed, I
don't have an eyeband.' He shrugged. 'All the net-
works are compromised anyway, have been for years.
That's why I listen to the radio, and read newspa-
pers, and write in a notebook, and carry paper
maps.'
'Fair enough,' said Myra, lightly, to hide her cold
shock at what he'd just said. Then she realised she
couldn't let it pass. 'What do you mean, "compro-
mised"?'
'Insecure, no matter what you do. Codes, hiding
the real message in the junk, whatever - there are
systems that'll crack every new variant as soon as you
set it up. Quantum computation killed cryptogra-
phy, and there are better methods than that now,
implemented on things nobody understands. They're
out there, Myra. I've seen them.'
248 KEN MACLEOD
She smiled sceptically. Things that man was not
meant to know?'
Jason nodded vigorously. Yes, that's it exactly!' he
said, as though he'd never heard the expression be-
fore. Perhaps he hadn't. The youth of today. He
looked down again at the map, dismissing the sub-
ject with a twirl of his hand. Myra let it drop too,
but she didn't dismiss it. She was pretty sure he was
mistaken, or lying, or had been lied to. And in
whose interest might it be for her to distrust her
'ware?
Hah.
Jason jabbed a forefinger on North America, ran
it around the Great Lakes and partway down the
Eastern seaboard. 'OK, here's my country, was
yours. The United States, as we still call ourselves.
Not exactly "sea to shining sea" any more. "From St
Lawrence to the Keys" never quite caught on, and
even that's hard to hold. I mean, we need Maine
between us and the Canadian hordes, but, shit.
We're holding down major insurgencies everywhere
between Baltimore and Jacksonville. And the only
reason we hang on to Florida is for Canaveral,
frankly, and the only reason they stay with us is
they're scared of El Barbudo.1 He glanced up under
his brows, cast her a wry smile. 'You should hear the
old boys at Langley kicking themselves about that
one. After the Pike Commission put a stop to the
exploding cigar capers they just thought fuck it, the
bastard's gotta die sometime. Not.'
He opened his fingers like dividers and straddled
the continent. 'West Coast. . .' He sighed. 'La-la
Land. They got a rival claim in to be the successor
state, so diplomatically we don't get on, but between
you and me and the gargon here —' he absently
waved his other hand, snapped fingers, pointed to
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their glasses ' - we're the best of friends.' He
brought the heel of his palm down on the middle
of America, masking off a large area between the
Appalachians and the Rockies. 'Compared with how
we get on with the rest. The Mormons, the militias,
the fundies, the White Right, the Indians - name it,
we lost to it.'
'Yeah, well,' Myra said. 'I had heard.'
'Lucky for us,' he went on, 'they're a bit down on
scientists. They got oil and minerals, all right, but
with Flood Geology they won't find much more of
it. This ain't rocket science. Speaking of which, we
and our La-la friends got all the aerospace and
comp sci and nuke tech experts. At least, we got the
ones who didn't die trying to convince some hick
inquisitor with a mains supply and a jump-lead that
they really, really didn't know where the alien bod-
ies were buried. Or where the crashed saucers were
stashed.'
'You're kidding.'
'I wish. Turned out more people believed in the
UFO cover-up than ever believed in the Jewish bank-
ers. When they got their hands on some of yer ac-
tual eevill guvmint scientists. . . you can imagine the
fun they had.' He had a thousand-yard stare, past
her, for a moment. 'Some of the scientists con-
fessed. In astonishing detail. Names, dates, places,
A-to-Z files.'
The kid serving tables put down another couple
of bottles. Myra smiled at him, shoved him a few
greasy gigalira notes, waved a cigarette at Jason.
'Any of it true?' She laughed uneasily. 'I've some-
times wondered, like about the diamond ships . . .'
Jason blinked, shook his head. 'Oh, no. Total cor-
roborative hallucination. Like alien abductions, or
witches' sabbats. They'd heard the stories too, see?
250 KEN MACLEOD
Hell, maybe some even believed it themselves, who's
to say. The diamond ships, nah, that was just black
tech from way back. Your basic Nazi flying saucer.
Neat idea in principle, but it never was practical un-
til the right materials came on-stream with the car-
bon assembler.'
Myra leaned back, refilling her glass, wishing she
could consult Parvus. 'You're telling me,' she said,
'that East America has border security problems
too? Well, let me put your mind at rest. We're not
about to embarrass you by asking for ground troops.
Or even teletroopers.'
'God, if it was that...' Jason had the long gaze
again. 'No, it's a bit more complicated. You're going
to Ankara next, right?'
'What?'
*You're going to ask the Turks for ground troops.'
'I don't know where you got that idea,' Myra said,
carefully not denying it. Ankara wasn't on her itin-
erary at all, but she was very curious to know why
Jason thought it was, and what bothered him about
it.
'Sources,' Jason said. 'Anyway, that's what I'm
here to tell you would be a very bad idea. If you
want to get any help from the US, that is.'
'Hmm,' said Myra. She glanced at a soldier trawl-
ing a souvenir rack a few metres away. 'I'm just look-
ing at a US-made GI uniform, US KevlarPlus body
armour, a US Robotics head-up with Raytheon AI,
a US Colt Carbine-14.. .'
*Yeah-yeah-yeah,' said Jason impatiently. 'Valued
customers. Old friends. Doesn't mean we'd be
happy to see their standard-issue US Army boots
tramping all over Central Asia.'
'Even to stamp on the Sheenisov?'
Jason leaned his elbows on the table, steepled his
THE SKY ROAD 251
hands in front of his face to mask his mouth, and
spoke quiedy.
'Look, Myra, these ain't communism's glory days.
I mean, in our glory days we'd have been pounding
them with B-52s round the clock, for all the good
that would have done. I understand your, ah, fra-
ternal allies have tried that in their own inimitable
way, with Antonovs. I've been authorised to let you
know - off the record, and deniably - that if you
come to New York or DC you'll be welcome, and
your requests will be listened to sympathetically.
But. Our threat assessment of the Sheenisov - where
the fuck did that name come from? - is pretty low-
key. If a motorised horde of Mongols in plastic yurts
want to plan their economy with steam-driven com-
puters, that's their problem, and if it turns out to
be popular in your country, that's yours.'
Myra stared at him, rocked back. 'Jeez. That's me
told.'
'Hey, nothing personal. It had to be me - or
someone like me - who told you this, because at the
level you're gonna be dealing with in NY or DC it'd
be . . . undiplomatic and impolitic to put it to you
so bluntly. I'm not saying you won't get anything.
You will, just - maybe not as much as you'd like.'
She narrowed her eyes, leaning forward again. He
looked so straightforward, so frank. He couldn't
know about the nuclear card up her sleeve.
'OK, OK,' she said, as though not too bothered,
which she wasn't. 'So, you're more worried about
the Turkish Federation expanding than you are
about the SSU?'
'You got it. And, well, there are bigger concerns
than that. The coup attempt has - let's say it hasn't
made things easier for us.'
'How?'
252 KEN MACLEOD
Jason compressed his lips. 'You'll find out,' he
said gloomily.
'All right,' said Myra. She swirled her beer, looked
in it, divined no clues. She looked up and smiled at
Jason. 'Nothing personal, point taken. So let's get
back to personal.'
Jason relaxed suddenly. *Yeah, OIL'
'And it's from the Gaelic, by the way.'
'What?'
'The name - Sheenisov. I think it was David Reid
who coined it'
'Well, whaddaya know.'
'What I want to know,' said Myra, draining her
glass and getting up, 'is what's this about them
having steam-driven computers?'
'Ah,' said Jason, as they returned to the jeep, 'I
can tell you all about that.'
'Should you be driving?'
'Ah, I guess not'Jason switched the jeep over to
autopilot, and as it took them back down the long
road to Olu Deniz he told her all about the Sheen-
isov's strange machines.
It was a strange machine that took her to America.
On her last morning she woke before Jason did,
lay for a while, then reached automatically for her
contacts. She was on the point of putting the dis-
posables in when she noticed that she could see
clearly, all around the room. A quick look out of
the window confirmed that she wasn't myopic any
more. She brought her hand within two inches of
her face, and it stayed in focus; she didn't have long
sight, either.
In the shower she looked down at her body, but
apart from seeing her toes clearly she couldn't see
any difference. Towelling her head afterwards, she
THE SKY ROAD 253
found a loose hair in her hand. She stared at it.
Jason, lookit that, lookit that!'
'Wha?' He sat up, looked at her, examined the
hair.
'It looks like . . . a hair/
'No, look at the end. No, the other end.'
'There's something to see?'
Was he awake? She shook his shoulder again.
'There's a quarter inch of blonde there! Not
grey!'
'Oh, Jesus. I'll take your word for it'
'Hah,' she said. 'Obviously the fix hasn't done
anything for your eyes. I'd have them checked, if I
were you.'
'They're good enough for the road, anyway.'
He helped her load her luggage on the jeep, dis-
appeared politely - probably for another surrepti-
tious phone-call - while she sweated through a final
check-up by Dr Masound, and was waiting at the
wheel of the jeep when she skipped out of the clinic
and hopped in beside him.
'All set?'
*Yup. All clear.'
'Welcome to eternity,' he said, gunning the en-
gine and slewing the jeep out of the driveway in a
spatter of gravel.
'Just don't send me there first!'
'Ah, I'll be fine,' Jason said, turning right on to
the road up into the hills, towards Fetiye. They
climbed and climbed, overtaking taxis and trucks
and dolmushes, being carefully polite to the troop-
carriers. The valley farms and roadside stalls were
almost all worked by astonishingly old people, who
looked as though they'd had the basic metabolic re-
juvenations but couldn't afford the cosmetic ones.
Instead of being small and stooped they were tall
254 KEN MACLEOD
and straight, but their faces were like Benin masks,
dark and corrugated, with bright eyes glittering out.
So, as Jason remarked, no change there.
They crested a rise and Myra could see again be-
fore and below them the impossibly blue, the
Windolene-dark sea. A mile or so offshore, visible
even from that distance, that height, was the ekran-
oplan. Smaller craft buzzed around its hundred-
metre length. Beyond them all the naval hovercraft
and hydrofoils busily patrolled; still further away,
across the strait towards Rhodes, Myra could make
out their equally assiduous counterparts, the patrol-
boats of the Greek Threat.
They followed the long swooping road down to
Fetiye, passing the Lycian tombs in the cliffs and
turning right before the mosque and down along
the edge of the bazaar to the harbour's long mole
and esplanade. They pulled up at the embarkation
point, beside a star-and-crescent flag and a glower-
ing statue of Kemal.
The engine spun to a halt. Jason looked across at
her.
'Well,' he said. 'Will I ever see you again?'
'If we're both going to live forever,' Myra said
wryly, 'probably yes.'
'I'll take that as a no.' Jason stuck out his hand.
'Still. It's been a good few days. Keep in touch. And
if the investigation turns up anything, VU be in
touch.'
She caught his hand, her newly sharpened sight
blurring suddenly. 'Oh, don't take it as a no!' she
said, dismayed at his casual acceptance of her casual
words as a permanent parting. This was like adoles-
cence all over again, this was more than lust, she
had a crush on him and she was saying the wrong
things. She startled him with a fierce embrace, her
THE SKY ROAD 255
lips wet on his, her eyelashes wet on his neck, and
all the while thinking this wasn't like her, this wasn't
right, she was supposed to be a diplomat and she
was falling for a fucking CIA agent who had been
sent to do a different kind of job on her; this was
Not The Done Thing, at all.
They pulled apart, holding each other's shoul-
ders, staring at each other, oblivious to the chatter-
ing crowd of small boys around the vehicle.
'Myra, you're amazing,'Jason said. Til never for-
get you, I'll keep in touch, I'll try to see you again,
but we both . . .'
Yeah,' Myra said. She made a long sniffly nasal
inhalation. 'We're both grown-up people, we have
jobs, we might not always be on the same side and
—' she giggled ' - "we only have fourteen hours to
save the Earth".'
'Or something. Yes.'
Jason disengaged, with a smile that to Myra still
looked like a regretful adieu. They remained awk-
wardly formal with each other as Jason dismissed the
boys' unwanted offers of porterage, helped her take
her luggage to the shutde boat, and shook hands as
she stood at the top of the ladder.
As the small boat chugged out across the harbour
to the larger craft, Myra watched Jason restart the
jeep, turn it around and drive it away, vanishing at
a turn off the boulevard.
She sighed and turned around to face the ekran-
oplan. The vast machine looked even more improb-
ably huge as it loomed closer: an aircraft the size of
a ship, with stubby wings. A ship that flew. It was on
the regular Istanbul to New York run, which stopped
off at Izmir and Fetiye before hitting its stride. The
boat steered its way through its competitors and
hove to under the shadow of the port wing, where
256 KEN MACLEOD
a set of steps extended down to a pontoon platform.
Officials officiously tagged the luggage for loading
into the cargo hold, and the passengers ascended
into the ship.
Myra made her way to the forward lounge, bought
a gin and tonic at the bar with her remaining hand-
fuls of Turkish gigalira notes, and took the urgent
multilingual advice to sit down before the ship took
off.
She'd never before travelled in one of these hy-
brid vehicles - a Kruschev-era Soviet invention, she
remembered with residual pride - and she was suit-
ably stunned by its speed and above all by the im-
pression of speed, as the great machine roared across
the Med at a mean height of ten metres and a top
speed of three hundred miles per hour. It left Fetiye
at noon, chased the day across the Atlantic, and ar-
rived in New York fourteen hours later at 6 P.M. local
time.
Myra spent most of those fourteen hours relaxing,
sleeping, sight-seeing and thinking about how to
save the Earth.
From the sea, Manhattan had a weird, unbalanced
look, the Two Mile Tower growing from the Lower
East Side throwing all the rest out of perspective.
South Street Seaport was still battle-damaged from
the coup, and smelt more than ever of fish. Myra
made her way along the duckboarded temporary
quay, indistinguishable in the stream of disembark-
ing passengers until she stepped into the waiting
embassy limo with its sun-and-eagle pennant and
welcoming chauffeur, who had the door slammed
before anyone could so much as gawk.
The long car nosed arrogantly into the traffic
flow. The driver, a stockily built Kazakh who looked
THE SKY ROAD 257
as though he moonlighted as a bodyguard, caught
her glance in the rear-view.
'The embassy, Citizen Davidova?'
Myra leaned back in the upholstery. Outside,
through the armoured one-way glass, she could see
people sitting around fires. 'No, the UN, thank you/
'Very well, Citizen.'
The car lurched as its front, then rear, suspension
coped with a shallow shell-crater. Or maybe a pot-
hole, NYC's municipal finance being what it was.
'But I'd appreciate it if you could track my lug-
gage from the ship to the embassy, thank you.'
'You're welcome.' He began talking rapidly in
Russian into a phone.
They pulled in at the UN building about ten
minutes later, the heavy gates of the compound roll-
ing back for them, closing quickly behind. Myra
checked her make-up in a hand mirror, stepped out
of the car and checked her jacket and skirt in the
bodywork sheen. Everything looked fine; in fact, she
felt rather over-dressed for the grotty old place. Pud-
dles on the plaza, repairs on the windows, rust on
the structural steel, and the Two Mile Tower over-
shadowing the glass-fronted obelisk. On a coppice
of flagpoles the two thousand, three hundred and
ninety-seven flags of the nations of the Earth and its
colonies flapped in the breeze like a flock of birds
preparing to migrate from some long winter to
come.
She took the driver's mobile number, and told
him he'd have at least a couple of hours before she
called him on it. He thanked her, grinned and
walked off briskly. Myra walked slowly past the old
late-Soviet sculpture - St George slaying the Dragon
of War, in ploughshared missile metal — careful in
her Prada heels, around the puddles and across the
258 KEN MACLEOD
crumbling tarmac, to the doorway. An expert system
recognised her; a guard saluted her.
In the foyer she stood lost for a moment until she
remembered that the whole place had been gutted
and refurbished, probably several times, since she'd
last been here. This time around, it had been done
out in the modish retro futurist style, rather like her
own office. The colour-theme was leaves, from
shades of green through brown to copper. Sooth-
ing, though the people in this calming environment
scurried about looking haggard. A huge UN flag,
blue ground with stylised globe and olive wreath,
hung above the reception desk. Myra registered a
momentary shock; it was like seeing a swastika.
Two men approached, their steps light on the
heavy carpet. She recognised them both: Mustafa
Khamadi, the Kazakhstan UN ambassador, short
and dark; and Ivan Ibrayev, the ISTWR's represen-
tative, tall and cropped-blond, some recessive Volga-
German gene manifesting in his bearing and
complexion.
Khamadi shook her hand, his smile showing the
gold Soviet teeth he'd kept through two rejuvena-
tions; Ibrayev bowed over her hand, almost kissing
it.
'Well hi, comrades,' Myra said, eager to break
with formality. 'Good to see you.'
'Well, likewise,' said Khamadi. 'Shall we go to my
office?'
Ivan Ibrayev shot her a look.
'Ah, thank you,' Myra said. 'But perhaps for, ah,
diplomatic reasons, Citizen Ibrayev's might be . . . ?'
'Very good,' said Khamadi.
As they waited for the lift his tongue flicked his
lips. 'Ah, Citizen Davidova—'
'Oh, Myra, please—'
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'Myra,' he went on in a rush, 'please accept my
belated condolences on your former husband's
death.'
Thank you,' she said.
'I only knew him slightly, of course, but he was
widely respected.'
'Indeed he was.'
The doors opened. The two men made way for
her as they all stepped in. The doors closed.
'I still think those spacist bastards killed him,'
Ibrayev said abruptly. He glared up at the minicam
in the corner. 'And I don't care who knows it!'
The whoosh and the rush, the slight increase,
then diminution of the g-force. Myra felt her knees
wobble as she stepped out of the lift into a long
corridor.
'Investigations are continuing.' She shrugged
stiffly. 'Personally, I don't think Reid had a hand in
it, that's all I can say.' She flashed a smile across at
Ivan, down at Mustafa. T knew the man . .. inti-
mately.'
Ivan's fair face flushed visibly. Mustafa displayed
a gold canine.
'It leads to complications, the long life,' he said.
'It makes us all close, in the end. What is the theory,
the six degrees of separation?' He laughed harshly.
'When I was very young, I shook hands with a
woman who had been one of Lenin's secretaries.
Think of that!'
Myra thought of that. 'Come to think of it,' she
chuckled darkly, 'so did I.'
But it still hit her, the pang like a blade in the
belly: all my ships are gone and all my men are dead.
No, no. Not yet. She still had ships, and she might
still have Jason.
Ivan Ibrayev's office was small. They sat with their
260 KEN MACLEOD
knees up against his desk. The trefoil flag hung on
one wall, rocketry ads on the others. The window
overlooked the East River. The door was open. A
flunkie appeared with coffee and cups, then van-
ished discreetly. Ivan closed the door and turned on
the audio countermeasures. Myra swallowed, trying
to make the strange pressure in her ear-drums go
away. It didn't.
She swallowed again, sipped her coffee. The two
men leaned forward, glanced at each other. Ibrayev
gestured to her to go ahead.
'OK/ she said. 'You know why I'm here, right?'
'To negotiate US military aid,' said Ibrayev.
'Yeah, well. East American, anyway.' They
laughed. 'I've already been given to understand that
not much will be forthcoming. What the person who
told me that didn't know, what you probably don't
know, is what we have to offer them.' She paused.
Their faces showed nothing. 'The ISTWR still has
some functioning nukes.'
'Nuclear weapons?' Khamadi asked. Ibrayev
smirked, as though he'd always suspected that the
little state he served still sheathed this hidden sting.
'Weapons,' Myra nodded. 'City busters, mostly,
but a reasonably comprehensive suite - all the way
down to battlefield tactical nukes, which -' she
shrugged '- aren't that hard to come by. But still.'
'We knew nothing of this,' said Khamadi. Ibrayev
nodded emphatic concurrence.
'Chingiz Suleimanyov didn't tell you?'
'Nyet.'
'Good,' Myra said briskly. 'Well, that's what I'm
here to tell you. Kazakhstan is now a de facto super-
power, for what that's worth.'
Ivan Ibrayev steepled his fingers. 'How do we use
them, that's the question. They're not much direct
THE SKY ROAD 261
use against the Sheenisov — no point in nuking
steppe, eh?'
Khamadi's eyes brightened, his mouth shaped a
shining snarl. 'We could point out that they need
not be aimed Eastward .. .'
'Huh!' Myra snorted. 'Citizens, comrades... / am
an American, and I can tell you one thing the Amer-
icans - East, West or Middle - won't stand for is
nuclear blackmail. This is a people whose nuclear
strategy involved megadeath write-offs on their side.
They may have come down in the world a bit, but
they're not too demoralised to take us out before
we know what hit us if we even try that. No. What
the President wants me to do is almost the opposite:
offer them - under our control of course, but a pub-
lic, unbreakable deal - to the US, or the UN, in
exchange for a military alliance that can stop the
Sheenisov in their tracks.'
The two men pondered this proposal with poker-
faced calm. Ivan opened a pack of Marlboros and
offered one to Myra. She lit up gratefully.
'It's worth trying,' said Khamadi. 'I must say, be-
tween ourselves, I think we may regret giving up the
new power which the nukes would place in our
hands.'
'It's not much of a power,' Myra said. 'In a sense
we are proposing to blackmail the Americans, not
with possible use against them but with possible use
against someone else without their permission.'
Khamadi refilled the cups, frowning. 'The UN still
has some nukes itself, as we've just seen. I suspect
their stock has been significantly depleted by their
use. So they might just be keen to replenish it.'
Ivan gestured at his wall posters. 'It has occurred
to me,' he said, 'that we could go all the way back
262 KEN MACLEOD
into the old business: selling deterrence to everyone
who wants it!'
Myra laughed. 'Deterrence against whom? The
UN? I don't see that working for long.'
Khamadi grimaced, as though the coffee were
more bitter than he'd expected. 'Yes, I take your
point. Perhaps it is for the best. So what can we do
to facilitate this?'
Myra drew hard on her cigarette. 'Apart from ver-
ifying my authority?' She smiled at them. 'You can
arrange - I hope - somebody to represent the other
side. I've given this a lot of thought on the way over,
and checked through the US personnel here, and I
have a suggestion for the right person to approach.'
'Sadie Rutelli,' Ibrayev said.
'That's it! How did you know?'
Ibrayev tapped his eyeband. 'Great expert systems
think alike.'
'Oh, well,' Myra said, feeling a bit deflated. 4I
guess she's the obvious choice. What are the
chances of meeting her?'
Ibrayev rolled his eyes and blinked a couple of
times. 'According to her public diary. . . pretty
good. She has a blank space between 10 P.M. and
midnight, which is when she intends to go home.
Would you like me to set up a paging program to
arrange a meeting?'
'I sure would,' Myra said.
'It's late,' Khamadi said. 'She'll be tired.'
'Make it the offer of a dinner date,' Myra sug-
gested. 'She can choose, I'll pay. Just the two of us -
I hope you don't mind, guys?'
The diplomats dismissed the very idea that they
might even have the slightest thought of such a
deeply unworthy emotion. Myra and Ivan matched
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fetches, and their electronic secretaries got busy try-
ing to reach Rutelli's.
'It may take some time to get through to her,' said
Ibrayev. 'She's busy.'
Myra stood up. 'Then I'll get a shower and some
sleep at the hotel. If somebody says they want me
urgently, call my fetch. If Rutelli comes through, call
me straight away, direct. Otherwise - call me in the
morning!'
'I hope you're not still enough of an ex-commie to
be embarrassed about all this,' said Sadie Rutelli.
She passed Myra a flute of chilled champagne from
the minibar of the limo that had picked her up at
the Waldorf.
'Indeed not.' Myra toasted her ironically. She was
leaning back in the leather seat and enjoying every
second of it. 'I know all about the expenses of rep-
resentation. It's all in Marx. We ex-commies are all
hardened cynics on these matters.'
'It's great to see you again, Myra. It's been a long
time.'
'Yeah, what? Thirty-four years. Jesus. And you look
like 2025 is when you were born.'
Sadie, sitting in the seat opposite, looked quite
stunning with her long black hair, sable bolero and
indigo evening-dress. Myra remembered her as
having been just as stunning in blue fatigues. She'd
been one of the UN Disarmament Commission
agents who'd stripped the ISTWR of its nukes after
the war. She had done it with tact and determina-
tion, and despite the strained circumstances, Myra
had warmed to her.
'Oh, you flatter me,' Sadie said. 'I must say you
look younger yourself than I remember.'
'Ah, I'm still working on that. Or the little ma-
264 KEN MACLEOD
chines are.' Myra stroked the backs of her hands,
relishing their now smoother and softer feel, the
kind of thing that cosmetic creams promised and
nanotech machines delivered.
She felt vigorous, as well - she wasn't experienc-
ing jet-lag (ekranoplan-lag.. . ) and her snatched
two hours' sleep had refreshed her more than
seemed proportionate.
'Still,' said Sadie, 4you can't beat back-ups, if you
really want to be sure of living . . . a long time.'
'Oh, really?' Myra tried not to scoff. 'You believe
that thing works?'
'To the extent that I've had a back-up taken, yes.'
'Has anyone ever come back from a back-up?'
Sadie frowned. 'Not as such, no. Nobody's ever
been cloned and had their backed-up memories im-
printed on the clone brain. Though there are ru-
mours, about some tests Reid's men did, way
back...'
'With apes. Yeah, I know about that. How do you
tell if a fucking chimp's personality has survived?'
Sadie smiled. 'Ah, Myra. You're still a goddamn
dialectical materialist. I was going to say, there have
been cases where people have got the backed-up
copy to run, in VR environments. It's expensive,
mind. Latest nanotech optical computers, those
things that look like crystal balls. Takes one hell of
a lot of processing-power, but there are some people
who can afford it: rock-stars, film-stars and such.'
'Don't they worry about the competition?'
'No, no!' Sadie stared at her. 'That's the point.
The copies do the performances — the originals just
retire!'
'Sounds like a raw deal,' Myra said. 'Imagine wak-
ing up and finding you're living in a silicon chip,
and you have to work for the benefit of your selfish
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original. Jesus. I'd go on strike.' She struck a guitar-
holding pose, sang nasally, 'Ain't gonna play Sim
City...'
Sadie laughed. 'Until your management reboots
you.'
Myra was laughing too, but it chilled her to think
of this new way for the rich to desert the Earth, not
to space but to cyberspace, with their bank accounts;
to live for ever on television, where their faces had
always been. And what a laugh it would be if, in their
silicon heaven, they were to meet the General...
Ah, shit. Back to business.
'Is this car secure to talk?' she asked, suddenly
sure that the restaurant wouldn't be.
Sadie waved a languid hand. 'Doesn't matter,' she
said. 'I know what you have to offer - the fact that
you asked to see me kinda gives it away, yeah?'
'Seeing you put it like that.. . but the devil's in
the details.'
'We don't need to worry about the details,' Sadie
said. 'Not tonight. Just a little discretion and circum-
locution, and we'll be fine.'
Myra smiled thinly. Probably Sadie knew a lot of
the details. It was still her job to keep track of nu-
clear deployments. Her eyeband - Myra ^guessed the
fine sparkly band around Sadie's forehead was an
eyeband - would show her every suspected tac nuke
on Earth and off it. And she'd have a shrewd idea
where Myra's strategic nukes were, too.
Myra glanced out of the window. The car was
making reasonable speed up. . . Amsterdam Ave-
nue, getting to the high numbers. The old buildings
were blistered, the pavements cluttered with nano-
built squatter shacks like spider bubbles, linked by
webbed stairways and ladders and swing-ropes.
Their dwellers, and the people on the street, were
266 KEN MACLEOD
in this part mostly white. Office-workers, mostly
Black and Hispanic, threaded their way among the
crowds, ignoring their importunity.
'Middle-American refugees,' Sadie said. 'Okies.'
The restaurant, when they reached it a few
minutes later, was well into the Harlem spillover.
Black flight had long since changed the character
of the area; Myra and Sadie stepped across the stall-
cluttered pavement under the incurious, inscrutable
stares of Peruvians and Chileans. It looked like an
America where the Indians had won. In fact, these
Indians had lost everything they had to the Gonzal-
istas, a decade or two earlier. The Gonzalistas had
been defeated, but their intended victims had no
intention of leaving the US. Now the former refu-
gees' petty commerce filled the offices and shop-
fronts and spilled on to the pavements, just as their
huge families filled the old public-housing projects.
But still, Myra thought, getting away from the kill-
ing peaks at all was winning. The Gonzalistas had
been a nasty bunch, even for commies; the kind who
would dismiss Pol Pot as a revisionist.
The restaurant was called Los Malvinas. Inside it
was crowded, mainly with young old-money Latinos,
preppily dressed, snootily confident of their social
and racial superiority over the newer immigrants on
the streets but exploiting - in their fashion-
statements as in other ways - their cultural connec-
tion. The air smelt meaty and smoky, the walls had
huge posters of Peron, Eva, Che, Lady Thatcher and
Madonna. Sadie was welcomed by name by an at-
tentive head waiter who escorted them to a table out
the back, in a small yard enclosed by trees and
creeper-covered walls.
'Nice place,' Myra said. She looked down the
THE SKY ROAD 267
menu. 'Doesn't look like it'll take a big chunk out
of the company card, either.'
'Knew you'd like it,' Sadie said. She shrugged her
bolero on to the chairback, revealing her bare
shoulders. 'Jug of sangria?'
'Good idea.' Myra tapped the menu. 'You'll have
to advise me on this. Just as well I'm not a vegetar-
ian.'
They put together an order which Sadie assured
her would be both good and huge, and sipped san-
gria and smoked a joint and gnawed garlic-oil-
dipped bread while waiting for it.
'OK,' said Myra. She glanced around, reflexively.
Half a dozen Venezuelan oil engineers, in shirts and
shorts, were talking loudly around the only other
occupied table; she shrugged and shook her head.
'OK. Let's talk. Hope you don't mind me saying,
but, hell. You got authority to negotiate at the level
we're talking about?'
'Sure,' Sadie told her. 'Don't worry about that.
Straight line to the top. Not that this is one of the
Boss's top priorities, mind you.'
'How about on the UN side?'
Sadie waved a chunk of bread dismissively. 'That's
all squared.'
'No change there then, huh?'
'Changes, yeah, but we've rolled to the top again.
For what it's worth.'
'Right, I know what you mean. "For what it's
worth" seems to come up in conversation a lot these
days. Anyway. Here's the deal. We sell you exclusive
rights to the package, you back us up against the
commie hordes. Shopping-list to follow, but like you
say, later for details.'
The waiter arrived with a hot platter and a couple
of dishes; a girl followed with bowls of salad and
268 KEN MACLEOD
rice. The main dish was like a salad of meat, in
which most possible cuts from a cow were repre-
sented, along with the tastier internals and a few of
the less tasty.
'Enjoy your meal, ladies.'
Thank you,' said Sadie. She stubbed out the
roach. 'Oh, and another sangria, please.'
Myra was ravenous, her appetite honed even
keener by the joint, and spent about twenty minutes
in atavistic carnivorous ecstasy and exclamation be-
fore slacking off enough to take up the conversation
properly again.
'So, Sadie.' She put down a rib, wiped her fingers
and chin. 'What do you say?'
Sadie took a long swig of sangria, the ice chinking
slushily.
*You know, that guy we sent to speak to you? From
the Company?'
'Bit hard to forget him.'
'Uh-huh.' Sadie sighed. 'Well, Myra, sorry about
this, but' She scratched her ear. 'It's still the deal,
basically. We can give you some kit, sure, but noth-
ing like what you're asking. Definitely no alliance.'
Myra rocked back. She heard the feet of her metal
chair scrape the flagstones.
'That's even with what we're offering?'
'Even with.' Sadie picked up something intestinal-
looking, dragged it through her teeth. 'Because we
can't take it. It's no use to us anyway, frankly.'
'Oh my God. Oh, shit' Myra reached for her cig-
arettes. 'Mind if—'
'Go ahead. Yes please.'
'What's the problem with our package?'
'Skill sets and legacy systems, basically.' Sadie
looked at the tip of her cigarette, wrinkled her nose
THE SKY ROAD 269
and sucked grease from her lips. 'Look above my
head. Up. What do you see?'
Myra gazed southward and upward.
'Top of the Two Mile Tower?'
'Right. Know what's in it? Squatters, mostly. Damn
thing damn near built itself, like a stone tree. But
the builders couldn't find enough businesses to rent
work-space in it.'
'That sort of thing's common enough,' Myra said.
'Speculative spectacular buildings are usually fin-
ished just before the recession hits, and stay empty
until the next boom.'
'If there is another boom . . .' Sadie said gloomily.
Myra remembered Shin Se-Ha's version of the
Otoh equations. 'There will be,' she said. One more,
anyway, she didn't say. 'What's your point?'
'We're losing people,' Sadie said. 'It's no secret.
The coup has succeeded in more ways than it's
failed. A hell of a lot of our best scientists and en-
gineers have migrated to the orbital colonies, and
they support the faction that Mutual Protection
have been running supplies for.'
'The Outwarders.'
'Yeah. Think civilisation on Earth is doomed, and
they're getting out. And, more to the point, so is a
lot of the big money. Most of the corporations have
been headquartered in orbital tax-havens since at
least the Fall Revolution. Now they've got the mus-
cle - technical, military - to back that up. And the
on-site personnel. They'll finance us, all right, but
strictly as user fees, like hiring a defence agency,
and only as long as we don't step out of line. You
may think of the US as the old imperialist oppressor,
but these days we're just another banana republic.
The whole Earth is one Third World. Big money
and skilled labour are in space, and what's left down
270 KEN MACLEOD
below is mostly surplus population.' Sadie smiled
wryly. 'And bureaucrats, like you and me.'
'So you're saying the US empire still exists,' Myra
said. 'But its capital - in both senses - is now in
orbit'
Teah, exactly!'
'Fair enough,' said Myra, 'but how does that affect
our offer?'
'Well.' Sadie leaned back, took a short draw, like
a sip, on her cigarette. 'Let me draw you an analogy.
Suppose, just hypothetically, for the sake of argu-
ment, that the US wanted to go back to a strategic
nuclear posture. Leave aside the fact that the Third
World War did for nukes what the First did for gas.
At least in terms of using them on Earth - the UN
got away with the Heaviside Layer blasts, but that
was a bit of a fluke. Leave aside the fact that the big
money in orbit is becoming virtually Green with par-
anoia about nukes in space, too.'
Aha, Myra thought. She would not leave that
aside, at all. This was the crux, however valid the
rest of Sadie's points were.
'Leave aside the fact that there simply aren't that
many big nukes left around. Suppose somebody
came to us with, I dunno, a stash of old post-Soviet
city-busters: laser-fusion jobs, long shelf-life, low
maintenance. They still wouldn't be any use to us,
because our whole military doctrine has shifted away
from reliance on nukes. There's a lot more to main-
taining a credible strategic nuclear deterrent than
maintaining the actual weapons. You need missile
and bomber crews, tactical boys, analysts, constant
practice. Hell, I should know, I worked hard enough
at dispersing the teams and scrubbing the records,
back in my disarmament days. We don't have people
with the relevant skills any more, and we don't have
THE SKY ROAD 271
the people to train new ones. We need all our avail-
able skill pool to keep our stealth fighters flying,
and our teletroopers, smart-battle tactics and tech-
niques up to scratch.'
'1 think I see your point,' Myra said dryly. 'So, by
the same kind of reasoning, our offer of, uh, mining
rights in Kazakhstan isn't really of interest.'
'You could say that. That is the analogy, yes.'
Myra doubted that their reversal of analogy and
actuality would have fooled any snoop for a second,
but there was a protocol to be followed on these
things. It was, she recalled, illegal for public officials
under UN jurisdiction - after the Fall Revolution as
much as before - to even discuss nuclear deterrence
as a serious policy option.
And of course they hadn't. Not in a way that
would stand up in court, which was all that mat-
tered.
'There is of course one advanced country that
isn't a banana republic just yet. . .' Myra said.
'Never even rejoined the UN, come to that.'
Sadie shrugged. 'Go to the Brits if you like,' she
said; lighdy, but she acknowledged the implied
threat. 'Not my problem. But it will be somebody
else's.'
'Just so long as we know where we stand,' Myra
said, likewise taking the hint. 'OK Forget about the
package deal. What about ground troops and air
support?'
'The latter, maybe. At a pinch. And hardware.
Hardware, we got. Troops, no.'
'Oh, come on. Even mercenaries. We can pay
good rates.'
'Mercenaries?' Sadie laughed. 'Mercenaries are
the best we have. We use them to put some back-
bone into our crack regiments. And the crack troops
272 KEN MACLEOD
are about all that's left. It's become just about im-
possible to raise ordinary grunts. Conscription?
Don't even think about it.'
Myra still looked sceptical. 'I'll show you,' Sadie
told her.
They chatted amiably for a while longer, agreeing
to dump on Khamadi and Ibrayev the detailed work
of negotiating what little aid the US had to give; but
basically, the discussion was over. Myra settled the
bill, left a generous tip and followed Sadie out. As
they recrossed the crowded pavement to the limo,
Sadie startled Myra by walking boldly up to a bunch
of Andean lads hanging around a headware stall.
The boys looked her up and down, lazily curious.
'Hi, guys,' she said. 'How're you doin'?'
'Fine, lady, fine.'
'How 'bout work?'
'This our work.' They grinned at the stall's owner,
who smiled resignedly back.
'Ever thought of joining the Army? Good pay,
great conditions. Tough guys like you could make a
good go of it'
They had to hold each other up, they were laugh-
ing so hard.
'Not gone get killed fighting hicks and geeks,'
one of them said. The sweep of his arm took in
everything from the Two Mile Tower to the stall's
bristling headware whiskers. He spat away, on to the
pavement.
'You preferred tech to men,' he said. 'Let tech
defend you.'
11
THE ROCK COVENANT
I followed Druin out of the tunnel and into
the gallery of the seerstone growers without any idea
of what he intended to do. Like him, I had my rifle
slung and my hands empty. He strolled across the
floor to a central aisle between the ranks of stone
troughs and turned down it, walking in the same
overall direction as we had been following in the
tunnel - downwards, towards the old power-station.
'Hey!'
One of the growers came hurrying up. He was a
stocky, dark man with sharp, darting eyes. His over-
alls were blue, dusted with white powder that caught
the light like ground glass. He stopped a couple of
metres in front of us and glared.
'What are you doing here?' he demanded. 'How
did you get in?'
'We're—'
Druin motioned to me to be quiet.
'We're just passing through,' he said. He gazed
around the chamber with an expression of slack-
jawed wonder. The other tinkers had stopped work
274 KEN MACLEOD
and stood about watchfully. 'It's a fascinating place
you've got here, I must say.'
'How did you get in here?' the tinker repeated,
taking a step closer.
Druin jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'Oh,
we were out chasing the deer,' he explained casu-
ally. 'We came across a kind of -' he looked at me,
as if searching for a word '- a manhole, would you
call it? In the woods up there. We went down it for
a bit of a lark, like, and made our way down through
yon tunnel.'
Druin hitched his thumb under the rifle's strap
and added, 'So if you don't mind, we'll just be on
our way.'
The tinker showed more real amazement than
Druin had feigned.
'You came through the tunnel?'
'Aye,' said Druin. 'It's got some real eerie hollows
in it,' he added, with an appreciative wink. He be-
gan to walk forward, and I beside him. To my sur-
prise the tinker stepped aside, with a glance and a
small shake of the head to his colleagues. I sus-
pected that no outsider had made it past the cav-
ern's spectral guardians for a long time, and that
the tinkers here just didn't know what to make of
us.
On either hand of us were the stone troughs; the
ones we passed first each contained a layer of tiny
stones, gravel almost; subsequent ranks had larger
and fewer stones, until we reached the very end,
where a trough - or rather, by this point, a large
circular tub - might contain a single boulder. On
the floor below the troughs were oddly shaped
stones, apparently discarded; some of these casual-
ties of quality-control had evidently ended up in the
tunnel. However, we saw no hollows in that cham-
THE SKY ROAD 275
ber, and I wondered if I'd misunderstood the im-
plied sequence of events, or if the light in there was
too bright for such displays.
Within the stones themselves, queerly distorted by
the rippling water, strange fleeting scenes played
themselves out with a coherence that increased with
the size of the stones. I had no leisure to inspect
them, but several times I felt that the faces flickering
across these smooth surfaces were faces I had seen
in the tunnel.
The walls and ceiling of the unnatural cave con-
verged to an entranceway to another passage, about
two and a half metres high and two wide. It contin-
ued for about thirty metres ahead of us, beyond
which a darker doorway loomed. This corridor was
unmistakably artificial, its squared walls and ceiling
being made of the same glazed substance as the
shaft. Its lighting, too, was subdy different from that
of the growing-gallery - though it came from similar
glass panels, it had that overtone of yellow which
marked it as ordinary electric lighting, if more pow-
erful than usually encountered. Our footsteps rang
on the ceramic floor, echoing sharply.
4
You carried yourself cool in there,' I said to
Druin.
'Ah, it's all bluff,' he said. 'They've got used to
folks being scared by their bluff. But I reckon we'll
soon meet some who're ready for us - our friends
back there will have signalled ahead.'
*You're not bothered?'
'Not a bit'
'I was, but I wasn't going to show it My heart was
hammering and my head was buzzing with bewil-
dered images, like the seer-stones themselves, and
my hand clutching the rifle's strap was slick with
sweat.
276 KEN MACLEOD
The response that Druin had expected - or, pos-
sibly, a stronger response - came when we were
about two-thirds of the way down the corridor. Fer-
gal and two other men appeared in the exit, barring
our way. They carried rifles of an unfamiliar design,
not aimed at us but ready for use. We walked for-
ward. He stepped out in front of the others and
raised a hand.
'Stop right there!' he ordered.
We stopped.
'What are you here for?' Fergal asked.
I decided it was about time I spoke up for myself.
Tm here to see you,' I said. 'And Menial.'
*You're seeing me,' Fergal said. He waved a dis-
missive hand. 'I'll talk to you later.' He stalked
closer, to a few metres away, and stared at Druin. 'I
know you,' he said venomously.
Druin shrugged. 'You'll have seen me around.'
Fergal's weapon was instantly aimed square at
Druin's gut. My companion made a twitch towards
his rifle strap, then raised both hands above his
head. The other two tinkers brought their rifles to
bear at the same moment.
'I know who you are,' Fergal said slowly, 'and what
you are. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't
kill you now.'
Druin took a deep breath. 'Och, man, if you have
to ask that there is no help for you,' he said in a
steady voice. I looked at him sideways, frozen except
for a severe shaking in my jaw and my knees. *You
see,' Druin went on conversationally, 'if you were to
kill me, now, my friend Clovis here would some time
soon have to kill you. He would kill you and cut your
head from your neck, and carry it to my widow and
my weans to prove that you were dead and the mat-
ter was at an end.'
THE SKY ROAD 277
He glanced at me. *You would, aye?'
'I would,' I swore. I had eaten under Druin's roof,
and could not well refuse the task, if required. The
thought of it made me feel sick, but it didn't shake
my resolve. I had no idea why Fergal might want to
kill Druin in the first place, and I didn't care. That
he was willing to contemplate murder told me all I
needed to know about him.
'Well, there you are,' said Druin. 'You could kill
Clovis too, I suppose, but that would just double
your problem.'
I did not find this last consideration quite as def-
inite and reassuring as Druin made it sound.
Fergal's glance flicked between the two of us, his
tongue unconsciously touching his lips. He backed
off a little.
'Put down your weapons,' he said, then added, as
we lowered our rifles, 'all of them.'
As I unbuckled my belt I looked at Druin. He
shook his head, almost imperceptibly. I placed my
knife and pistol and multi-tool beside the rifle.
'The sgean dhu as well.'
I felt naked when I stood up. Quick hands passed
over or patted my body.
'They're clean.'
Fergal picked up my gear, and one of the other
tinkers picked up Druin's. Fergal jerked his chin at
the exit and moved around behind us.
'This way.'
We walked forward to the end of the corridor.
Beyond it was the open interior space of the old
power-station; we descended a short flight of steps
to a concrete floor and were told to halt. Behind us
I could hear some low-voiced consultation. We
waited for its decision, hands on our heads, and I
looked about. The turbine, of course, was long since
278 KEN MACLEOD
gone, as were most of the original fittings; all that
remained was a haunting afterlife of odours, of
flaked paint and rusted metal and antique brick-
work. Above these whiffs rose the newer smells of
concrete and solder. The whole big cuboidal build-
ing, with its long windows, had been turned into a
complex factory full of workshops and walkways,
noisy and bright with the screech and sparks of
metalwork. From the number of people I glimpsed
at their benches or hurrying along, I guessed that
about a hundred tinkers were at work in the build-
ing.
Strangely I felt on safer ground here, amid those
scores of busy people, and hard by the road and rail
of civilisation. I knew this comfort was delusory, but
clung to it anyway. The thought of calling out for
help crossed my mind; then I reflected that Fergal
and his comrades would hardly be so bold if their
actions were unknown to the rest.
Suddenly the tinkers clattered down the steps be-
hind us and we were each roughly jostled away, in
opposite directions. I heard a door slam, from the
other side of the stair, just before I was pushed
through another.
The room into which I stumbled was a few metres
square, with an overhead light, a table and a couple
of chairs. Along its sides rough stacks of copper pip-
ing, coils of cable, sacks and so forth suggested that
the room was one that currendy didn't have a def-
inite use, and was used indifferently as a store, a
meeting-place and - now - an interrogation cell.
There was even, as somehow seemed inevitable, a
sink and an electric kettle and some grotty opened
bags of coffee, sugar and tea.
Fergal stepped past me, spun a chair into place
THE SKY ROAD 279
on the opposite side of the table and gestured to
the other.
'Have a seat.'
He put the weapons he'd taken off me on the
draining-board, keeping his own rifle trained on me
all the while. Then he sat down, not at the table but
tilting his chair against the far wall, and cradling the
black rifle with its odd, curving ammunition clip.
'OK, man,' he said. 'Looks like I underestimated
you, Clovis.' I let this flattery pass. He rocked the
chair forward again, gazing at me intently. You've
got yourself into a bit of a mess,' he continued in a
confidential tone, 'and the others are pretty riled
with you, but I think I can square it with them. We
can sort this out.'
I said nothing.
'Do you know what Drain is?'
After waiting a moment for some response, he
went on, 'He's a management spy, that's what. He
works for the site security committee of the ISS at
Kishorn. He reports on union activists, among other
things.'
Fergal said this in such a tone of loathing that I
was surprised. The minor hassles between the un-
ions and the contractors and subcontractors seemed
to me hardly a matter for such moral outrage, let
alone death threats. I folded my arms and cocked
my head slightly to one side. Fergal leaned back
again.
'He pushed to have you sacked, you know,' he
said. 'That's why he was in the bar at The Carron-
ade.'
I admit I felt slightly shaken by this, because it was
entirely plausible and because it implied that some-
one in the bar had been watching us, but I still
made no reply.
280 KEN MACLEOD
'He has not come here, with you, to spy on us.
He's here to spy on you, to find out what your real
connections to us are.'
'If that's what he's doing, it sounds reasonable
enough to me,' I said, goaded at last. 'I'm sure none
of what you're doing is a threat to the project, any-
way. That's why I helped Menial in the first place.
So what's the problem with his being here?'
'Oh, it has nothing to do with that. Menial told
you the truth - we think there's a possible threat to
the ship, we're investigating it urgently and if we
find evidence for it we'll present the evidence to the
project's management. No. Druin - and whoever is
behind him - are looking for any stick to beat the
tinkers with. He's out to discredit us, and arouse
hostility to us.'
I shook my head. 'No - he's never shown any hos-
tility to the tinkers, as far as I know.'
'Naturally,' Fergal said derisively.
'Why should he or anyone want to do that, any-
way?'
'God, you are so fucking naive!' Fergal waved a
hand to indicate everything outside the room and
inside the building. 'We're a somewhat privileged
group, by virtue of our monopoly on skills which,
frankly, are not hard to learn. Why should you de-
pend on us to build and run your computers?' He
laughed. 'You've seen how we make them. It's an
ancient technology, called nanotech. We don't un-
derstand it, but we can apply it. A farmer could do
it, just as a farmer can grow crops without under-
standing how the molecular genetics and replication
work. A competent mechanic, with maybe a skilled
jeweller or watchmaker for the fiddly bits, could in-
corporate the seer-stones, as you call them, into ma-
chinery.'
THE SKY ROAD 281
'They'd have to know the white logic'
'That too is not hard to learn. So what's stopping
you?'
'Me?'
Tour peopled he said impatiently.
'Funnily enough,' I said, 'I asked Druin that very
question. He said it was - well, tradition, you would
call it. It works, it goes back to the Deliverance, no
point questioning it. That's what he said.'
'No doubt. And it wouldn't have been long before
he was complimenting you, saying he'd mulled it
over and he thought it was a good question.'
'Do you mind if I smoke?' I asked. I wanted to
give the impression of weakening; my craving made
it credible.
'Sure, go right ahead,' said Fergal.
I took the materials from my pocket and lit up.
'What I don't understand,' I said, 'is why you're
so bothered by his turning up here. You even threat-
ened to kill him. Maybe that was a bluff—'
'It wasn't!'
'But why? Even if he's as hostile as you say, he'll
have people searching for him if he doesn't return,
and it won't take anyone long to think of looking
here.'
Fergal flicked his fingers. 'We could make it look
like an accident that had nothing to do with us. It's
a dangerous sport, deer-hunting.'
'And I would go along with your story, or join him
at the bottom of a cliff?'
'Something like that.'
'What,' I asked, trying to keep my voice from be-
traying my rage and fear, 'is important enough to
justify doing something like that, now?'
'Ah.' Fergal frowned. 'He - and you - have ar-
rived at a very awkward moment. We've found some-
282 KEN MACLEOD
thing in the files that Menial retrieved - something
we've been missing for a very long time, and which
we only recently realised might be stored at the Uni-
versity, of all places. We—'
He paused. * Let's just say we'd lose a lot if anyone
started poking around now. There's obviously an in-
vestigation going on, and we really aren't in a po-
sition to resist any intrusion in force.' He dusted his
palms and stood up, laying the rifle carefully aside
across the sink, within his reach and out of mine.
'Which is where you come in, Clovis. Obviously we
don't want to kill Drain, or yourself.'
'If you can possibly avoid it.'
'Exactly!' he smiled, damning himself with his
grin. 'No need for any of that. You're an intelligent
bloke, Clovis, and you can help us. All you have to
do is persuade Drain that there's nothing here to
threaten the project, and that he should leave well
alone.'
'That shouldn't be hard,' I said. 'And Drain
shouldn't worry you. Even if he is what you say, he's
only doing his job. And speaking of jobs, I've just
lost mine and I want an explanation. As well as the
files you took, and a chance to speak to Menial.'
Fergal nanowed his eyes. 'Menial might not want
to speak to you.'
That's for her to say.'
'As for the files—'
He frowned, considering. I got the impression
that he was beginning to feel the files were turning
out to be more trouble than they were worth.
'Look,' I said, 'I understand why you feel they're
yours. But they're not mine to let you have, or yours
to take. The Deliverer left them to the University,
not to the Fourth International.'
Fergal jumped up as if he'd sat on a wasp.
THE SKY ROAD 283
4
Who told you about the Fourth International?'
I shrugged. Tm a historian,' I said. 'It's common
knowledge among scholars.'
This double lie deflated Fergal somewhat. He sat
back down and eyed me warily.
'So what do you know about it?'
'It's a communist secret society that goes back to
before the Deliverer's time.'
'Hmm,' he said. He rubbed an eyelid. 'That's
about right. Though "communist" doesn't really tell
you what it's all about, these days.' He laughed
harshly. 'God, I sometimes feel if we could get cap-
italism back—'
'The Possession?' I asked incredulously.
'Well, you would call it that. Let me tell you, it
would be better than this dark age you people have
got yourselves bogged down in.'
'This is a dark age?' I laughed in his face. 'We're
building a spaceship not fifty kilometres from here.'
'Oh, Christ.' Fergal knotted his fists. 'Aye, build-
ing it out of boiler plate. You build everything, up
to crude atomics and even fucking laser-fusion engines
with skills handed down from master to apprentice.
Compared to the ancients, you people are complete
barbarians. Compared to what you could be—'
He sighed and stood up, and began pacing the
room like a beast in a cage. 'You could have a world
where nobody has to do any work that isn't like play,
where almost any sickness or injury could be
mended, where nobody has to die, where we live
like gods and fill the skies with our children's chil-
dren. Instead we have this.' He smacked his palm
with his fist and looked around with an expression
of disgust.
'And who would do the work in this paradise?' I
asked, perhaps more offensively than I intended.
284 KEN MACLEOD
'Machines, of course. Every bit of work in the
world can be done by machines, linked up and co-
ordinated.'
'Oh, right,' I said, disappointed. 'The path of
power.'
'It doesn't have to be like that, next time—'
'Next time?'
Fergal leaned over the table on his fists, in a man-
ner simultaneously intimidating and confidential.
'That's what the International exists for: the next
time. The next chance humanity has to break out
of this prison. Our time will come, again. And next
time, we'll be ready.'
I shook my head. 'I don't understand.'
He looked at me with some regret, then straight-
ened up and moved back to his seat. 'It's no use
trying to explain it to you now,' he said. 'There's so
much you need to know to make sense of it, and
you have no way of getting—'
He was interrupted by a banging on the door.
'Who's there?' he shouted.
'It's me - Menial! Fergal, you've got to—'
'Wait there!'
His shouted command came too late. The door
burst open and Menial charged in. She rushed past
me and placed something on the table and then
snatched her hands back from it as though it were
a dish too hot to handle. It was a seer-stone appa-
ratus, and the stone in the middle of it was glowing
with colour and alive with movement, forming a tiny
scene under the domed surface, a bubble of life star-
ding in its virtual reality.
The scene was of a forest glade, in which a man
sat elf-like on a rock. He looked out at us, quite calm
and uncanny. He spoke, and his voice came from a
speaker in the side of the surrounding apparatus.
THE SKY ROAD 285
The volume was too low to make out what he was
saying - certainly not above Menial's shouting.
*You never told me there was a deil in it!'
Fergal had jumped up, and was staring down in-
tently at the stone. He raised a hand, without look-
ing up.
'Calm down, Menial,' he said mildly. 'This is no
deil. It's what you were looking for.'
'What in hell is that?' I asked. I too was on my
feet, peering entranced at the amazing, beautiful
thing.
'It's an artificial intelligence,' the tinker said, his
voice thrilled with awe. He stooped to the seer-stone
and placed his ear close to the speaker and listened.
Menial seemed to have noticed me just as I spoke.
'What are you doing here?' she asked. Her eyes
were reddened, her cheeks pale with fatigue. She
looked scared and puzzled.
'I came here for you,' I said. 'I hoped you might
want me to come back.'
'But I thought—'
Tou two, please leave now,' Fergal said. He didn't
even look up at us. He waved a hand absently to
one side. 'Take your weapons and tools, Clovis, take
this woman if you want and get the hell out of here
with your friend, the company spy.'
Menial turned and looked down at Fergal.
'You want me to go?' She sounded hurt, but hope-
ful as well.
Tes, yes,' Fergal said, impatiendy deigning to
spare her a glance. 'You've done your job, and very
well too. Your skills won't be needed in the . . . next
phase. Oh, and Clovis - take the bloody paper files
while you're at it. We won't be needing them any
more, either.'
286 KEN MACLEOD
Menial glowered at Fergal for a moment and
clutched my hand.
'Glovis, what's going on?'
'I think we'd better do as he says,' I said. I let go
of her hand and edged around the table, picking
up the rifle I'd carried and the gear from my belt.
I buckled them back on, shoved the sheathed dag-
ger back in my boot and took Menial's hand in my
left, keeping the rifle in my right. Together we
backed out of the room. Fergal didn't watch us go,
or even - as far as I could see - notice. He was
talking quietly to the sprite in the stone. I pushed
the door shut with my toe.
'Do you want to come with me?'
Menial blinked. 'Of course I do.'
I hugged her (rather awkwardly with the rifle in
one hand, but I wasn't letting go of it again) and
then said, 'We better get out before that bastard
changes his mind.'
'Or something worse happens. Yes, come on.'
The big work-shop space was still busy, with lights
coming on here and there as the evening shadows
lengthened - the time, I was startled to realise, was
only ten o'clock — and the ambient light reddened.
A few people on the overhead walkways glanced
down at us curiously, but that was all.
The room in which Druin was being held was only
a few quick strides away. I opened the door and
walked in, Menial close behind me. This room had
only a chair in the middle, with one very bright light
above it. Druin was sitting on that chair with a
bored, sullen and stubborn expression on his face,
while the two tinkers who'd accompanied Fergal
stood, one in front of him and one behind. Their
raised voices fell silent as we entered. Their rifles -
and Drum's - were propped against the back wall;
THE SKY ROAD 287
mine was pointing straight ahead. It still wasn't
loaded, but they weren't to know that.
Tergal says you're to let him go,' said Menial.
'What have they been doing to you?' I asked.
Druin stood up and stretched. 'Och, nothing to
speak of,' he said. 'They have merely been boring
me with an account of my sins. I have not yet found
it in my heart to confess.' He deftly retrieved his
weapons and kit. Til thank you to escort us out,
gentlemen.'
One of the tinkers found his voice. 'I want this
confirmed by Fergal.'
'You do that if you like,' Menial said. 'But I warn
you, he's not in a friendly mood.'
The tinker opened his mouth and closed it again.
He smiled at Menial in a surprisingly complicit way,
which made me suspect that he and Menial had
some shared experience of Fergal's moods. 'Oh,
well, it's your responsibility,' he said.
We stepped outside the room.
'Wait a minute,' said Menial.
She skipped away up a stair-ladder and ran along
a walkway, her feet setting the metal ringing. We
waited in uneasy silence until she returned, the two
file-folders hugged to her chest.
'That's us,' she said. 'All set.'
The two men walked ahead of us down a long
central passage through the machine shop to the
building's ancient green copper doors, then turned
sharply left and showed us out through a rather less
imposing wooden door.
'Goodbye,' said Druin balefully.
The tinkers ignored him.
'Are you leaving?' one of them asked Menial.
Tm going home,' she said. 'I hope I see you
again.'
288 KEN MACLEOD
* * *
Drain's truck was just over a kilometer away. We has-
tened along the quiet road, the late sun in our eyes.
Drain strode briskly in front. Menial's hand was
clasped in mine, fingers intertwined. None of us
said very much; we had too much to say all at once.
At last we reached the track. Drain stopped and
looked at the rifles.
'Och, I forgot, we have some deer to kill.'
He laughed at my face, and took the two rifles
and racked them again on the back of the track. We
went around to the cab and climbed in. Menial
shared the double passenger-seat with me; it was
comfortably crowded. For a minute we all slumped
gratefully. I passed Menial a cigarette and lit for
both of us. The Kyle train clattered past.
'You know,' Drain said reflectively, 'I've never be-
fore had a gun pointed at me, thank Providence. It
isn't an experience I'd want to repeat.'
'I don't think they'd really have killed either of
us,' I said. It was us who marched in with rifles,
after all.'
4
Aye,' said Drain indignantly, 'and I've carried a
rifle into The Carronade many's the time, and no-
body ever took it ill.'
'Different situation—'
Tergal could have killed you!' Menial inter-
rupted. 'If he was in the mood. It was only the pos-
sible consequences that stopped him. You did
something stupidly dangerous going there.'
'Well, we went there to get you, and to get yon
papers that Clovis makes such a fuss about,' Drain
grinned. 'And that's what we've come out with.'
'What a charming way to put it,' said Menial, un-
offended. I leaned past her and frowned at Drain.
'What about you? Fergal said you were working
THE SKY ROAD 289
for site security, spying on the unions and on the
tinkers. And that you argued for getting me sacked.
Is that true?'
'I don't spy on anyone,' Druin said. That's just
the tinkers' way of putting it, at least those three
who caught us. There'll be the deil to pay for that,
you know!'
'How?' Drum's non-denials hadn't passed me by,
but this was more urgent.
Druin turned the engine on and began to steer
the truck back on to the road west. Talse impris-
onment!' he said. 'And assault with a deadly
weapon, which is what threatening someone with a
gun is. You and me, Clovis, we could sue the bas-
tards.' He glanced across at me sharply. 'You haven't
any idea, by any chance, why they kept us in the first
place, and why they let us go when they did? I mean,
with me they just kept banging on about what a scab
I was. What did Fergal have to say to you? And, come
to think of it, what are you two up to anyway? I know
you're up to something, and that it concerns the
ship. Which means it concerns me.'
I slid my arm around Menial's shoulders. She
smiled at me, then gazed straight ahead.
'Tell him,' she said. 'Tell him it all.'
So I did, as we pulled out of Dark and drove into
the sunset.
'Aye, well,' said Druin, 'you've told me all you know,
Clovis.' He sipped his whisky and flicked at a midge.
'Quite a tale! But I haven't heard Menial's side, and
I reckon that's more than half the story.'
We were sitting around a roughly made, age-
smoothed table in the broad stone-flagged kitchen
of Druin's house, ourselves surrounded by the
shelves of crockery, the shining electric oven and a
290 KEN MACLEOD
sink with a dripping tap. Arrianne and the children
had long since gone to bed. The back door stood
open to the warm night, and the smells and sound
of the sea-loch. A saucer on the table was filling up
with our cigarette-butts. Beside it a bottle of whisky
and a pot of coffee were emptying fast.
Menial rubbed her eyebrows, ran her fingers
through the wide swathes of her hair and flicked
them back behind her shoulders. She had not ex-
panded on any of my account, beyond the occa-
sional corroborative comment or nod.
'Well, all right,' she said. 'From my side there's -
well, some of it I'd rather talk about with Clovis - it
really is personal, it really is no concern of yours,
Druin.'
Druin tilted his hand. 'OK. And the rest?'
'Ah, well, it goes back a wee bit, to when I started
worrying about. . . stories I'd heard about what hap-
pened at the Deliverance. Basically, it was that the
Deliverer, Myra Godwin herself, had set off some-
thing that physically destroyed the settlements and
satellites, and that in doing so she'd not only killed
God knows how many people, she'd created a bar-
rier to anything ever getting safely back into space
again. Every orbiting platform that was destroyed
would have been broken into fast-moving fragments
which in turn would destroy others, and so on until
there was nothing left but a belt of debris around
the Earth - and anything that goes up now would
just end up as more debris! Now, Fergal is a well-
respected tinker, apart from his being a . . . leading
member of the International.' She shot us a glance.
'Which is not as sinister as you think! But that's by
the way. Fergal's in charge of the tinkers who're
working on the project, though he doesn't work on
the site himself. So after getting nowhere with the
THE SKY ROAD 291
project management, I took it to him, and he said
we should try to investigate it for ourselves. It was
myself who suggested we could look for someone
who might have access to anything the Deliverer left
at Glasgow, and that, well, there were students work-
ing on the project for the summer who might...'
'So you came looking for me?'
'Aye,' she grinned. 'But I wasn't to know what I'd
find. Could have been somebody who was only in-
terested in scholarship, or who would not have gone
along with the idea. Anyway, I kept my ears open,
and it was not long before I heard about you.'
Drain laughed, as much at my embarrassment as
at her account.
'Clovis was not exactly quiet about his interests!
He's been bending our ears about the Deliverer and
history all the bloody summer. But back to your Fer-
gal. It sounds like he took your worries seriously.'
'Oh, sure,' Menial said. 'I got the impression that
quite a few tinkers have the same idea, and. . . at
least some people in the International had even
stronger reasons to think it'
Drain took a sudden wasteful gulp of his good
whisky.
'Why would the tinkers - or this International -
want to keep that a secret?'
Menial stared at him. 'Because the Deliverer's
reputation, and her last message to the world, is
what protects the tinkers! If the ordinary folk, the
outsiders - no offence - got to think she was some
mass-murdering monster like Stalin, what would
they care about anything she said?'
Drain cupped his chin with his hand and re-
garded her quizzically.
'Is that what you think, or is that what Fergal told
you?'
292 KEN MACLEOD
'Both, but, well, yes. I see what you mean.'
'More than I can say,' I said.
Merrial turned to me. 'What he means is, it's
something I've accepted as long as I can remember
without thinking about it, but when you say it out
and think about it, it just doesn't seem very likely.'
'Exactly!' said Druin. 'It's true up to a point,
mind, but fundamentally it doesn't explain why the
tinkers and the rest of us rub along fairly well for
the most part. The story that they're the Deliverer's
children, as it's said, is just a symbol, a signpost or
landmark, like the statue itself. We don't get on with
the tinkers because we respect the Deliverer - we
respect the Deliverer and maintain her statues be-
cause we get along with the tinkers. And we do that
because we need the tinkers, and they need us.'
I looked at the man, astonished. In all my years
of study I had never read or heard a hint of anything
like that. I had certainly never had such a reflection
on my own. That something so self-evidently true -
once stated - yet so unobvious and against the grain
of what Gantry would have called 'vulgar cant'
should come from this metalworker and not from a
scholar was something of a shock to my estimation
of scholarship, not to mention of myself.
There was no way I could say all this without
sounding condescending, so I only said, 'Druin,
that's brilliant. Never thought of that.'
He gave me a thin-lipped, narrow-eyed smile, as
if he knew my unspoken thoughts. 'Aye,' he said,
'brilliant or no, I'm pretty sure the thought has oc-
curred to our man Fergal. So his secrecy has other
aims than that. If you, Clovis, were to publish your
great work on the Deliverer when you're an older
and wiser man, which proved beyond a shadow of a
doubt that she was the most wicked woman who ever
THE SKY ROAD 293
walked the Earth, do you think for a minute that
folk would start throwing stones at the tinkers?' He
laughed. 'No, they'd be throwing stones at you!'
'Where does that get us?' I asked, somewhat de-
fensively.
'It gets us to this,' Druin said slowly, tapping the
table with a blunt fingernail. 'Like I said, Fergal's
desire for secrecy in this matter is not for the reason
Menial and you thought. In fact, from the way you
say he behaved when Menial found the wee man in
the stone, I would say that finding yon thing, what-
ever it is, was his real aim all along. That was what
he sent you both to seek in Glaschu. Now that you've
found it for him, he doesn't give a damn about any
supposed space debris. And don't forget, Menial,
you raised the matter with the project and the only
reason you were slapped down hard is that of course
the designers have thought of that - whether the
Deliverer's doing or no, the stuff that was up in orbit
in the past must have gone somewhere! In the old
records, such as they are, you could see them like
moving stars with the naked eye - is that not so,
Clovis?'
I nodded.
'Well, they're no there the now, and our best tel-
escopes - which isn't saying much, I admit, com-
pared to the ones with which the ancients saw the
Universe born, but still - can't see a speck up there.
And there's no more shooting stars now than there
was in antiquity - we know that for sure, because
these records were on paper and were passed on.
So there's likely no cloud of debris around the
Earth, although if the Deliverer did as you said, I
guess there could be some heavy stuff up there in
the high orbits yet. But even that's unlikely. It's said
that in the troubled times the sky fell, and the best
294 KEN MACLEOD
scientists' guess is that that was our ancestors' way
of saying what they saw when the great space cities,
long deserted or filled with dead, were eventually
brought spinning down by the thin drag of the air
up yon and fell to Earth of their own accord.'
By this time I was beyond being surprised by
Druin; his words were just further nails in the coffin
of my conceit.
'Did you find anything in the computer files
about this?' I asked Menial.
She shook her head. 'No, there's nothing that
goes up to the date of the Deliverance itself. It was
when I was searching through them that I opened
the file that released what Fergal called the "artifi-
cial intelligence".' Her eyes widened at the memory.
'At first I thought it was just one of they faces that
appear in the stones.'
'What are those, by the way?' Druin asked.
Merrial waved her hand. 'We don't know. We've
found references to things called Help programs,
and that seems to be what they - are they're aye
spelling out "help", anyway! Just some old stuff that
got passed down, I think. But this thing wasn't one
of them at all. It looked straight at me, and spoke.'
'What did it say?'
" 'Hello",' she said, in an unnaturally deep voice.
We all laughed.
She gave an exaggerated shudder. 'My next
thought - when I'd got over the shock a - bit was
that it was a security demon, like the one you and
me ran across in Glasgow. But it wasn't that, either.
It wasn't warning me off - it was inviting me in.
That's when I ran with it to Fergal.'
'Who seems to have accepted its invitation,' I said.
'He lost interest in all else as soon as he saw it'
'Hmm,' said Druin. He stood up and stepped over
THE SKY ROAD 295
to the doorway, perhaps to get away from our
smoke. The sky, an hour after midnight, was still
light - or growing lighter again - behind him.
'Which rather suggests to me that that was his ob-
jective all along. As why shouldn't it be?' He turned
back to us, his eyes shining. 'Who wouldn't want to
talk to an artificial intelligence? The ancients had
them, and even the tinkers have lost them - am I
right, Menial?'
'Oh, sure,' she said. 'I've never seen or heard of
us having anything like that myself, and I... I think
I would have.'
Tou know,' Druin said, 'this is a relief, really. All
right, the two of you were used by Fergal, maybe put
through a bit of anguish and inconvenience, but no
great harm has come of it. And no, Clovis, I don't
count your little difficulties as great harm - you'll
have worse trouble than that before you're my age!'
'All right,' I said, holding back some irritation, *I
can see how it might not seem important to you.
But Fergal has got hold of this thing, and what's
worrying me is what he intends to do with it.'
'What he intends to do with it,' said Druin, 'de-
pends on what it is. Any ideas there, Menial?'
'No,' she said. 'It was in Myra Godwin's files, and
we know that some people had these things back
then - it could have been some kind of adviser or
counsellor. Maybe Fergal knows what it is, but I
don't.'
'I hate to think what Fergal might do with an ad-
viser that has access to knowledge from the past,' I
said. Druin shook his head.
'So what if Fergal has found a new toy, or a new
friend for all I know? It's none of our damn busi-
ness, and certainly none of mine - it has nothing to
do with the security of the ship, now has it?'
296 KEN MACLEOD
'You've got over your annoyance at being held
and disarmed pretty damn quick/ I said sourly.
'Ach!' Druin said. 'Hot words. Forget it. Who
would sue a tinker, anyway?'
At that Menial and I both had to laugh. The fu-
tility of 'taking a tinker to court' was proverbial.
'That doesn't solve the problem though,' Menial
said.
'What problem?'
'The problem isn't the thing itself. Fergal is the
problem.' She frowned, evidently troubled. 'He's no
exactly evil - his intentions are good, in a way, and
he can be a very. . . charming man in his way, on a
personal level; but he's very. . . single-minded, you
know? He has a tendency to focus on one thing at
a time, and to over-ride anything and everybody
else.'
Druin snorted. 'Hah! I don't know Fergal, but I
know the type. More by repute than experience,
thank Providence.' He chuckled. 'Mind you, if ever
I run across a manager like that, he tends to have a
short career thereafter. As a manager, anyway.' He
stomped over and sat down again. 'But still - that's
a problem for your lot, no for mine. I still say we'd
best let the matter drop. The project's getting awful
close to completion, we're actually ahead of sched-
ule, and there's big bonuses riding on getting the
platform out the yard before the end of August -
which could make the difference between getting it
out before the winter and having to wait till the
spring. That's no small thing, and trouble wi the
tinkers is the one thing that could blow it at this
stage.'
'What worries me about Fergal,' I said, 'is not so
much his personality as his beliefs. I know you're
not that kind of person, Menial, but communism is
THE SKY ROAD 297
notoriously susceptible to characters who are ...
who can twist it into a reason for doing what they'd
like to do anyway, which is living outside the cove-
nant.'
'What do you mean by "the covenant"?' asked
Druin.
'Och, what you said - when Fergal seemed to be
threatening to kill you. Blood for blood, death for
death - that's the covenant, the rock. Or what you said
about us and the tinkers, having to live together -
same thing, on the side of the living.'
Tergal sometimes says things like that,' Menial
interjected hastily. That so-and-so ought to be shot,
or whatever. He doesn't mean it, it's just hot words,
as Druin put it'
Druin made a conciliatory gesture. 'What you're
both saying may well be true enough,' he said
mildly. 'The covenant is strong in our days, for rea-
sons which - och, we all know the reasons! So a man
like Fergal can rant and rave, but he can't do much
harm. How many of the tinkers would you say follow
his ideas, as opposed to, say, respecting him as a
man and an engineer?'
'Not many,' said Menial cautiously.
Druin leaned back and took a sip of whisky, then
topped up our coffees.
'Well, there you are,' he said in a relaxed and
expansive tone. 'Like I said, no business of mine.'
He leaned forward, becoming more concentrated in
his expression, fixing us both with his gaze. 'As to
what my business is, Fergal and his two sidekicks
were right in one respect - I do have a place on the
site security committee. I'm no spy - I was put there
by the union, dammit! And I did push for having
your clearance revoked, Clovis. What else could I
do, with the information I had? But I can equally
298 KEN MACLEOD
well push to have it restored, and I will. You'll be
back at your job in a day or two, if you want it, what-
ever your University decides about you.'
That's -' I shook my head '- that's great, that's
what I want. Thanks.'
'But before you return you files to the University,
have another look through them, and try to see if
there is anything in them about what happened at
the Deliverance. Or anything about this artificial in-
telligence. Tell me what you find, even if it's noth-
ing, just to put my mind at rest. Put that couple of
days to good use, you and Menial.' He grinned slyly.
'I don't need to tell you to do the same with the
nights. Speaking of which, I'm off to my bed. And
meanwhile, not a word about all this. Keep the
peace with the tinkers, and we'll get this show on
the road.'
'The sky road,' I said, quoting Fergal.
'Aye. Everybody happy?'
We walked to Menial's house, and on the way we
talked.
'I thought,' she said, 'that you were too commit-
ted to your history, your research and your old pa-
pers, to be willing to stay with me. That was what I
was upset about, not your questions.'
'Ah,' I said. 'And I thought you were too com-
mitted to the secrets of your society to trust me.'
'Aach,' we both said at once.
I told her what Druin had said, about the tinkers'
methods of recruitment.
She laughed, clinging to my arm and swinging
away out on it, looking up at me and looking away,
giggling.
'It's true!' she said. 'It wasn't what I'd planned.'
'So you - '
THE SKY ROAD 299
Tell for you and hoped you'd join us, yes.'
'Ah-ha-ha! Become a tinker!'
'Well, why not?'
She swung around and caught me by both elbows
and looked me straight in the eyes.
'Why not?' she repeated.
I thought of what I'd seen and felt - and smelt -
in the library when I went there with Menial, and I
thought of what I'd seen in the old power-station.
This was history, this was the real thing, not dead
but living, a continuity with the past and an earnest
of the future, the sky road indeed. But who's to say
it was those considerations that weighed with me,
and not the sight of Menial under the stars, on her
way to a bed I could share for all the nights of my
life?
Not me, for sure.
'Why not,' I said. 'Yes.'
12
DARK ISLAND
C oming in from the West on the M8,
the taxi hired by the Kazakhstani consulate to take
Myra from Glasgow Airport was hit by small-arms
fire just as it came of! the flyover at Kinning Park.
Myra saw white starry marks pock the smoky ar-
moured glass, did-did-did, heard the wheels' whee of
acceleration; her hand went reflexively to the shoul-
der holster under her coat and got caught in the
strap of the seatbelt For a moment, as she looked
down at her recently, newly smooth and now sud-
denly white hand, she thought death had found her
at last - that she was going to die old and leave a
good-looking corpse.
Then they were out of it, smoothly away, swinging
around up and on to the Kingston Bridge over the
Clyde. Myra twisted about and looked back and to
the left, where the standard-practice burning-tyres
smokescreen rose somewhere among the office-
blocks and high-rises into the pale-blue late-May
morning sky. A helicopter roared low and fast above
the motorway, making the big car rock again, and
THE SKY ROAD 301
flew straight at one of the tall buildings. A diagonal
streak of punched square holes was abruptly
stitched across the reflective glass of the building's
face. The helicopter paused, hovering; the car
swooped from the brow of the bridge, and the scene
passed out of sight.
'Jesus,' she said, shaken. 'What was all that about?'
The speaker in the partition behind the driver's
seat came on.
'Greens,' the man said. 'They sometimes shoot at
traffic from the airport' She saw his reflected eyes
frown, his head shake. He wasn't wearing a peaked
cap. He was wearing a helmet. The car slowed as the
traffic thickened. 'Sorry about that'
'Can't be helped, I guess,' Myra said. 'But -' she
put on her best ignorant-American tone '-1 thought
you folks had that all under control. In the cities,
anyway.'
Not what she'd call a city - there were taller build-
ings in Kapitsa, for fuck's sake! Even with its hills
Glasgow looked flat. She could see the University's
bone-white tower above the stumpy office-blocks.
The place had changed considerably since the
1970s, but not as much as she'd expected, consid-
ering all it had been through: the 2015-2025 Re-
public, the Third World War and the Peace Process;
then the Restoration and the guerilla war against
the Hanoverian regime, and the Fall Revolution and
the New Republic, itself now in its fourteenth year
of (what it too, inevitably called) the struggle against
terrorism. The blue, white and green tricolour of
the United Republic and the saltire of the Scottish
State flew from all official or important buildings.
'No, I'm afraid it's not all under control at all,'
the driver was saying. 'They're right here in the
towns now, and there's bugger all we can do about
302 KEN MACLEOD
them. Apart fae bombing the suburbs, and it's no
that bad yet'
'Just bad enough to be strafing tower-blocks?'
4
Aye.'
Myra shivered and setded back in the seat. Her
not very productive mission to NYC had taken up
less time than originally scheduled, leaving her a
couple of days before her pencilled-in meeting with
someone from the United Republic's Foreign Of-
fice. She was beginning to wish that nostalgia — and
an itch to personally sort out the disposal of her
archive - hadn't made her decide to spend that Sat-
urday and Sunday in Glasgow.
The United Republic, though not her first choice
of possible allies, was still the next best thing to the
United States. It was politically opposed to the
Sheenisov advance, but hadn't done much to stop
it because it had a healthy distaste for entangle-
ments in the Former Union. On the other hand,
thanks to shared oil interests in the Sprady Islands
it was a strong military and trading partner of Viet-
nam, which was standing up pretty well against the
Khmer Vertes, which... after that it got compli-
cated, but Parvus had the story down to the details.
The upshot was that with an actual state on offer as
a stable ally, the UR might well be interested in a
deal, nukes or no nukes.
The taxi exited the motorway and took a few
sharp turns to arrive at the western end of St Vin-
cent Street, slowing down just across from the New
Britain Hotel, where she had a room booked.
'Bit ay a problem ...' said the driver.
A crowd of a couple of hundred was outside the
hotel, almost blocking the pavement, and spilling
over on to the street. It consisted of several small
and apparently contending demonstrations; three
THE SKY ROAD 303
separate loud-hailer harangues were going on from
perilous perches on railings and ledges of next-door
buildings; lines of Republican Guards segmented
the groups. The reverse sides of placards wagged
above bobbing heads.
'Ah, no problem,' Myra said. 'Just a lefty demo.'
Probably protesting the presence of a represen-
tative of some repressive regime, or possibly an un-
popular government minister staying at the New
Brit. As the big car described a neat and illegal U-
turn and glided to a halt a few yards from the left
flank of the demonstration, Myra idly wondered
what specimen of political celebrity or infamy she'd
be sharing residence with.
The driver stepped out - on the wrong side, as
she momentarily thought - went around the rear,
pinging the boot open on his way, and opened the
door for her. She gave him a good flash of her long
legs as she swung them out and emerged, in tall
boots, short skirt, sable hat and coat. The rejuve-
nation was definitely making her legs worth seeing
again; she'd have to rethink her wardrobe ...
The driver lifted her two big suitcases from the
boot; she waited for a moment as he clunked it
down and closed the nearside door, then she walked
towards the hotel entrance, looking curiously at the
demo as she hurried past it. There was about three
yards of clearance between the shopfronts and the
half-dozen or so Republican Guards deployed along
the pavement to demarcate the front line of the
demo. Behind the Guards the crowd was jumping
up and down and yelling and chanting.
She glanced up at a placard being waved above
her and saw at the centre of it a blurrily blown-up
newsfeed-clip picture of her own face. Suddenly the
304 KEN MACLEOD
contending chants became clear, like separate con-
versations at a party.
Victory to - the SSU!'
That one was in a battle of the soundwaves with,
'Sheenisov - hands off! Viva - Kazakhstan!'
Above them both, not chanted but being shouted
repeatedly through one of the loud-hailers, 'Sup-
port the political revolution in the ISTWRP
A competing loud-hailer was going on in a more
liberal, educated and educational tone about the
crimes of Myra Godwin's regime - she caught the
words 'nuclear mercenaries' and 'shameful exploi-
tation' in passing.
For a moment Myra stopped walking; she just
stood there, too shocked to move. Her gaze slid past
the reflecting shades of a Guard to make eye-contact
with a young girl in a tartan scarf. The girl's chant
stopped in mid-shout and Myra couldn't look away
from her disbelieving, open-mouthed face. Then
the girl reached over the Guard's shoulder and
pointed a shaking finger at Myra.
'That's herl' she squealed. 'She's here!'
Myra smiled at the girl and looked away and
walked steadily towards the steps up to the hotel
door, now only about ten yards away. The driver
puffed along behind her. The chants continued; it
seemed she was getting away with it.
And then a silence spread out, just a little slower
than sound, from the girl who had identified her.
The chants died down, the loud-hailer speeches
ceased. The crowd surged through the wide gaps
between the Guards, blocking the pavement. A
young man, not as tall as Myra but more heavily
built, stood in front of her, yelling incomprehensi-
bly in her face.
THE SKY ROAD 305
Her old understanding of the Glasgow accent re-
stored from memory.
* Ah despise you!' the man was shouting. *Yi usetae
call yirsel a Trotskyist an yir worse than the fuckin
Stalinists! Sellin nuclear threats and then sellin slave
labour! And noo yir fightin agin the Sheenisov!
They're the hope o the world and yir fightin them
for the fuckin Yanks! Ya fuckin sell-out, ya fuckin
capitalist hoorF
He leaned in her face ever more threateningly as
he spoke. His fists were balling, he was working him-
self up to take a swing at her. Three yards behind
his back somebody holding up a 'Defend the
ISTWR!' placard was pushing through the press of
bodies. Myra took one step back, bumping into one
of her suitcases - the driver was still holding it, still
behind her. Good.
She slipped her right hand inside her coat. The
yelling man's clamour, and forward momentum,
stopped. Another silence expanded around them.
Myra reached into a pocket above her thumping
heart and pulled out her Kazkhstani diplomatic
passport. She thumbed it open and held it high,
then waved it in front of the nearest Guard's nose.
4
Officer,' she said without turning around, 'please
escort my driver into the hotel.'
'Aw right, ma'am.'
'Thanks!'
The driver passed by on her left surrounded by
uniforms. Myra took advantage of the accompany-
ing flurry of distraction to dive behind the man
who'd yelled at her, and to push herself into the
small huddle of pro-ISTWR demonstrators. She
glanced quickly around five shocked but friendly
faces, noticing lapel badges with a flashed grin of
recognition and pride - the old hammer-and-sickle-
306 KEN MACLEOD
and-4, a solidarity-campaign button with the
ISTWR's signature radiation trefoil, sun-and-eagle
stickers . . .
'Comrades,' she said, 'let's go inside.'
The comrades clustered around her and together
they stepped back on the pavement. The angry man
was being restrained by some of his own comrades,
but still denouncing Myra at the top of his voice.
Myra's group marched up the steps and through the
hotel's big swing doors into the now crowded foyer.
White marble floor, black-painted ironwork, fluted
mahogany at the reception and stairwell, a lot of
flowers and stained glass. The militiamen and the
driver were standing off to one side, some hotel-
management chap was hurrying up with a politely
concerned look and a mobile phone, and - looking
back - she saw that everyone was inside and the
steps were clear and the door was being secured.
Jesus H. Christ,' she said. By now she was thor-
oughly ratded. She reached inside her coat again.
Everybody froze.
She stayed her hand, and looked around; smiled
grimly.
'Anybody else need a cigarette?'
The iron fire-escape door was spring-loaded and
would clang if she let it swing back, so she closed it
slowly, letting go of its edge at the last moment.
It clanged.
Myra looked up and down the fire-escape and
around the back yard of the hotel. Dripping pipes,
rattling ventilation ducts, soggy cartons, moss and
lichen and flagstones. She padded down the steps,
almost silent in her battered sneakers, old jeans,
sweater and padded jacket. At the bottom she
pushed her eyeband under the peak of the baseball
THE SKY ROAD 307
cap under which she'd piled her still-grey hair,
jammed her fists in the deep pockets, feeling the
reassurance of the passport and the gun, and
strolled across the yard, through another one-way
gate, along an alley to Pitt Street then down on to
Sauchiehall.
She caught her reflection in a shop-window, and
smirked at how like a student she looked. It wasn't
a perfect reflection, so it also made her look flatter-
ingly young - like she'd look in a month or two, she
hoped. And she already had the bearing, she could
see that as she glanced sideways at the reflection of
her walk, jaunty and confident. Her joints didn't
hurt and her heels didn't jar and she had so much
energy she felt like running, or skipping, or jump-
ing about just to burn some of it off. She couldn't
remember having felt this good when she really was
young.
And things were coming back, memories of an
earlier self, earlier personal tactics, like, before her
rejuve, if she'd got caught up in a situation like that
outside the hotel she'd have turned to the Guards
to protect her, as though by reflex, and no doubt
sparked a riot right there; not now, it had been a
lightning calculation that the demonstrators, how-
ever, hostile to each other or to the militia, would
not attack an innocent minion like the driver an
would not attack her while she was shielded by the
comrades. No violence in the workers' movement,
no enemies on the Left - it didn't work all the time,
but by and large the truce was honoured; mutual
assured deterrence, perhaps, but then, what wasn't?
Sauchiehall, Glasgow's main shopping street, had
been depedestranised since she'd last been here
and it thrummed with through traffic, electric
mostly but with a few coughing old internal-
308 KEN MACLEOD
combustion engines and speeding cyclists and, jeez,
yes, cantering horses among them. Myra raced the
red light at the end of the street, kept up her jog as
she crossed the pedestrian bridge over the howling
intersection above the M8 and up into Woodlands
Road. There she slowed and strolled again, relishing
the old patch, the familiar territory, the nostalgia
pricking her eyes. (God, she'd flyposted that very
pillar of that overpass for a Critique seminar in
1976!)
But the area was posh now, full of Sikh men in
suits - bankers and lawyers and doctors - and
women in saris accompanied by kids and often as
not a Scottish nanny; pavements over-parked with
expensive, heavy Malaysian cars. Not like old times,
not at all, except for the occasional curry aroma and
the feel of the wind and the look of the scudding
clouds above.
Talking to the comrades in the New Brit, that had
been like old times. It had been like fucking time
travel, and far more like homecoming than any en-
counter she'd had in New York. After she'd thanked
the militia officers, flatly refused to press assault
charges, and insisted on giving a huge tip to the
driver, she'd retired to the hotel's cafe for a coffee
and a smoke with the five young people who'd es-
corted her in: Davy and Alison and Mike and Sandra
and Rashid, all proud members of the Glasgow
branch of the Workers' Power Party, an organiza-
tion much fallen-back from its high-water mark in
the 2020s under the old Republic but still struggling
along, still recruiting and still the British section of
the Fourth International.
And they really were young, not rejuvenated old
folks like her; she could hardly understand it, be-
cause she'd been thinking of the International, for
THE SKY ROAD 309
decades now, as a club of ageing veterans. But then
she thought of how the most formative and excit-
ing experience of their childhoods had been a rev-
olution - the British section of the Fall Revolution,
yes! - and how that might have given them an idea
of what the real (that is to say, ideal, never-actually-
existing) Revolution might be like.
They'd regarded her, of course, as an old com-
rade, a veteran revolutionary who'd actually made a
revolution, and actually ran a workers' state; but they'd
soon lost their reserve, perhaps unconsciously mis-
led (she fancied) by her increasingly believable ap-
parent youth; and told her in more detail than she
needed to know of the inevitable rancorous rivalries
that had pitted them against, and the rest of the
local Left for, her regime's liberal critics and/or Sino-
Soviet communist foes.
She was grateful for their support, of course, and
told them so; but she thought their ingrained ac-
ceptance of far-left factionalism was blinding them
to the depth of genuine hatred and moral outrage
she'd aroused, and indeed to its justification. There
had been nothing in the angry man's diatribe which
she hadn't at one time or another said to herself.
You fucking sell-out, you fucking capitalist whore. Yes,
comrade, you have a point there. There may be
something in what you say.
At the same time she found that the comrades
were over-solucitious, certain that she'd be in dan-
ger if she wandered around on her own in Glasgow.
They urged her to contact the consulate, and to
travel officially. Myra had demurred, pointing out
that that was exactly what had got her into this trou-
ble in the first place. She hadn't told them what she
did intend to do, however - somebody must have
leaked the news of her unheralded and early arrival,
310 KEN MACLEOD
and she had no reason to suppose it might not be
one of them.
She passed the old church, St Jude's, which still
looked much too grand, too catholic for the tiny de-
nomination it served, and opposite it the Halt Bar
where she'd drunk with David Reid and with Jon
Wilde, separately and together, during and after the
brief, intense affairs that had nudged all their lives
on to their particular paths.
And thus, the lives and deaths of countless others.
Jon had virtually started the space movement, and
founded Space Merchants. Reid had built up Mu-
tual Protection, and Myra the ISTWR. All from small
beginnings, inconsequential at the time, all eventu-
ally affecting history on a scale usually attributed to
Great Men.
Perhaps if they had not, there would have been
some other Corsican .. . but no. Chaos reigned,
here as elsewhere.
At the green bridge over the Kelvin she paused,
gazing down at the brown spate and white swirl.
How trivial were the causes of the courses of any
particle, any bubble on that flow. No, it was wilder
than that, because the water was at least confined
by its banks: it was more like how the whole course
of a river could be deflected by a pebble, by a grain
of sand, a blade of grass, at its first upwelling; where
the great forces of gravity and erosion and all the
rest did minute but momentous battle with the sur-
face tension of a particular drop. History was a river
where every drop was a potential new source, a foun-
tainhead of future Amazons.
She walked on, past the salient of Kelvingrove
Park on the left and up the steepening slope of Gib-
son Street, and turned to the right along the still
tree-shaded avenue to the Institute. She rang the
THE SKY ROAD 311
bell, smiling wryly at the polished brass of the name-
plate. Once the Institute of Soviet and East Euro-
pean Studies, then of Russian and East European
Studies, then . . .
The Institute for the Study of Post-Civilised Soci-
eties, was what they called it now.
The woman who opened the door looked very East
European, in her size (small) and expression (sus-
picious) . Her dark eyes widened slightly.
'Oh, it's you/ she said. 'Godwin.'
Tes, hello.' Myra stuck out her hand. The woman
shook it, with brief reluctance, tugging Myra inside
and closing the door at the same time.
'This place is watched,' she said. She had black
bobbed hair; her age was hard to make out. Her
clothes were as shabby as Myra's: blue denim smock,
black jeans grey at the knees. 'My name is Irina Gu-
zulescu. Pleased to meet you.'
They stood looking at each other in the narrow
hallway. Institutional linoleum, grey paint and green
trim, black stairway. The place smelt of old paper
and cigarette smoke. Posters - shiny repro or faded
original - from the Soviet Union and the Former
Union: Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev, Antonov, solemn;
Gagarin, smiling. The Yeltsingrad Siege: heroic
child partisans aiming their Stingers at the Pamyat
Zeppelins. The building was completely silent and
there was nobody else around.
'I was kind of expecting more people here,' Myra
said. 'I left a message.'
'Like I said.'
'Oh.' Myra felt baffled and miffed.
'Your cases arrived safely,' Irina said, as though to
mollify her. She escorted her up the narrow black-
bannistered stairs to the library. The stair carpet was
312 KEN MACLEOD
frayed to the point of criminal negligence. The li-
brary itself was cramped, a maze of bookcases
through which one had to go crabwise. Several gen-
erations of information technology were carefully
racked above the reading-table. Myra's crates were
stacked beside it.
TU leave you to it,' Irina said.
Thanks.'
Myra, alone, pulled down her eyeband, upped the
gain, looked down at the crates and sighed. They
were still bound with metal tape. She clicked her
old Leatherman out of its pouch and got to work
opening them, coiling the treacherously sharp
bands carefully into a waste-paper basket. Then she
had to pull the nails, like teeth. Finally she was able
to get the files out.
She sorted the paper files into stacks: her per-
sonal stuff - diaries and letters and so on - and po-
litical, sorted by time and organization, all the way
back from her ISTWR years through to internal fac-
tional documents from that New York SWP branch
in the 1970s. These last still made her smile: had
there really ever been anyone daft enough to choose
as his nomme de guerre for a debate about the armed
struggle 'Dr Ahmed Estraguel'?
She worked her way, similarly, through the for-
mats and conversions from Dissembler through
DoorWays to Linux to Windows to DOS, and
through storage media from the optical disks and
bubble-magnetic wafers and CD-RWs ('CD-Rubs',
they used to be called) to the floppy disks, almost
jumping out of her seat at the noise the ancient PC
made when it took the first of those. In the quiet
building, it sounded like a washing-machine on the
spin cycle.
After about an hour and a half, which passed in
THE SKY ROAD 313
a kind of trance, all her optical and electronic files
were copied to the Institute's electronic archive. She
blinked up her eyeband menu, and invoked Parvus.
'Hi,' she said.
'Hello,' he said.
She felt almost awkward. 'Do you mind having a
copy taken, and its being downloaded?'
The entity laughed. 'Mind? Of course not! Why
should I mind?'
'OK,' Myra said. She uncoiled a fibre-optic cable
from the terminal port and socketed it to her eye-
band. 'I want your copy to guard this collection of
files ' she ran her highlighting finger over it '- and
anything you've got with you right now, applying the
kind of discretionary access criteria that your exist-
ing parameters permit. Give the scaling a half-life
of, oh, fifty years. Got that?'
'Yes.' Parvus smiled, doubled, then one of him
disappeared dramatically like a cartoon genie
swooshing back into a bottle.
'Done,' he said. It had taken longer than she'd
expected - she must have had more files on her
personal datadeck than she'd realised.
'Thank you,' said Myra. 'Anything to report, by
the way?'
Parvus shrugged expansively. 'Nothing that can't
wait. Except that Glasgow Airport is closed.'
'What?'
Surely not a coup, not here—
'Fighting on the perimeter. Damage to the run-
ways. Just Green partisans, nothing serious, but
there's no chance you'll get your flight on Monday.'
'Oh, shit. Book me a train. For tomorrow, OK?
Catch you later.'
She disengaged the cable link and let it roll back.
Then she got to work labelling the stacks, dating the
314 KEN MACLEOD
paper folders and making notes for the Institute's
archivist.
Somebody clattered up the stairs, strode into the
library and flicked the light on. Myra turned around
sharply and met the surprised gaze of the girl who'd
identified her at the demo.
'Oh!' said the girl. She slowly slid her tartan scarf
from around her neck and flicked her long, thick
black hair out from under her denim jacket's collar.
4
What - what are you doing here?'
Myra straightened up, feeling irrationally pleased
that she was marginally taller than the younger
woman.
'I was about to ask you the same question,' she
said.
'I work here! I'm a post-grad student'
She said it with such confusion of face, such a
widening of her big brown eyes, that Myra couldn't
help but smile.
'And a political activist, too, I understand.'
The girl nodded firmly. 'Aye.' The comment
seemed to have allowed her self-confidence to re-
cover. She stepped over to a chair and sat, stretching
her legs out and propping her boots on a book-
caddy. Myra observed this elaborately casual behav-
iour with detached amusement.
'I was an activist myself, when I studied here,'
Myra said, half-sitting on the edge of the table.
'I know,' the girl said coldly. 'I've read your thesis.
Detente and Crisis in the Soviet Economy*
Myra smiled. 'It still stands up pretty well, I think.'
Teah. Can't say the same about your politics,
though.' She frowned, swinging her feet back to the
floor and leaning forward. 'In a way it's nothing . . .
personal, you understand? I mean, when I read what
you wrote, I like the person who wrote it. What I
THE SKY ROAD 315
can't do is square that with what you've become.'
That was laying it on the line! Myra felt a jolt of
pain and guilt.
'I don't know if I can, either,' she said. 'I
changed. Real politics is more complicated than -
ah, fuck it. Look - uh, what's your name?'
'Menial MacClafferty.'
'OK- Menial. The fact is, the Russian Revolution
got defeated, and never got repeated - perhaps
because the defeat was so devastating that it made
any subsequent attempt impossible.' She laughed
harshly. 'And like the man said, it's gonna be social-
ism or barbarism. Socialism's out the window, it was
dead before I was born. So barbarism it is. We're
fucked.'
Menial was shaking her head. 'No, nothing's in-
evitable. We make our own history - the future isn't
written down. "The point is to change it." Look at
the Sheenisov, they're building a real workers' de-
mocracy, they've proven it's still possible - and what
do you do? You fight them! On the side of the Yanks
and the Kazakhstani capitalists.'
'Like I said,' Myra sighed. 'Real politics is com-
plicated. Real lives, mine and those of the people
I've taken responsibility for. The future may not be
written but the past bloody well is, and it hasn't left
me with many options.'
'You mean, you haven't left yourself-—'
'Tell you what,' Myra said, suddenly annoyed. She
waved at the stack of cardboard and paper around
her. 'Here's my life. There's a lot more on the com-
puter.' She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. 'Pass-
word's "Luxemburg and Parvus" for the easy stuff.
You're welcome to all of it. The hard stuff, the real
dirty secrets, I've put a hundred-year embargo on,
and even after that it'll be the devil of a job to hack
316 KEN MACLEOD
past it. If you're still around in a couple of centuries,
give it a look.'
'This is what you're doing?' Merrial asked. 'Turn-
ing over your archives to the Institute? Why?'
Myra could feel her lips stretch into a horrible
grin. 'Because here it has a very slightly better
chance of surviving the next few weeks, let alone the
next few centuries. You want my advice, kiddo, you
stop worrying about socialism and start getting ready
for barbarism, because that's what's coming down
the pike, one way or another.'
Merrial stood up and glared down at Myra.
'Maybe you've given up, but I won't!'
'Well, good luck to you,' said Myra. 'I mean that.'
The young woman looked at her with an unread-
able expression. 'And to you, I suppose,' she said
ungraciously, and turned on her heel and stalked
out. Whether automatically or deliberately, she
switched off the light as she went. Myra blinked, fid-
dled with her eyeband and got back to work.
'Everything all right?' Irina Guzulescu was limned
in the backlight of the library doorway.
Myra straightened up and dusted off her hands.
'Yeah, I'm doing fine, thanks.' She laughed.
'Sorry about the dark, I was using my eyeband to see
with, instead of putting the light on.'
'Probably just as well,' the small woman said. She
advanced cautiously into the room, past the opened
crates and labelled stacks of Myra's archives. 'Some
of the books in here are so fragile, I fear sometimes
one photon could...' She smiled, and handed
Myra a mug of coffee.
'Oh, thanks.' It was cold in the library's still, stale
air. She clasped her hands around the china's
THE SKY ROAD 317
warmth. 'Is there anywhere I can go for a smoke?'
she asked.
'Oh, sure, come on down to the basement.'
The basement seemed hardly changed; the big ta-
ble that took up most of the room brought back
memories - the long discussions and arguments
around it, the adventures planned there, the after-
noon she'd talked with Jon and Dave, and gone with
Jon.
Along the way, Irina had picked up her own mug
at the kitchenette cubby-hole. She sat down oppo-
site Myra and shoved an ashtray across the table. In
the unforgiving light she looked older; she'd obvi-
ously had the treatments, but the weight of her years
still pulled at her face; it didn't sag, but it showed
the strain.
'Well,' Myra said, lighting up, 'uh, that thing you
said? About the place being watched? Why's that?'
Irina moved her hand as though flicking ash. 'Po-
lice mentality,' she said. 'Obviously if we study the
post-civilised, we're potentially sympathetic to them,
and to the enemy within.'
'The what?'
'The Greens.' Irina laughed. 'The FU and the
Greens, it's like it used to be with the SU and the
Reds. In the good old days of the Cold War, being
interested in the other side at all was suspect, no
matter how useful it might be. And of course the
same on the other side.' She smiled. T worked at
the Institute of American Studies in Bucharest. Se-
curitate on my case all the time.'
Jesus. You must be nearly as old as I am.' Myra
thought the remark tactless as soon as it was out of
her mouth, but Irina preened herself at it.
'Older,' she said proudly. 'I'm a hundred and
ten.'
318 KEN MACLEOD
'Wow. Hundred and five, myself. Had the earlier
treatments, of course, but I've just had the nano
job.'
'Ah, good for you, you won't regret it.' She smiled
distandy. *You know, Myra Godwin, you are part of
the history. Of this Institute, and of the societies it
was set up to study. I supervised a student a few years
ago in a PhD thesis on the ISTWR.'
'Never thought I'd end up in charge of my very
own deformed workers' state.' A dark chuckle. 'Not
that I ever believed that's what it was, or is,' Myra
hastened to add. 'Or that such a thing could exist.
Ticktin cured me of that delusion a long time ago.'
'Hmm,' said Irina. 'It was Mises and Hayek for
me, actually. Ticktin didn't rate them very highly.
Or me.' She laughed. 'Used to call me "Ceau§escu's
last victim".'
'Well, yes,' Myra said. 'Never found the liberals
terribly persuasive myself, to be honest. The ques-
tion that always used to come to mind was, "Where
are the swift cavalry?" '
Irina shook her head. 'I'm sorry?'
'Oh, it was something Mises said. If Europe ever
went socialist, it would collapse, and the barbarians
would be back, sweeping across the steppe on swift
horses. Well, half Europe was - not socialist as I
would see it, but as Mises would see it - and where
are the swift cavalry?'
Irina stared at her. As though unaware of what
she was doing - the reflexes of a habit she must have
thought was conquered coming back - she reached
across the table for Myra's cigarettes and lit one up.
'Oh, Myra Godwin-Davidova, you are so blind.
Where are the swift cavalry, indeed.' She paused,
narrowing her eyes against the stream of smoke.
THE SKY ROAD 319
'What mode of production would you say exists in
the Former Union?'
'The post-civilised mode?'
'A euphemism.' She waved smoke. 'What would
your Engels call a society where cities are just mar-
kets and camps, where most people eat what they
can grow and hunt for themselves, where almost all
industry is at the village level, where there is no no-
tion of the nation?'
'Well, OK, it's an old-fashioned term,' Myra said,
with half a laugh, 'but I suppose technically you
could call it barbarism. Technologically advanced
barbarism, but yes, that's what it is.'
'Precisely,' Irina said. She looked at her cigarette
with puzzled distaste and stubbed it out. 'There are
your swift cavalry. Look outside our cities, at the
Greens. In fact, look inside our cities. There are
your swift cavalry!'
Myra really had never thought of it like that.
'The only swift cavalry I'm worried about,' she
said bitterly, 'are the goddamn Sheenisov.'
To her astonishment and dismay, Irina began to
cry. She pulled a grubby tissue from her pocket and
sobbed and sniffled into it for a minute. On a sud-
den impulse, Myra reached across the table and
grasped her hand.
'Oh God,' Irina said at last. 'I'm sorry.' She gave
a long sniff and threw the tissue away, accepted
Myra's offer of a cigarette.
'No, Fm sorry,' Myra said. T seem to have said
something to upset you.'
Irina blinked several times. 'No, no. It's my own
fault. Oh, God, if you just knew. I stayed here to see
you, not just to let you in.' The cigarette tip glowed
to a cone, she was sucking so hard. 'Nobody else
wanted to come in this morning and meet you. They
320 KEN MACLEOD
think you are a terrible person, a monster, a crimi-
nal. I don't' She blinked again, brightening. 'I go
back, you know. To Romania, and to . . . other "post-
civilised" countries. All right, to the Former Union.
And you know what? People are happy there, with
their farms and workshops and their local armies
and petty loyalties. The bureaucrats are gone, and
the mafias have no prohibitions to get rich on, and
they are gone. The provinces have their small wars
and their feuds, but ' she smiled now, sadly '— I
sound like a feminist, if you remember them, but
the fact is, it's just a testosterone thing. Young men
will kill each other, that's the way of it. For a woman,
Moscow - hell, any provincial post-Soviet town - is
safer than Glasgow.'
Oh, not another, Myra thought. A Green fellow-
traveller, a political pilgrim. I have seen the past and
it works.
'And when I see something like communism com-
ing back,' Irina went on, 'when I see the goddamn
Sheenisov riding in their tanks, collectivising again,
assimilating all those little new societies, I want to
see them stopped.'
She looked straight into Myra's eyes. 'You can do
it, you can stop them. You must fight, Myra. You're
our only hope.'
Myra felt like crying, herself.
The Brits just didn't do trains.
They'd invented them. They had a couple of cen-
turies' experience with them. They had more actual
enthusiasts for trains per head of the population
than anywhere else. They'd invented trainspotting.
And they still couldn't seem to figure out how to
make trains run on time.
So here they were on a bright, cold Sunday morn-
THE SKY ROAD 321
ing, somewhere south of Penrith, and under trac-
tion from one electric engine that sounded like it
came from the sort of gadget you would use for
home improvements. Wooded hillsides slid slowly
past. At least she had a seat in First Class. The train's
guard was just wandering through the adjoining Sec-
ond Class, where all the screaming kids were, and
the refreshments trolley was being trundled along
behind him.
Myra lit a cigarette and gazed out. She felt rela-
tively content, even with a long journey, made
longer by bloody typical Brit inefficiency, ahead of
her. She had plenty of reading to do, right there in
her eyeband. Parvus had prepared her a digest of
recent British foreign policy, last time she'd done a
download. About 100 kilobytes, not counting hyper-
links and appendices. Stacks of v-mail to catch up
with.
Not to mention the news. By now there was a reg-
ular CNN spot, on the world-affairs specialist news-
feed, dealing with the ISTWR. The demos opposing
the policy of federation with Kazakhstan had grown
to a daily assembly of two thousand or so, with a cou-
ple of hundred people braving the chilly nights in
tents in Revolution Square. Some of their banners
were what Myra would've expected from her local ul-
tralefts, the sort of folks she'd tangled with outside
the New Brit. Others were liberal - pro-UN - or lib-
ertarian, with a pro-space, pro-Outwarder undertone.
Nobody on the street - or on the net - seemed
to have yet found out about the nukes; a small
mercy, but Myra suspected that some at least of
those behind the various demonstrators knew about
them. Reid, for one, certainly did, and she thought
it possible that his hand was reaching for them
322 KEN MACLEOD
through the ISTWR's home-grown space-movement
militants.
Myra had spent the first hour or so of the journey
at her virtual keyboard, writing out reports back and
instructions and advice for her commissars, Denis
Gubanov in particular. She wanted every chekist he
could spare to get busy infiltrating and investigating
these demos.
The partition doors hissed and thunked open.
The guard came through, a tall, stooping man in a
uniform, with a holstered pistol on his hip.
'Tickets from Carlisle, please/ He had a slightly
camp voice, gentle and pleasant. He smiled and
checked the tickets of the business executive sitting
opposite and across from Myra.
"Scuse me,' the steward sang out, behind him.
The steward was a small, scrawny youth in a white
shirt, tartan bow-tie and trews. Spiky black hair.
The trolley rattled and jangled into the compart-
ment. The guard stepped aside to let it pass. As he
did so the train lurched a little, setting the trolley's
contents ringing again, and the brakes squealed as
the train came to a halt.
There was a crackly announcement, from which
Myra could only make out the words * trees on the
line*.
A ripple of derision ran through the carriage.
Myra added her hoot to it, and glanced out of the
windows. There were trees beside the line, to the
right, but they were about a hundred yards away,
across a puddled meadow, On the other side, a
sharp slope, with trees above the scree.
She heard a gasp from the steward, and a sort of
cough from the guard. A large quantity of some red
liquid splashed across the table she was sitting at,
and some of it poured over the edge and on to the
THE SKY ROAD 323
lap of her skirt. Myra recoiled, looking up with a
momentary flash of civilised annoyance - her first
impression was that somehow the steward had
spilled a bottle of red wine over her.
The guard fell sideways across the table with a
shocking thud. His throat gaped and flapped like a
gillnslit, still pumping. She could see the rim of his
severed windpipe, white, like broken plastic. His
mouth was open too, the tongue quivering, drip-
ping spitde. His eyes were very wide. He raised his
head, and looked as though he were trying to say
something to her. Then he stopped trying. His head
hit the table with a second thump, diminuendo.
The steward was still standing, clutching a short
knife in one hand and an automatic pistol, evidendy
the guard's, in the other. His shirtcuff had blood on
it, as did the front of his shirt. It looked like he'd
had a nose-bleed which he'd tried to staunch on his
sleeve. It was surprising how thin a liquid blood was,
when it was freshly spilled, still splashy, a wine-dark
stream.
The steward flicked his tongue across his lips. He
waved the pistol in a way that suggested he was not
entirely familiar with its use. Then, in a movement
like a conjuring trick, he'd swapped the knife and
the pistol around and worked the slide. Lock and
load; he knew how to use it, all right.
'Don't fucking move,' he said.
Myra didn't fucking move. She'd stuck her small
emergency-pistol in the top of her boot when she'd
taken off the holster with the Glock, which was now
lying under her jacket on the luggage-rack above.
There was no way she could reach either weapon in
time. Nor could she blink up a comms menu on her
eyeband - the phone was in her jacket, too. The
other passenger, who was sitting across the aisle and
324 KEN MACLEOD
facing the opposite direction, didn't move either.
Somebody, not a child, in the Second-Class com-
partment was screaming. The steward had his back
to that compartment, and at least several people in
there must have been aware of what had happened.
Without moving her head, or even her eyes, Myra
could see white faces, round eyes and mouths,
through the glass partition.
She was thinking why doesn't someone just shoot this
fucker in the back? Then, out of the corner of her eye,
she saw movement outside, along both sides of the
train. Men and women on horseback. Long hair;
feathers and hats; leather jerkins and weskits; rifles
and crossbows brandished or slung. Like cowboys
and Indians. Green partisans. Barbarians.
Far behind her, near the back of train she
guessed, there was a brief exchange of fire and a
distant, thin screaming. It went on and on like a car
alarm.
Every door in the train, internal and external,
thunked open. OK, so somebody'd got to the con-
trols. Myra felt a cold draught against the warm and
now sticky liquid on her knees. The colour washed
out of the world. Myra realised that she was about
to go into shock, and breathed hard and deep.
Some of the horsemen, dismounted, leapt aboard
the train. At the end of each carriage, a pair of them
faced opposite ways, covering the passengers with
rifles. The man who landed facing Myra filled the
partition doorway. 'Barbarian' was not an epithet,
applied to him; he was tall and broad, he had a
beard and pony-tail gleaming with grease, and his
jacket and chaps bore smooth-edged, irregularly
shaped plates of metal attached to the leather with
metal rings, a crude and partial armour.
THE SKY ROAD 325
* Hands on heads! Everybody outside! On to the
track!'
Myra put her hands on top of her head and stood
up and shuffled sideways into the aisle. The steward-
punk who'd murdered the guard still had her cov-
ered, and was backing out past the big fellow, whom
he obviously knew. The businessman, standing up,
had a curiously intent look on his face. Myra
guessed instantly that he was about to make himself
a hero, and in a fortuitous moment of eye contact
she shook her head. His shoulders slumped slighdy,
even with his hands in the air; but he complied with
the shouted command and the minutely gestured
suggestion, jumping out to the right and landing on
the permanent way on his feet and hands, then
scrambling up and running across the adjacent
track to the low bank with the fence by the flooded
meadow.
Myra raised her hands and stepped over the
guard's buckled legs, edged past the barbarian and
the steward and jumped out. She landed lightly, the
impact jolting her pistol uncomfortably but reassur-
ingly deeper down the side of her boot, and walked
across the track and up the bank, then turned to
face the train.
People were all doing as she had done, or helping
kids - silent now - down to the broken stones. The
Greens strode or stood or rode up and down, yip-
peeing, all the time keeping their rifles trained on
the passengers. There were at least a score of the
attackers on each side of the train, probably more.
About a hundred people, passengers and crew, had
come off the train. Somebody was still on the train
and still screaming.
Myra stood with her hands on her head and shiv-
ered. The sight of so many people with their hands
326 KEN MACLEOD
up made her feel sick. The barbarians probably in-
tended to loot the train - they must know that some
at least of the passengers would be carrying con-
cealed weapons, but they weren't as yet even both-
ering to search for them. The hope that they would
be spared would be enough to stop almost anyone
from making an inevitably doomed attempt to fight.
It might just stop them until it was too late. If the
Greens intended a massacre they would do it, of that
she was sure, just when least expected. The Greens
would manoeuvre inconspicuously so that they were
out of each other's lines of fire, and the fusillade
would come. Then a bit of rape and robbery, and a
few final finishing shots to the head for the
wounded if they were lucky.
One tall man in a fur cloak and leather-strapped
cotton leggings was stalking around from one group
of passengers to another, peering at and talking to
every young or young-looking woman. When he
reached Myra he stopped on the slope just below
her, rested his hand on his knee and looked up,
grinning. He was clean-shaven, with long sun-
bleached red hair tied back with a thong around his
brow. On another thong, around his neck, hung a
whistle. Beneath his fur cloak he wore a faded green
T-shirt printed with the old UN Special Forces
motto: SORT 'EM OUT - LET GOD KILL 'EM ALL.
'Ah,' he said, 'you must be Myra Godwin!'
He had a London accent and a general air of en-
joying himself hugely. Myra stared at him, shaken at
being thus singled out. He recognised her, and she
had a disquieting feeling that she'd seen him some-
where before.
'Yes,' she said. 'What's it to you?'
'You got any proof of that?'
THE SKY ROAD 327
'Diplomatic passport, jacket pocket, above the
seat I was in.'
'I'll check,' he warned, eyes narrowing.
'Oh, and bring my fucking Glock as well. You are
in deep shit, mister.'
'We'll see about that,' he said. He turned around
and yelled at the big man who'd emptied her car-
riage; he was still standing in the doorway, rifle
pointed upward.
'Yo! Fix! Get this lady's stuff out. From above her
seat'
He didn't take his eyes off her as the big man
passed him the folded jacket and he fingered
through it. One quick glance down at the opened
passport, and he put the whistle to his lips and blew
a loud, trilling note, twice.
'Right, Fix, spread the word,' he said. 'We got her.
Tax them and leave. Let's get outta here before the
helicopters come.'
The other man jogged off, shouting orders. In a
minute, out of the corner of her eye, Myra could
see the tax being organised: the people from the
train had all been herded into one group, and a
man with a shotgun and a woman with a sack were
going around, taking money and jewellery and small
pieces of kit and personal weapons. People handed
their stuff over with a sickeningly eager compliance.
'Want your jacket back?'
Myra nodded. He tossed it, still folded, to her;
held on to the holstered automatic, the passport
and the uplink phone.
"You'll get these back later,' he said.
She put the jacket on. It was a thin suit jacket and
didn't do much to keep out the chill.
'What do you mean, "later"?' she asked.
He laughed at her.
328 KEN MACLEOD
Tou're coining with us. Well let you go soon.'
The wind just got colder.
Myra gestured at her blood-spattered blouse and
blood-soaked skirt.
'Excuse me if I don't believe you.'
'War is hell, ink?' he agreed biighuy. He moved
his hand as though tossing something light away.
'The guard was a spy, anyway.'
Myra said nothing.
'OK, youse lot!' some guy on a horse was shout-
ing. 'Get back on the train and stay there. Don't try
chasing us, don't anyone try shooting after us.
'Cause if you do, we'll come back an' kill youse all.
And don't leave the train after we're gone, neither,
or the choppers will pick you off in the fields.'
The group filed into the train through one of the
doorways. Myra could see them dispersing along the
carriages.
'That's all you're going to do?'
The red-haired man nodded. 'This time.' He
jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'I mean, I feel
sorry for these people, but not sorry enough to kill
them. And I'm not going to waste time searching
the train for valuables. No point in being greedy,
otherwise the trains would just stop coming
through. Just enough tax to cover the op, you
know.'
'What op?'
He stared at her. 'Getting hold of you.'
Oh, shit. She'd thought that was what he'd been
driving at. She blinked rapidly, recording his image,
and triggering a search protocol on her eyeband, to
see if this knowledgeable bandit was known himself.
'You did all this just to get me?' She smiled sourly,
over chattering teeth. 'How did you know I was on
the train?'
THE SKY ROAD 329
The man looked at her scornfully. 'That wasn't
difficult/ he said. He waved a hand expansively but
evasively. 'We're everywhere.'
'Seems a bit excessive.'
'Some things you just can't say in a phone call,'
he said idly. Then he shifted his feet and straight-
ened up, grinning. 'Besides, raiding is such fun.' He
drew in a long breath of fresh air as though inhaling
a drug. 'It's a lifestyle thing.'
A slender, dark-skinned woman with curly, wavy
blonde hair down to her waist rode up on a big
black horse, leading a similar horse and a dun mare.
She smiled at the tall man, and turned a colder
smile to Myra.
*You know how to ride?'
In a moment everyone was mounted. Myra tugged
up her bloody skirt as she settled in the saddle. The
tall man waved and whistled three blasts. Suddenly
the Greens were dispersing away from the train, di-
agonally up the scree-slope to the trees or, as those
around Myra did, straight across the wet meadow.
She found herself on a hell-for-leather gallop be-
hind Fix, with the blonde-haired woman and the
red-haired man on either flank. Over a hedge, down
a path, into a narrow wooded dell.
Somewhere far away, the sound of a helicopter.
Then some short machine-gun bursts, though at
whom they were aimed, Myra did not wish to guess.
Myra rode silently like the others, but in the spec-
tral company of Parvus; the AI was murmuring into
her bone-conduction earclip and flashing Grolier
screens up in front of her eyes. Nothing more cur-
rent was available without the uplink phone. He'd
provisionally identified the man who'd captured her,
but it wasn't very enlightening - the latest pictures
330 KEN MACLEOD
of him were from about twelve years ago, and he
hadn't been a land-pirate then. He had been a net
commentator, and - before that - a minor agitator
in the Fall Revolution. The television clips of his
rants explained why he looked vaguely familiar —
she'd watched the British national democratic rev-
olution in the time she'd been able to spare from
following the Siberian Popular Front's assault on
Vladivostok. -
The dell opened to a larger valley, thickly settled.
Old stone houses, geodesic domes, wattle huts, new
thatched cottages, a few nanofactured carbon-shell
constructions. A lot of cattle and sheep in the fields;
kids running everywhere. The path became a gravel
road which widened, at the centre of the main
street, to a small cobbled square. In the centre, just
by a verdigrised copper statue of a Tommy with a
fixed bayonet, memorial to the fallen of three world
wars, was an outdated but still effective anti-aircraft
missile battery. No higher than the statue itself, it
held a rack of a dozen metre-long rockets. Myra
could read the small print of what they were tipped
with: laser-fuser tactical nukes.
People crowded around, welcoming the returning
raiders. They called the red-haired man what she
thought at first was 'Red', which made sense; then
realised it was 'Rev', which made no sense at all. It
certainly wasn't the name her search had come up
with. The kids were cheering and doing the high-
stepping, highjumping Zulu war-dance called toyi-
toying.
Fix reined in his horse in front of a large stone
building which had a low-ceilinged front room open
to the street: a cafe. Myra followed suit, dismounted
and was led through into a back room with a fire,
and high leather chairs around a table. The room
THE SKY ROAD 331
smelt of woodsmoke and alcohol and unwashed hu-
manity and damp dogs.
'Have a seat'
Myra sat and the two men and the woman sat
down opposite her. They regarded her in silence for
a moment. She decided to hazard the Grolier's
guess.
Jordan Brown,' she said. 'And you must be Cat
Duvalier.' That name was in the entry's small print
as Jordan Brown's wife.
'Well done,' the man said, unperturbed. 'Nifty lit-
tle machine you've got there.'
Myra flipped the eyeband back. *Yes. So tell me,
Mr Brown, what it is you want.'
'It's Reverend Brown,' he said. 'First Minister of the
Last Church of the Unknowable God.' He smiled.
'But please, call me Jordan.' He looked over his
shoulder and shouted an order. 'Beer and brandy!'
He slung his cloak over a chair; without it, leaning
over the table in his T-shirt and wild hair, he looked
somewhat more intimidating. Some absence in his
gaze reminded Myra of spetznatz veterans, or old Af-
ghantsi. The Blue Beret slogan on the T-shirt just
might not be ironic, she thought. A boy padded in
carrying glasses and bottles.
'All we've got at the moment,' the woman called
Cat said. 'What'll you have?'
'I'll have a beer.'
She accepted the drink without thanks, and lit a
cigarette without asking permission or offering to
share. Damned if she was going to act as though she
was enjoying their hospitality.
'You were saying, Reverend.'
Jordan Brown spread his hands. Just to talk
things over.'
'You've gone to a lot of trouble to do that.'
332 KEN MACLEOD
T sure have,* he said. Tve risked the lives of my
fighters, I've exposed one of my agents, I've had a
man slaughtered like a pig - which he was, but that's
nothing to you - and had another train guard shot
in the belly just for trying to do his job. Quite pos-
sibly, some of the passengers have already fallen to
friendly fire.' He shrugged. 'And I would have killed
more, if I'd had to. The point is, I'll get away with
it' He waved his hand above his head. 'We all will.
The helicopter was the worst the British can do
against us.'
Myra looked straight at him. 'Like I care. You
might not get off so lightly when this gets back to
the Kazakhstani Republic'
Jordan nodded soberly. 'No doubt I'm trampling
all over diplomatic niceties. But it's you that came
to Britain to get help, not the other way round. So
you'll forgive me for not worrying too much.'
'Hah!'
'Anyway,'Jordan went on, Tve no wish to get into
a pissing-contest. I have something more important
to say to you. So. Are you willing to have a serious
conversation?'
Myra shrugged, looking around theatrically. 'Why
not? I don't see any better entertainment.' She
poured a brandy chaser, again without false cour-
tesy.
Jordan Brown leaned forward on his bare fore-
arms, took a swig of brandy and began to speak.
^You've come to Britain to get military aid against
the Sheenisov. You might even get it. What I want
to tell you is two things. One, don't do it. It won't
do you any good. You can't fight communism with
imperialism. It's just throwing napalm on the fire.'
Myra favoured him with a look that said she'd
heard this before. 'If you say so. And what else do
THE SKY ROAD 333
you have to tell me? Try and make it something
1
that's news to me, how about that?
'You're in worse trouble than you think,' Jordan
said. 'The entity you call the General is working for
the Sheenisov.'
Myra almost choked on her sip of brandy. She
coughed fire for a moment. She felt totally disori-
ented.
'What? And how the hell would you know?'
'Strictly speaking,'Jordan Brown said, 'the Sheen-
isov are working for it. As to how I know
He held out a hand towards Cat. She leaned for-
ward as Jordan leaned back.
'Myra,' she said earnesdy, 'I may be a barbarian
now, but I used to be like you. I used to be in the
International.'
'Oh, Jesus!' Myra exploded. 'Half the fucking
world is run by ex-Trots! Tell me something I don't
know, like how you heard about the FI mil org -
the General.'
'I was coming to that,' Gat said, mildly enough -
but Myra could read the younger woman's face like
a computer screen, and she could see the momen-
tary spasm of impatient rage. This barbarian lady
was someone who'd got dangerously used to not be-
ing interrupted. Cat forced a smile. T still hear ru-
mours.'
'Rumours? That's what you're relying on?'
'It seems you've just confirmed one,' Jordan said,
dryly.
Myra acknowledged that she had. But it seemed
a situation where stonewalling would be less pro-
ductive than admitting that the General existed, and
trying to find out where the rumour came from. Par-
vus hadn't spotted anything like that. . .
'Did you pick this up off the net, or what?'
334 KEN MACLEOD
Jordan looked at Fix and Cat, and all three of
them laughed. To Myra, it sounded like a mocking
laugh.
'God, you people/Jordan said. His tone changed
as he went on, becoming an invocation, or an im-
precation. *You have a screen between you and the
world all the time. We have the human world, and
the natural world. We have the whole world that you
call marginal, the scattered society of free humanity.
We have the whisper in the market, the gesture on
the road, the chalked mark on the pavement. The
twist of a leaf, the turning of a twig. We have the
smell carried on the wind. We have the night sky
and the names of all its fixed and moving and falling
stars. We have our friends in all your cities and
camps and armies. We have the crystal radio that
receives and the spark-gap that transmits, in codes
you have forgotten, on wavelengths you no longer
monitor, in languages that you disdained to learn.'
He tipped his head back and began glossolaliat-
ing in Morse code, da-da-dit-di-da-dididididah... Cat
and Fix cocked their heads, listening, and after a
minute grinned and guffawed.
Jordan looked a little smug at this demonstration.
'See, I can joke in tongues. We have our own Inter-
net, and our own International. Don't bother look-
ing for a leak from yours.'
'Besides,' said Fix, speaking up for the first time,
4
we know this thing from way back. Jordan and Cat
fought in the revo, and so did it. It was called the
Black Plan, and it was used by - or it used - the
Army of the New Republic. We've all encountered
it, and we know where it went. To New View, your
commie-cult commune in space.'
'And we know how it thinks,' said Cat. 'We can
see its hand in what the Sheenisov are doing, in
THE SKY ROAD 335
their tactics and in their strategy. It's not exactly ma-
levolent, but it is . . . ambitious.'
4
So?' Myra shrugged, trying hard to stay cool, and
to reassert her control over the conversation. 'We -
that is, my country, Kazakhstan -' there, she had
said it, and the words my country, Kazakhstan could
not be unsaid ' - we are not relying on this thing.
We take no orders from it, not since - well, it got
on the wrong side of me, put it that way. I don't say
I believe you about its taking the side of the Sheen-
isov, but - let's say I wouldn't put that past it. If
you're so worried about it, why do you object to my
getting help to stop it?'
'Because,' said Jordan, emphasising each word
l
with a chop of the hand, it can not be stopped. Not
by fighting it. If it finds itself on the losing side it
will change sides, or work for both sides, and it will
win. Its only real enemies are rival AIs, such as those
of the space movement, and those strange ghosts of
genius that some of the spacers are trying to turn
into. It will defeat them, or absorb them, and then
it will be content in its . . . singular godhood, spread-
ing with humanity to all the worlds to come. It will
look after our best interests, whether we like it or
not.'
'Hah, come on. You can't possibly know that'
Jordan sat back and looked at her with an ironic
expression. 'Oh, yes I can, but call it an educated
guess if it makes you feel better. If the British Re-
public were to come in on your side, I'm sure they'd
be delighted to get their old planning-system back.
They'd jump at any offers it made them. Or they
would accept similar Greek gifts from the space
movement's AIs. So whoever wins - the Western
powers, the space movement or the Sheenisov - hu-
336 KEN MACLEOD
manity will be living inside some machine or other,
for ever.'
'Would that be so bad?'
'No,' said Jordan. 'That's what I'm afraid of.'
He jumped up. 'But what the hell. You do as
seems best. If you still want to ally with the British
when you get to London, go right ahead. Much
good it'll do you.'
He downed his remaining brandy and looked
around at the others, then at Myra. 'Come on,' he
said. 'I'll take you to the road.'
She rode along beside the red-haired man, troubled
but unconvinced by his strange tirades. Wet
branches of beech and birch brushed past them,
making her duck and blink. The stony path led up
the side of the hill above the settlement. Myra
looked back down at it before it passed from view.
'How do you people live?' she asked. 'You can't
live just on raiding, and some day soon, according
to you, there'll be nothing left to raid. Like, who
pays for these anti-missile missiles?'
'We all do,' Jordan said. 'We don't have taxes,
that'd be a laugh. We - not just this village, all of
the free people - have a couple of simple economic
principles that have been applied in communities
like this for nearly a hundred years now. One is that
we don't have rent, but land ain't free - God ain't
making any more of it, but we keep right on making
more people. So we apply the equivalent of rent to
community purposes, like defence. The other is that
any individual, or any group, can issue their own
currency, backed up at their own risk. No landlords,
no usurers, and no officials.'
'Oh, great,' said Myra. 'A peasant's idea of Utopia.
THE SKY ROAD 337
Single tax and funny money! Now I've heard every-
thing!'
4
It does work,' Jordan said. 'We, as you can see,
flourish. We're the future.'
Jordan,' she said, 'you know I found some clips
of you on my encyclopaedia? Well, from them I'd
never have figured you for going over to the Green
Slime. Or for a preacher, come to that.'
Jordan laughed, unoffended. 'The world will fall
to the barbarians or to the machines. I chose the
barbarians, and I chose to spread some enlighten-
ment among them. Hence the preaching, which
was - to begin with - of a kind of rationalism. I can
honestly say I have led many of my people away from
the dark, heathen worship of Gaia, and from witch-
craft and superstition. But I also found, like many
another missionary, that I preferred their way of life
to the one from which I'd come. And along with
loving nature, I came to love nature's God.'
*You were an atheist.'
'So I believed. I later realised that I was an ag-
nostic. A militant agnostic, if you like. All theology
is idolatry, all scripture is apocrypha. All we can say
is that God is One. God encompasses the world,
there is nothing outside him, and nothing opposed
to him. How could there be? So God approves of all
that happens, because all that happens is his will.
God loves the world, all of it, from the Hubble to
the Planck, from the Bang to the Crunch. God is in
the hawk hovering up there and in the mouse that
cowers from its claws in yonder field. God is in the
sickle and the sheaf, the hammer and the hot iron,
the sword and the wound. God is in the fire and in
the sun and in the holocaust. God was in the spy I
had killed today, and in the man who killed him.'
Antinomianism was, Myra knew, a common enough
338 KEN MACLEOD
heresy in periods of revolution or social breakdown.
Four hundred years ago, these same words could
have been ranted forth on those very hills. There
was nothing new in what Jordan said, but Myra felt
sure it would not disturb him in the slightest to
point this out. He had probably read Winstanley and
Christopher Hill for himself.
'You seem to know a lot about this unknowable
God of yours.'
That I do.'
'Is God in the machines, in the AIs that you fear?'
'That too, yes.'
'What's the difference between a God who makes
no difference and takes no side and no God at all?'
They had reached the crest of the hill. Jordan
reined in his horse. Myra stopped too, and looked
down the hill at the grey ribbon of the motorway
and the white blocks of a service-station.
So close, all the time.
'You can walk from here,' Jordan said dryly. He
took her horse's reins as Myra dismounted. He so-
berly returned her holstered weapon, her passport
and her phone.
'Oh, and to answer your question. There is no
difference, in a sense. But to believe that God is in
everything, and is on your side whatever you do and
whatever happens, gives one a tremendous access of
energy.' He grinned down at her. 'Or so I've found.'
And with that, the agnostic fanatic was gone, swift
on his horse.
Myra slogged down the hill to the service area,
cleaned up, made some phone calls while she ate in
the cafeteria, and hired a car to take her to London.
She arrived, through all the obstacles thrown up
by the small battles on the way, on the evening of
the following day. She had long since missed her
TH E S K Y R O A D 339
appointment with the Foreign Office; she had told
them that in advance, and they'd asked her to call
back when she arrived, to make another.
But, after all she had seen along the way, and all
she had not seen - such as any evidence that people
like Jordan's band, and worse, operated with any-
thing other than insolence and impunity, give or
take the odd gunship attack - there didn't seem to
be a whole hell of a lot of a point
13
THE SEA EAGLE
iVai iin drummed on the roof of Menial's
house. The view outside was dreich. I'd looked out
the window earlier, down the glen and the loch;
ranks of cloud were marching in off the sea, and
one after another shedding their loads on the hills.
Inside, it was warm: we sat huddled together, backs
to the piled-up pillows, sipping hot black coffee.
'No work today, thank Providence,' I said.
'Not at the yard anyway,' said Menial. She waved
a hand at the soldering-iron and seer-stones and
clutter in the corner of the room.
'You start learning a different work, here.'
'Aye, great,' I said.
'What is this Providence you talk about, anyway?'
she asked.
'Urn.' I stared at the slow swirl of the coffee. 'It's
.. . the helpful side of Nature, you might say. When
things work out as we would wish, without an ap-
parent cause.' I looked at her. 'You must know that.'
'But that's just coincidence,' she said. 'All things
come by Nature.'
THE SKY ROAD 341
'Some things are more than coincidence, and Na-
ture is more than—' I was going to say 'more than
Nature' but stopped and laughed. 'You really don't
know any Natural Theology?'
'No,' she said cheerfully. 'I've always just taken for
granted that the outsiders have strange beliefs.
Never gone into the details.' She put her empty mug
down at her side of the bed and snuggled up to me.
'Go on. Tell me the details.'
'Oh, God. All right. Well, the usual place to start
is right here.' I tapped her forehead, gently. 'Inside
there. From the outside we see grey matter, but
from the inside we think and feel. We know there
are billions of cells in there, processing information.
So thinking and feeling - consciousness — is some-
thing that information does. It's what information
is, from the inside, its subjective side. Where there's
information, there's consciousness.'
'But there's information everywhere,' she said.
'Wherever anything affects anything else, it's infor-
mation. The rain falling on the ground is informa-
tion.'
'Exactly!' I slid my arm around her shoulders.
'You've got it'
'Got what? Oh.' She shifted a little and looked
straight at me. *You mean there's consciousness
everywhere?'
Yes! That's it!'
'But, but—' She looked around. You mean to tell
me you think that clock, say, has thoughts}'
The ticking was loud in the room as I considered
this.
'It has at least one,' I said cautiously.
'And what would that be?'
' "It's later .. . it's later . . . it's later
She laughed. 'But the whole universe—'
342 KEN MACLEOD
'Is an infinite machine, which implies an infinite
mind.' I put my hand behind her head, cradling the
container of her finite mind.
' "And this all men call God",' I concluded
smugly.
Menial punched me.
'And the computers, I suppose you would say they
are conscious too?'
4
Aye, of course,' I said.
'What a horrible thought.'
'They may not be conscious of what we see from
the outside,' I said. 'They may be thinking different
thoughts entirely.'
Menial gazed abstractedly out of the window.
'What thought is the rain thinking?'
'Can't you hear it?' I said. 'It's thinking "yesssss".'
'Hmm,' she said. 'Now there's a. coincidence . . .'
We used the couple of days before my reinstatement
in my job at the yard for the beginnings of an ed-
ucation in fine soldering and in programming, the
latter subject being simultaneously fascinating and
maddening. We also made a painstaking study of
the Deliverer's documents, which continued - after
we'd returned the originals to Gantry, and I'd re-
turned to work at the yard - with the photocopies,
but they yielded no information relevant to the
ship's mission. The folder from the 2050s rein-
forced, in its casual references and assumptions
more than its explicit statements, the staggering ex-
tent of the orbital activity of pre-Deliverance hu-
manity. But it contained no hint of the Deliverance
itself.
There was one moment when I thought I had won
a real historical insight, albeit one tangentially rel-
evant to our immediate concerns.
THE SKY ROAD 343
I looked up from the stack of papers on Menial's
broad table. Every evening after work, I'd slowly
sifted through them, as now, in the late sun.
'Menial?' I said. She turned from the seer-stone
apparatus on which she was working, and laid down
her soldering-iron.
You found something?'
'No, just - realised something. These Greens she
talks about in some of her articles, the marginal peo-
ple who lived outside the cities. She makes the point
here that they had a lot more practical skills than
folk gave them credit for, that they weren't just ig-
norant barbarians but farmers and smiths and elec-
tricians and so on.'
'Yes,' she said, with a mysterious smile. 'That was
true.'
'Well! These people, the Greens, they must have
been the ancestors of the tinkers!'
'Here,' she said, passing me a cigarette. *You're
going to need this.'
'Why?' I asked, lighting up.
'Because - oh, Dhia, how can I break this to you
gently? You've got it the wrong way round entirely!
Why do you think we call the settled folk "the out-
siders"?'
'What?'
'Aye, the Greens, the barbarians, these are not
our ancestors, Clovis. They're - I was going to say
yours, but I can't say that any more, mo graidh, now
you're one of us. They're the ancestors of the out-
siders! We are the survivors, the descendants, of the
city folk!'
'So how is it that we - I mean the outsiders - live
in the cities now?'
She stood up then, walking around the small
room like a lecturer, gesturing with her cigarette.
344 KEN MACLEOD
'Oh, but your face is a picture, colha Gree! They
live in the cities now because they invaded them,
they moved in at the Deliverance when the old civ-
ilisation and city life had broken down. And they're
still there, bless them, blundering around like the
barbarians they are, in the borrowed costumes of
the past. All these scholars that you wanted to em-
ulate, they're just rummaging about in the ruins,
reading books they misunderstand so badly it isn't
funny. You're well out of that, my love, you'll learn
more from us in a year than in a lifetime at the
University!' Indeed.
A huge cheer went up, almost drowning the inrush-
ing roar of water, as the sluice-gates opened. The
water poured over the edge of the drydock in a sa-
line Niagara that went on and on, until it seemed
that the loch itself would be lowered before the
deep hole was filled. Faster than a tide, the water
crept up the legs and pontoons of the platform.
Menial's hand gripped mine as we made our way
through the crowd, pushing to the front like chil-
dren. The entire accessible part of the cliff-edge
around the dock was lined with people. Everybody
who'd worked at the yard, on the platform or the
ship, was certainly there, along with casual visitors
from the surrounding towns, keen sightseers from
all over the Highlands, and outright enthusiasts
from even farther afield. A couple of hundred me-
tres around the cliff and inward, officers of the In-
ternational Scientific Society, project managers and
exemplary workers made speeches from a wooden
stage with a raised dais and an awning. Nobody far-
ther away than fifty metres, at the outside, could
make out a word these dignitaries said, particularly
THE SKY ROAD 345
not from the PA speakers strung out like fairy-lights
on catenaries of cable all over the place. Squawks
and howls and crackles worthy of a railway station
echoed around the cliff-faces.
I ducked in between a couple of workers at the
front who'd incautiously allowed a quarter of a me-
tre to open up between them. Menial followed with,
no doubt, a smile at both of them which made them
feel they were being done a favour.
And then we were there, a metre or two from the
crumbling, tussocked edge. The platform and the*
spaceship loomed startlingly close. At that moment
another cheer went up, as though to acclaim our
arrival, and I realised that the capsule at the tip of
the probe was, minutely but perceptibly, swaying.
The platform was afloat.
'Hoo-rrayy!' I shouted, joining enthusiastically in
the applause. Menial yelled something almost too
high to hear beside me; I could hardly hear myself.
Though a less spectacular moment than the flood-
ing of the dock, it was freighted with greater signif-
icance: the beginning of the Sea Eagle/Iolair's
journey, which would end in space.
It was a strange launch vehicle, simultaneously
more primitive and more advanced than anything
sent into space in the first age of space exploration.
The ancients could, no doubt, have built a fusion
torchship, but they didn't. They went straight from
massive liquid-fuelled rockets to the nanotech dia-
mond ships of the last days. In our time, with chem-
ical fuels relatively expensive and nanotech (other
than the tinker computers) quite beyond our reach,
and the secret of controlled fusion still extant, the
fusion torch is a logical choice.
But, as Fergal had implied, building it out of
boiler plate was a trifle inelegant. On the other
346 KEN MACLEOD
hand, the skills were there, locally available from
shipbuilding; and the weight - given the immense
power of the engine - was not a significant con-
straint. And say what you like about red-leaded steel
plate, it is reliably resistant to sea-water. There was,
of course, no question of launching such a monster
from anywhere on land, which is less forgiving - of
intense heat, high-energy particles and unstable iso-
topes - than the sea.
Its mission, too, was primitive, or at least simple:
to launch into orbit an experimental communica-
tions and Earth-observation satellite. That payload
had required the co-operation of scientists and en-
gineers (tinkers or otherwise), lens-makers and pho-
tographers, from all over the civilised world. Its
electronic and electrical systems strayed suspiciously
close to the path of power - even deploying, if you
wanted to be awkward, a system very like television.
But after much soul-searching and acrimony, the
majority of the most respected practitioners of Nat-
ural Theology had, with some reluctance, nodded
their long-haired heads. Television, they gravely
pointed out, had been destructive only as a mass
medium. To object to it as a method of communi-
cation from a satellite to a ground station would,
they averred, be crass superstition, unworthy of this
enlightened age.
Needless to say, a minority of their equally re-
spected, though (it has to be said) usually older,
colleagues insisted that this was the first step on a
slippery slope at the bottom of which lay a popula-
tion reduced to a passively rotting mass of mental
and physical wrecks. With equal inevitability, given
the nature of Natural Theology, a much smaller
(and, yes, younger) faction were pointing out that
the sort of abject helotry described and decried by
THE SKY ROAD 347
their conservative colleagues were in fact the peo-
ples better known as the ancients, who had watched
television assiduously and had an achievement or
two to their credit before they fell. To which, of
course . . . but the argument's further iterations
would be tedious to elaborate.
Merrial walked forward more boldly than I would
have and sat down cheerily on the very lip of the
cliff, her legs dangling over and her skirt elegantly
spread on the heather to either side of her. I sat
beside her and tried not to look down at a drop to
the sea, direct and vertical except where it was in-
terestingly varied by jutting rocks. We had found
ourselves a viewpoint slightly in front of the plat-
form, between its foremost extension and the open
gates of the dock.
The shouting and cheering had stopped now, re-
placed by the susurrus of conversation, the contin-
uing surge of the rising sea and the deep whine of
the platform's turbines as they laboured to move the
gigantic structure. Very slowly, the mast-like rocking
of the ship's shaft was intersected by a net forward
motion. Slow though it was, this set up a noticeable
bow-wave at the front, clashing and splashing against
the incoming waves. Complex interference patterns
formed as the waves rebounded off the sides of the
dock and the platform itself, and the sun, already
past the zenith and dipping towards the west, made
spectra in the spray.
Even at five kilometres per hour, the platform
didn't take long to pass us, to the sound of further
cheering, and waving to and from the operational
crew down on the decks. Another significant mo-
ment, duly registered by another round of applause,
came when the platform passed through the gates
and into the open sea - or at any rate Loch Kishorn.
348 KEN MACLEOD
After this there was really nothing to see except the
slow departure of the rig, and people began to drift
away. The platform had a long voyage ahead of it,
out of the loch and into the Inner Sound, from
whence it would pass the headlands of Rona and
Skye before heading out into the Atlantic. Barring
any serious mishap - and the weather forecasts were
optimistic - it would proceed for seven more days
before it was far enough out in the ocean to hold a
position for the launch of the ship itself. The on-
board crew would transfer to an escort vessel and
stand off on the horizon, triggering the launch by
radio control when the scientists and engineers had
determined that the conditions were right. Given
the robustness of the Sea Eagle and the power of its
drive, little short of a severe storm could stand in its
way. Only the platform was, in theory, vulnerable to
the wind and the waves - so the chanciest part of
the whole venture, the part which could literally
sink it, was the one that had just begun.
Unless Menial's fears about the orbital debris
were borne out. Nothing more had been heard
about this from Fergal or any other tinker, accord-
ing to Druin, and he could be trusted on such a
matter, according to Menial. Although her own
contract on the project had come to an end, those
of other tinkers working on mission-critical systems
(as the cant had it) had not; and she was still well
up on the latest tinker gossip - as, increasingly,
was I.
In the weeks between our reconciliation and the
floating of the platform we had had an interesting time,
in which our joy in each other was countered -
though not in any way diminished - by the reactions
of other people to it. At the yard, I daily endured
the merciless mockery which my mates seemed to
THE SKY ROAD 349
think entirely compatible with continued friendly
relations in other respects. In the softer circum-
stances of my previous experience - in childhood,
schooling and University - some of their insults and
abuse would have occasioned life-long, smouldering
enmity, if not immediate physical violence. Here
they passed as light-hearted badinage, and it was
their ignoring rather than avenging that was taken
as a token of manly honour.
The stand-offish attitudes of the tinkers at the
camp were harder to take, but Menial insistently
reassured me that they were a similar test, of the
strength of my commitment to their ways, and to
her. As the days and weeks passed their reactions to
me had gradually warmed to the point of a frigid,
prickly politeness.
Merrial and I were, by tinker custom, bundling —
trying out the experience of living together before
making a public commitment I was enjoying the
experiment and I was as committed as I could ever
imagine being, and so was Merrial, but neither of
us was in any hurry to move our relationship on to
a more formal basis. A tinker marriage is a serious
matter, involving among other horrendous ex-
penses - seamstresses, cooks, musicians - that of
keeping hundreds of people drunk for a week.
Merrial looked over at me.
Time to go?'
'Aye.'
We stood up and made our way back, easier now,
through the thinning crowd. For obvious reasons,
alcohol was strictly banned from the site, and from
this day's event. Everybody was heading back for the
towns, starting with the nearest, Courthill. The end
of the project, and the final pay-packets and bo-
nuses, would be celebrated by drinking the pubs dry
350 KEN MACLEOD
over the course of the afternoon and evening.
We wandered along the path back to the main
road, occasionally greeting people we knew. The
stage from which the speeches had been made stood
empty, and was already being dismantled. The var-
ious dignitaries were moving down the path in a
compact group, and I hurried a little to overtake
them on the grass, eager for a closer glimpse of the
famous men and women who had travelled far to
honour our achievement. Menial observed this be-
haviour with sardonic toleration.
I was pointing out a renowned Russian astrono-
mer and an English spacecraft engineer to Menial
when we both noticed Fergal towards the rear of
the procession, walking alone among them all. I was
surprised to see him, then realised that I shouldn't
be - he had been the project manager on the guid-
ance system, after all. At the same moment, he no-
ticed us. He beckoned us over.
Menial glanced at me. I shrugged. We went over
and joined him, I making sure that I walked be-
tween him and Menial. I felt uneasily that we had
no place there, but the rest of the dignitaries po-
litely paid us no attention whatever, to the extent
that they noticed us at all, and weren't simply
caught up in their own deep conversations.
He looked at us sidelong, without hostility. Our
confrontation might as well never have happened,
for all that he showed of bearing any grudge. For
myself, it was different.
'How have you two been getting on?' he asked.
He'd obviously heard of our bundling.
'Oh, fine. Great!'
Menial caught my hand and swung it. 'This one's
no an outsider any more, I'll tell you that'
THE SKY ROAD 351
'Good.' He smiled, and changed the subject. 'It's
a great day for us all.'
'Aye,' I said. 'But I'll not be sure of it until the
ship's in orbit.'
'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,' he said. His
gaze flicked to Menial's eyes. 'The ship is safe.'
'How are you getting on?' I asked boldly. 'With
your new friend?'
'Who - oh, the AI!'
'What?'
'Art-if-icial In-tell-igence,' Fergal and Menial ar-
ticulated at the same moment. I glanced from one
to the other and laughed.
T have to learn that sort of thing sometime!'
'Indeed you do,' said Fergal indulgently. 'Still,
you have plenty of centuries ahead to learn it.'
'Well, I suppose two is plenty, at that,' I replied,
puzzled at this odd remark.
Fergal stopped, then hastened on as others trod
on our heels.
'She hasn't told you?'
Menial was looking at him and at me with a mute
appeal that somehow seemed to mean something
different for both of us. Fergal firmly shook his
head.
'Well, she bloody should have.'
'I didn't want to—' began Menial.
'Give him an improper inducement? Or scare
him off?' Fergal smiled sourly. 'Like it or not, Mer-
rial MacGlafferty, it's a bit late for either now,
wouldn't you think?'
'Oh, I'm not sure he's ready—'
'Will you two,' I said, 'please stop talking as if I
wasn't there?'
Fergal glanced over his shoulder, looked ahead,
352 KEN MACLEOD
then turned his gaze to the ground and spoke in a
low voice.
'Do you know why people today live longer than
they did until some time before the Deliverance?'
'Aye,' I said. 'I found references to it in the De-
liverer's papers. Life-extension treatments. I sup-
pose in some way the effects must have persisted,
and become hereditary.'
'Close enough,' he said, evidently resisting an im-
pulse to quibble. 'Well, the people who became the
ancestors of the tinkers had a better treatment.'
My heart thudded. 'How much better?'
He looked around again. A couple of metres sep-
arated us from the others on that path, before and
behind.
'So much better that we don't know how much
better it is.'
I looked at Menial, feeling the blood drain from
my face, and then rush back. I squeezed her hand.
'Well, if you'll have me, I don't care if you do
oudive me, and stay young while I grow old.' Easy
enough to say, when you're twenty-two and don't
believe that ageing or death have any personal ap-
plication in the first place. But to my surprise, Mer-
rial laughed.
'This one isn't genetic, any more than the other,'
she said. 'It's—'
'Infectious,' said Fergal. 'Or is it contagious? I can
never remember.'
'Whatever,' said Menial. 'It's, urn, sexually trans-
mitted.'
She sounded almost embarrassed.
Fergal, it seemed, was still welcome in The Carcon-
ade, and even Druin, when he passed him at the
bar, was affable towards him. I guessed, myself, after
THE SKY ROAD 353
my third litre and sixth whisky, that the tinker In-
ternationalist was anxious to show us his friendly
side. I remained unpersuaded by it, but decided to
make the most of it while it lasted. I had still not
assimilated the news that I could expect to live
longer than I'd ever expected, and it would take me
long enough to do it.
'So what,' I asked him, at a corner table in the
security of the raucous din around us, 'was that
thing Menial found? The AI?'
'It's . . . a planner,' he said. 'A mind that can co-
ordinate an entire economy. Something we're going
to need, some day.'
'After your glorious revolution?'
*Yes, and maybe before. It's a revolutionary itself.'
'So what are you going to do with it?' I asked.
Fergal might have been, as Jeanna had said, able
to hold his drink. He may well have not done or
said anything without calculating its effect on the
vectors of his purposes. But I'm sure it was a reckless
impulse that made him say what he said next.
'It's on the ship. Well, a copy of it, anyway.'
He was looking at me, not at Menial, as he spoke.
He didn't see what I saw: the momentary flash of
triumph and delight on Menial's face. That
glimpse, as much as his words, must have drained
the colour from mine. And then - I could see her
dissembling - by the time Fergal turned to her, she
looked even more shocked than I felt.
'Why the hell did you do that?' she asked.
Fergal leaned in and lowered his voice. 'I learned
a few things from the AI,' he said. 'Its memories go
right up to a few days before the Deliverance. It
knows nothing about what happened but it does
know that the Deliverer had control of nuclear and
other weapons in space. So the possibility that - you
354 KEN MACLEOD
know, what we feared - was true is too strong to
ignore. But at this stage - hell, if the mission were
aborted, or if the ship were destroyed, God alone
knows how long it'd be before we'll see another.
There was only one way to do it, and that was to
make a copy and let it into the ship's own seer-stone
control systems. Out of sheer self-preservation, the
copy would be forced to take the kind of fast-
reacting control over the ship's drive that would let
it dodge through any debris that's still there.'
4
Would that work?' I asked Menial, who was star-
ing at Fergal as though seeing past him.
'Oh, aye,' she said, without looking around, 'we
couldn't do that ourselves, but an AI would be in
with a chance, I reckon. But what happens once it's
up?'
Fergal grinned. 'It just sits in the centre of a new
communications web, that's all. A useful thing to
have.'
'Bloody dangerous, you mean!' I said.
'Don't worry,' said Fergal, realising he'd gone too
far. 'It's not going to interfere with the satellite. It'll
just. .. gather information. For the future.'
'Oh God!' Menial exclaimed. 'You're out of your
fucking mind! That thing is a deil! It'll have the
world in a new Possession before you know it!'
'It'll be our Possession,' Fergal said.
Tours, you mean!'
Fergal stretched out his legs.
'And what would be wrong with that?'
He looked at our appalled faces and burst out
laughing.
'Don't be stupid,' he said. 'There's no way it can
do anything without having people to work with,
and there are no such people yet.' He placed a
THE SKY ROAD 355
thumb on Menial's chin for a moment 'As you fine
well know.'
She smacked his hand away, none too gently.
'That was not funny,' she said. She got up with
unsteady dignity. 'I'm going for a piss.'
Fergal watched me watching her thread her way
through the throng. If he detected the tumult in my
thoughts he gave no sign.
'No chance of persuading you, Clovis?'
'Not a chance in hell,' I said, still distracted. His
casual banter fooled me for not a second; this was
a man who wanted power, Possession indeed, and
his current scheme with the AI would not be his last.
He was a man I would have to watch, and might one
day have to kill.
'Oh, well,' he said. 'Our day will come, and you'll
see it'
I was about to contest this when I felt a hand on
my shoulder.
'Oh, hello, Catherine.'
My former landlady smiled down at me; like every-
one here, she was already a bit drunk. She nodded
at Fergal and looked back at me.
'Hi, Clovis. I hope you like your new accommo-
dation.'
'Oh, aye.'
She reached into a pouch on her hip. 'I've got
something for you,' she said. 'A letter that arrived a
few days ago, I didn't get round to—'
'That's all right,' I said, taking the bulky envelope.
'Thanks.'
Fergal, perhaps subdued by his rebuff, was moodily
studying his drink, or tactfully respecting my privacy,
as I opened the package. From the handwriting of
the address, I knew it was from Gantry. It contained a
letter and a thick booklet. The letter was neatly
356 KEN MACLEOD
typed. I glanced down the predictable hand-wringing
about my expulsion from the University (the trial
had been a farce, not that I cared any more) and
about my choice of tinkering as a career; then
turned over to the next sheet.
However, Clovis, and just as a little reminder of the
joys of historical research - you may remember I
looked a little puzzled when you introduced your
girlfriend, Merrial? The reason was that I thought I
recognised her from somewhere. Actually, of
course, I hadn't - but I'd come across a picture of
what may be an ancestor of hers by the same name,
in one of the Institute's old yearbooks - 2058, in
fact. You may even have glanced through this once
yourself. Have a look at page 35 - the resemblance
is quite striking.
(Needless to say, I expect you to return ...
I almost dropped the papers as I fumbled open
the booklet and turned to the page. It showed - in
much sharper detail and better colour than in mod-
ern photographs - some kind of social occasion.
People were sitting, smartly dressed, at long tables,
clapping their hands as others in their company
danced. In the immediate foreground was a girl,
caught in mid-twirl, her thick black hair swaying
around behind her head, one hand swinging her
long, layered skirt out to the side, her bare feet
lightly, precisely placed. A fine dancer. Merrial.
She was even named, in the small print of the
caption.
It could be an ancestor, I tried to tell myself, as
Gantry thought. But I knew it was not so. If anyone
could be identified from a photograph, Merrial
could. She looked, in the picture, no different from
how she looked this day.
THE SKY ROAD 357
I had, from the first moment I'd seen her,
thought her younger, fierier, fresher than myself,
and attributed her occasional ironies and unreason-
ably intelligent remarks to her native wit, which I
was quite unenviously happy to regard as greater
than my own. It was a shock to realise that they were
the wisdom of age. Dear God, how old was she? She
had lived since the Deliverer's time! The thought
was enough to make me feel dizzy.
Gantry was right about one thing -1 had seen this
picture before, on an idle trawl through the Insti-
tute's public-relations archive. And, as I had antici-
pated, the memory of seeing it did come back. It
had only been a few seconds' pause as I'd turned
the pages, a couple of years earlier, my attention
momentarily caught by this pretty image from the
past.
Fergal's voice broke into my appalled reflections.
'Bad news from home?'
I shook my head, folding the letter around the
booklet again, inserting the sheets in the envelope
and slipping it into my pocket.
'No, no,' I said, forcing a smile. 'Nothing like
that. It's just -1 feel faint, I think I've had too much
to drink, on an empty stomach, you know?'
I clapped my hand to my mouth.
'Oh God.' I swallowed. The tinker's sardonic,
sceptical eyes regarded me. I realised that I had still
to decide what to do about another shock, delivered
only minutes earlier: that he - apparently with Mer-
rial's expectation - had put the AI on the ship. All
it would take to expose him, and blast whatever
schemes either or both of them had hatched, would
be a word to Druin ...
*You sure you're all right?'
*Yeah, I'll be fine. I just need some fresh air. I'm
358 KEN MACLEOD
going out. Could you tell Menial to come out too?'
'Sure,' he said, already scanning the crowd for
other company. 'Where'11 you be?' 'In the
square,' I said. 'At the statue.'
14
FINAL ANALYSIS
T o Almaty then, and apple-blossom on
the streets, smoke in the air, and the Tian-Shan
mountains beyond; so high, so close they were
improbable to the eye, like the moon on the
horizon. Myra almost skipped with relief to be
back in Kazakhstan.
President Chingiz Suleimanyov's office was a lot
grander than Myra's. She felt a tremor of trepida-
tion as she walked past the soldier who held the
door open for her. A ten-metre strip of red carpet
over polished parquet, at the end of which was a
small chair in front of a large desk. The chair was
plastic. The desk was mahogany, its green leather
top bare except for a gold Mont Blanc pen and a
pristine, red-leather-edged blotter. Glass-paned
bookcases on either side of the room converged to
a wide window with a mountain view. The room's
central chandelier, unlit at the moment, looked like
a landing-craft from an ancient and impressive alien
civilisation making its presence known.
The President stood up as she came in, and
walked around his intimidating desk. They met with
360 KEN MACLEOD
a handshake. Suleimanyov was a short, well-built Ka-
zakh with a face which he'd carefully kept at an
avuncular-looking fiftyish. He was actually in his
fifty-eighth year, a child of the century as he occa-
sionally mentioned, which meant that he'd grown
up after the Glorious Counter-Revolution of 1991
had passed into history. The reunification of Ka-
zakhstan in the Fall Revolution had been his finest
hour, and he always called himself a Kazakhstani,
not a Kazakh: the national identification, not the
ethnic. He didn't have any of Myra's twentieth-
century leftist hang-ups. He had never had the
slightest pretension to being any kind of socialist.
However, he followed Soviet tradition by wearing
the neatest and most conventional business-suit that
dollars could buy.
'Good afternoon, Citizen Davidova,' he said, in
Russian. She responded similarly, and then he
waved her to her seat and resumed his own. The
soldier closed the door.
'Ah, Myra my friend,' Suleimanyov said, this time
in BBC World Service English, 'let's drop the for-
mality. I've read your reports on your mission.' He
gestured with his hands as though letting a book fall
open. 'What a mess. Though I must say you are look-
ing good.'
'I'm sorry that I was not more successful, Presi-
dent Suleimanyov—'
'Chingiz, please. And no need to apologise.' He
pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for
a moment. He looked tired. 'I don't see how anyone
else could have done better. Your action in leaving
Great Britain was perhaps . . . impetuous, but even
with hindsight it will probably turn out to have been
for the best. What a long way down they've come,
the English. As for the Americans—well, what can I
THE SKY ROAD 361
say?' He chuckled, with a certain schadenfreude, and
gazed upwards at the crystal mother-ship. 'Fifteen
years ago they were stamping their will on the whole
planet, and now a few nuclear weapons are too hot
for them to handle. In my father's time they were
willing to contemplate taking multiple nuclear hits
themselves.' He looked back from his reminiscence
to Myra. 'Sorry,' he said, suddenly abashed, 'no of-
fence intended. I forget sometimes that you were -
are - an American.'
'No offence taken,' Myra said. 'I entirely agree
with your assessment. What a crock of shit the place
is! What a pathetic lot they are! The chance of a
long life has only made them more afraid of death
than ever.'
The President's bushy eyebrows twitched. 'It has
not done that for you, then?'
Myra shook her head. 'I can see the rationality of
it - people think they have more life to lose if they
have a long one to look forward to - but I think it's
a false logic. A long life of oppression or shame is
worse than a short one, after all.'
She stopped, and looked at him quizzically. He
smiled.
'True, we are not here to discuss philosophy,' he
said. 'Nevertheless, I'm happy that you think it bet-
ter to die free than to live as slaves. We may get the
chance some day, but let's try to delay our heroic
deaths for a bit, eh?'
*Yes indeed.' She wanted very badly to smoke, but
the President was notoriously clean-living.
'Very well,' said Chingiz. 'Something I did not tell
you before . . . I arranged for other cadres with sim-
ilarly relevant experience to make similar ap-
proaches to the governments of France, Turkey,
Brazil and Guangdong. They have encountered a
362 KEN MACLEOD
similar lack of interest. So we have to face the
Sheenisov on our own. I need hardly tell you that
we don't stand much of a chance, over anything but
the short term.'
'I have a suggestion,' Myra said. 'If the West is
unwilling to assist us, then to hell with them. Let's
cut a deal with the Sheenisov! All we want is our
territorial integrity, their withdrawal from Semipa-
latinsk and access to the markets, trade routes and
resources of the Former Union. What they want,
presumably, is a passage across or to the north of
Kazakhstan, as they make their way west to the
Ukraine, which is the nearest soft target but still one
that will take them many years, perhaps decades, to
assimilate. I don't think they're ready to take on
Muscovy or Turkey just yet. It strikes me that these
aims are not incompatible.'
*Yes, yes,' Chingiz said, 'the option of our switch-
ing sides has occurred to me, and to my Foreign
Secretary. The difficulty is that no one has ever "cut
a deal" with the Sheenisov. They have no leader, or
even leadership - at least, none that the world
knows. They are indeed a horde, without a Great
Khan like my namesake. That makes them difficult
to deal with - in every sense.'
'Ah, come on,' Myra said, feeling bolder. 'Even
the anarchists had their Makhno. I don't believe a
leaderless horde could accomplish what they have,
even in military terms. It's applying guerilla tactics
at the level of strategy and of main-force confron-
tation - that is novel, but it requires precise co-
ordination. There is nothing random going on
here.'
Chingiz's lips set in a thin line for a moment. He
shook his head. 'A system without a centre can
achieve more than we may intuitively expect, Myra.
THE SKY ROAD 363
That after all is the lesson of the twentieth century,
no? It works in economics, and in nature, and to
some extent in military affairs too/
'Good point,' Myra said. She didn't want to bring
the deranged Green rumour about the General into
this level of conversation. 'Let's assume they have
no leadership. In order to have the co-ordination
they display, they must have horizontal communi-
cation between the units, and some method of ar-
riving at a common response . . . even if it's only
some social equivalent of excitation and inhibition
in a neural network. In that case, any offer made to
a sufficiently large unit would be spread through the
rest, as would a response. It would still be worth-
while contacting them.'
'Hmm,' said Chingiz. He steepled his fingers.
'And what do you propose? Walking towards them
until they take notice, then talking to the first per-
son able to understand you?'
'That's about it.'
'It sounds dangerous, apart from anything else.'
'Actually, I propose announcing my intention be-
forehand, through whatever channels we have, then
heading for Semipalatinsk.'
'Come, come,' said Chingiz. 'Things are not that
bad, not yet. You can still fly in, direct'
'And out?'
'Oh, yes. Air-traffic control is still functioning. As
are radio and television, on selected channels. It's
only computer interfaces that are being blocked -
by physical cutting of landlines or by electromag-
netic jamming. It's incredibly differentiated stuff -
very clever. We couldn't do it.'
She peered at his calm face.
'What reports are we getting?'
'About life under the Sheenisov? Hah. In some
364 KEN MACLEOD
respects, life goes on as normal. There are certainly
no democidal activities. There are what the Sheen-
isov call reforms. Workplace democracy, and so forth.
They are very insistent about that. Many businesses
dependent on the net are failing — they either re-
orient to the Sheenisov internal communications
system, whatever that is, or they pick up sticks and
go, or they are expropriated on the grounds of
abandonment.' He rubbed his hands. 'Needless to
say, this is giving our republic a temporary influx of
people, of capital, and of comms gear and computer
capacity. Some refugees are destitute, but not
many.'
'Any willing to join the fight back?'
'No mass rallying to our armed forces, I must say.
The usual dashnik emigre diversions - plotting, plead-
ing, mounting sabotage expeditions, low-key terror-
ism. We don't encourage it' He rubbed a finger up
and down the side of his nose. 'Naturally, we try to
prevent it. . . to the best of our ability, but our re-
sources are quite inadequate for such a task.'
'But of course.' Myra smiled. 'Could you raise me
some muj? Two or three good men, not fanatics, not
suicidal, but willing to take a risk and have a go if
necessary. I'm still deeply reluctant to fly into Se-
mey. Too much opportunity for an opportune me-
chanical failure - frankly, I'm getting a little
paranoid about anything that's computer con-
trolled, on either side. So, if I may, I'd like to drive,
with bodyguards.'
Ghingiz raised his eyebrows. 'Drive all the way?'
'No, no. Fly to Karaganda, announce what I'm do-
ing, then drive to Semey, bypassing the ISTWR.'
'Ah, yes.' He teased some of the hairs in one
shaggy eyebrow back into place. 'A little local diffi-
culty there.' He sounded reproachful.
THE SKY ROAD 365
'The situation's under control/ Myra said.
'Perhaps. But, on balance, I would suggest that
you don't go back there, or even bypass it by truck
or jeep through the Polygon. Far more dangerous
than flying.' He raised a hand, stilling her incipient
protest. 'I know what you mean about the comput-
ers, and flight control. I too have thought about
this. You will get your bodyguards. You make your
announcement, fly to Semey, then wander where
you will until someone makes contact - which, as
you say, someone surely will. You will pass on the
proposals and await developments. Then you will fly
from Semey back to Kapitsa, and either declare the
conflict settled, or rally your people for their part
in the common defence.' He smiled thinly. 'Either
way, your internal political problems will be over.
Externally, however, it may turn out that the Sheen-
isov are not our most immediate problem . . .'
'Ah, yes,' said Myra. 'The next move. Presumably
at least one of the countries we made our offer to
will start to worry about what we're going to do with
the nukes, and the option of disarming us will move
up the agenda pretty damn quick.'
'Precisely,' said Chingiz. 'The US-spacer nexus is
the one we probably have to worry about most - as
your friend in New York said, the space industrialists
and settlers are understandably edgy on the subject.'
'They're your nukes now,' Myra said. 'We'll go
along with anything you say. Presumably you'd want
us to stand them down and turn over the opera-
tional codes.'
Chingiz slammed his fist on his massive desk,
making Myra jump.
'No!' he said. 'We are not going to be pushed
around. We are not going to give up our nukes with-
out guarantees of military aid. And we are willing to
366 KEN MACLEOD
threaten nuclear retaliation against any attack.'
'So you're ready to go to the wire on this one?'
'Absolutely,' said Chingiz. 'To the wire. But not
beyond.'
'All right,' said Myra. 'We'll go with you. We'll see
who blinks first.'
'Thank you,' said Chingiz. His face relaxed a lit-
tle. 'It's a high-risk strategy, I know. But the end-
game is upon us, and I for one am not going into
it defenceless.'
Myra nodded.
'The best thing you can do,' she said, 'is act as
though you're ready to wash your hands of us - of the
ISTWR. Denounce and disown us - privately of
course, on the hotline - and urge the UN or US or
whoever to negotiate directly with us. That should
buy us some time.'
'Only if they believe you're mad enough to do it.'
Myra bared her teeth. 'They will.'
Sernipalatinsk, or Semey, was a pleasant enough
town, whose steppe location had let it spread out so
much that even its taller buildings looked low, even
its narrower streets wide. There was room in those
broad streets for trees whose dusty leaves had been
an object of suspicious Geiger-counter monitoring
on her first visit, in the late 1980s. The good old
days of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Association
against nuclear testing. Of all the betrayals she'd
perpetrated against her youth, this one stung the
most. Marxism, Trotskyism and socialism could go
hang; it was the implacable naive humanist inter-
nationalism of that protest, its irrefutable medical
and statistical basis, its sheer bloody outrage rooted
in biology rather than ideology, which had been her
purest, fiercest flame. She had thought nuclear
THE SKY ROAD 367
weapons the vilest work of man, whose very posses-
sion contaminated, and whose mere testing was
murderous.
Nurup Kerbayev and Mustafa Altynsaryn, her
proudly counter-revolutionary bodyguards, strolled
a polite step or two behind her, beards and ban-
doliers bristling, Kalashnikovs slung on their shoul-
ders. Nurup was ethnically Kazakh-Russian; Mustafa
looked more Mongoloid, almost Han Chinese. With
their AKs and baggy pants and scuffed boots and
bulging jackets they both looked just like counter-
revolutionary bandits. They also looked like Sheen-
isov soldiery or the local population, whom the
Sheenisov had encouraged to carry arms as a deter-
rent to counter-revolutionary banditry.
They walked down the streets and across the
squares quite unchallenged, though one or two peo-
ple gave Myra a curious glance, as though recognis-
ing her from her television appearance the previous
evening. Apart from the parked tanks on the street-
corners, around each of which a curious crowd,
mainly of children and young people, fraternised
with the relaxed-looking crew, the town so far
showed litde sign of being caught up in a social rev-
olution. It was the weird fighting-machines that were
alarming. They stalked and lurched about like Mar-
tian invaders; but the locals treated them with casual
familiarity, like traffic or street-furniture. Perhaps,
Myra thought wryly, it was the absence of searing
heat-rays and writhing metal tentacles that did the
trick.
As well as those combat drones, big clunky
calculating-machines were being installed, indoors
in shop-fronts and factories, outdoors in the
squares. Gears and teeth and crystal spheres, build-
ing to frenetic orreries of some alternate solar sys-
368 KEN MACLEOD
tern, Copernican with Ptolemaic epicyles. Nanotech
dripped and congealed around the brass and steel,
like epoxy that never quite set. Around noon Myra
and her companions watched one being winched
off a flatbed truck and placed carefully in a plaza
below a cosmonaut monument.
Tucking bizarre/ said Myra, half to herself, as a
Sheenisov cadre clambered on to the plinth and be-
gan an explanatory harangue in Uzbek, not one of
her languages.
'With this they will replace the market/ Nurup
scoffed, under his breath. 'God help us all.'
A lively market in soft drinks and hot food was
already forming around the strange device. Nurup
and Mustafa bought her Coke and kebabs, and
themselves a hotdog each. Both talked quietly to the
stall-keepers. Taking the food, they sat down on a
bench and ate.
'There is much discontent,' Mustafa said eagerly.
'Bazaar gossip,' Nurup said. 'Stall-keepers will tell
you anything. They will tell the Sheenisov they love
them.'
The two men argued obliquely but intensely for
a few minutes about the prospects for terrorist ac-
tion against the Sheenisov.
'We're not here for that,' Myra reminded them.
She shared out cigarettes, then together they walked
out of the square. Neither of the men raised any
questions about her random following of the streets,
until they ended up at the bank of the broad Irtysh
river. Flats on the opposite bank, a riverside walk on
this. A small pleasure steamer chugged downriver,
ferrying a calculating-machine on its promenade
deck.
Myra leaned against a railing, gazing into the
river. The two men leaned against the railing, look-
THE SKY ROAD 369
ing the other way. People passed. After a few
minutes of this Mustafa asked what was going on.
'Nothing,' said Myra, not turning around. 'Or
maybe something. I'm assuming we've been fol-
lowed, or watched. I'm quite prepared to wait here
for at least an hour. Make yourselves comfortable.'
But they were too edgy and too alert to be com-
fortable. The most they did was light another of her
Dunhills. Myra slipped her eyeband down and was
at once struck by a sense of deja vu, as the whole
scene around her hazed over, sleeted with grey
flecks. After a moment she realised the source of
that sense of recognition - it reminded her of how
she'd first seen towns like this, back in the 90s:
through their Soviet pollution haze. She blinked,
moved the eyeband up and down, tried to pick up
the nets. Nothing but the grey snow. Even Parvus,.
summoned from memory, looked frazzled by it.
Sheenisov jamming. Shit.
She'd just given up this experiment when she
heard her name called. She turned. Shin Se-Ha and
Kim Nok-Yung walked side by side by the pathway,
waving to her.
'It's all right,' she told her swiftly tense body-
guards. 'I know these guys.'
She shook hands, smiling, with the Korean and
the Japanese; introduced them to the Kazakhstanis.
Discreet compliments on her rejuvenated appear-
ance were exchanged with her admiration for their
now healthier physiques. Even their relatively hu-
mane imprisonment had marked them, weighing
them down with something which their new free-
dom - if freedom it was - had enabled them to
shrug off. They walked taller. They confronted the
Kazakhstani emigres unabashed.
370 KEN MACLEOD
'So, you are Sheenisov,' said Mustafa, in a disgusted
tone.
'Lay off/ said Myra. 'They're OK We have to
talk.'
*Yes,' said Nok-Yung. 'We have to talk.'
It was a mild day, for the time of year. Not shirt-
sleeve weather, but comfortable if you dressed
warm, as they all had. Myra indicated a semi-circle
of benches in a concreted picnic area along the
bank a little. The two ex-prisoners shrugged, then
nodded.
Nok-Yung and Se-Ha sat on either side of her, the
two bodyguards on separate benches a few metres
away. Children, snug-wrapped in quilted satin
bomberjackets and padded trousers, capered about
and yelled, oblivious to the adults.
'So how are you getting on, in this brave new
world?' Myra asked.
'We're fine,' said Nok-Yung, his comrade nodding
emphatically. 'Our families are joining us soon, and
in die meantime we have much to do.'
*You both got jobs?' Myra smiled.
'There are no jobs,' Se-Ha said primly. 'There is
work. We have been . . . co-opted, and we have been
sent to talk to you.'
'Well, I had guessed this was hardly a coinci-
dence,' Myra said. 'But I had not expected to see
you as Sheenisov cadre already.'
'It's an open system,' Nok-Yung said. 'Interesting
contributions are quickly taken up; amplified; dis-
cussed.'
'The opposite of the nets, then,' Myra said. They
laughed.
'And the opposite of the Leninist system,' Nok-
Yung said earnestly. 'Once you are in, you are in,
there is no . . . apprenticeship? No candidacy, no
THE SKY ROAD 371
working your way up. Past experience,' he added
rather smugly, 'counts.'
Myra flashed her eyebrows. No doubt the militant
and the Marxist mathematician had found their
niches quickly. Tm sure that's all fascinating,' she
said. 'But I'm here to put a diplomatic proposal to
the Sino-Soviet Union as a whole. Can I do that, just
by talking to you?'
'Yes.'
'Very well.' She put it to them, straight: the deal,
the crossing corridors. Let the revolutionary horde
flow around Kazakhstan, like a flood around a rock,
and they could swamp the rest of the world, for all
she cared. (Gould and would run into the sand, she
did not say, but that was what she expected.)
They listened politely, now and then asking for
clarification, making notes and doodling maps on
hand-held slates that - while obviously information-
retrieval devices - looked as though they were made
of. . . slate. Se-Ha stood up.
'I must consult,' he said, nodded, and walked
briskly away. Nok-Yung accepted a cigarette, and
leaned back luxuriantly, sprawling out with his el-
bows on the back of the bench. He regarded Myra
through narrow eyes and curling smoke.
'Why do you resist the SSU, Myra?' he asked
mildly. 'It is only democracy. It is only socialism. A
means - and an end, compatible at last, after all the
disasters and crimes done in the name of both.' He
spread his hands. 'There are no secrets here, no
deceptions. When you were as young as you look -'
he smiled ' - you would have thought this revolution,
this liberation more wonderful than your wildest
dreams.'
'Don't let my mujahedin friends hear you say that!'
she warned, half in jest. She glanced over at Nurup
372 KEN MACLEOD
Kerbayev. He smiled back, eyes and teeth flashing
like knives.
'But you're right/ she went on. 'Let's just say . . .
I may look young again, but I've had a long, long
life in the meantime. I've come to believe in myself,
and in . . . my country, Kazakhstan. And I will not be
assimilated, and nor will we.' She waved a hand
around. 'These people, they may seem . . . happy
enough to wait and see. But deep down, no -just
below the surface - they are seething with suspicion.
They are not your Mongolians or Siberians, who
God knows had it bad enough under Stalinism but
who found everything since was worse. To the Ka-
zakhs socialism means "the tragedy" of the 1930s:
the forced settlement, the famine. It means the nu-
clear tests, the cancers, the birth defects. They don't
want to be the subjects of any more experiments.
And if you want to point to the ISTWR as a counter-
example - that was a special case. A self-selected
minuscule minority. Our socialism was always a joke,
more black humour than Red. Trotskyism in one
country - what a laugh!'
What a laugh she gave. She frightened herself.
One of the scampering children playing around
them stopped, put his thumb in his mouth and ran
away.
'We ran a benign state capitalism, nothing more,'
she went on. 'In your case, my friend, it was not even
that. God, I feel disgusted with myself that we did
it, that we ever allowed ourselves to be compradors
for Reid's goddamn private gulags.'
Nok-Yung stared at the sky for a moment. T don't
know what to say, Myra,' he said at last. 'Your regret
over the Mutual Protection camps is . . . well taken.
But about the other matters - you must surely know
that none of what you have been talking about, the
THE SKY ROAD 373
USSR and so on, is socialism as we understand it,
and as you understood it. So stop confusing the is-
sue/
'Oh, I'm well aware that you are different. That
you may well be the genuine article: Marx and En-
gels, Proprietors. And you know what? I don't care.
I don't want it, for myself or for anyone.'
'Why not?' Nok-Yung sounded more puzzled than
offended.
Myra pointed across the river to the insectile
shape of a fighting-machine, patrolling the water's
edge with heron-like steps.
'Because of those damn things,' she said. 'And the
calculating-machines.'
'What!' Nok-Yung's eyes creased up in amuse-
ment. 'Luddism is not your true ideology, Myra. I
cannot believe this. These machines are one of the
most marvellous achievements of the Sheenisov - a
whole alternative nanotechnology, worked out quite
independently of the West. You know how the ma-
chines scale down, all the way to the molecular
scale, and are all mechanical and chemical and op-
tical, with no need for electronic interfaces? That's
their - our - secret weapon, an open secret. A com-
puter system that the enemy cannot penetrate, but
that everyone can understand and access. I've just
begun to use it, and I tell you, it has the most in-
tuitive interface I've ever come across. The capital-
ists would kill for it. Or rather, they would kill to be
able to monopolise it. But it's free, so they can't.'
'I know about your strange machines,' Myra said.
'The CIA told me all about them.' She tapped her
temple, smiling ironically. ' "I have detailed files." '
Nok-Yung caught the allusion. 'It is not The Ter-
minator, you know! Not - what was it in the films? -
Skynet. It is not... inimical.'
374 KEN MACLEOD
'Not now, perhaps. But what will it do, when it -
or you-have covered the world, like a banyan tree?'
Nok-Yung spat a puff of air and smoke. 'More
Luddism! The machines will form a benign human
environment, a second nature, within which human
nature can flourish, truly, for the first time.' He
leaned forward, speaking confidentially. 'Let me tell
you what we have done, something that no other
system would have dared to do. We have nanofac-
tured a virally distributed, genetically fixable version
of the anti-ageing treatment. It spreads before our
migrations like a benign plague. You may be already
infected, yourself. A gift.'
'God, that is so irresponsible!' Myra jolted rigid.
'Viruses mutate, dammit, in case you hadn't heard!'
Nok-Yung made a planing motion with his hand.
'Not this one. It has self-repair built in. It has tested
stable through a million virtual generations.'
' Virtual generations, yes! Man, you did enough de-
sign work in the camp to know what that's worth in
the real world!'
'Different system, different design philosophy,' he
said, with infuriating complacency. 'Our testing kits
are themselves part of the real world. It's like the
difference between a working scale model and a
simulation. There is simply no comparison. And the
computing resources are vast, vaster even than any-
thing the spacers have yet built.'
Myra felt her gaze sinking into the bottomless
pool of his self-confidence. It was truly terrifying; it
was, she realised, what she most feared for herself -
to be so sure. To be absolutely certain that she was
right would, as far as she was concerned, be the end
of her. Doubt was her only hope, her comfort and
companion since childhood, her scepticism her sole
security.
THE SKY ROAD 375
Shin Se-Ha returned and sat down, affecting not
to notice their frozen moment of mutual incompre-
hension. He looked at Myra, gravely, and shook his
head.
'No deal, I'm afraid.'
Myra could scarcely believe it.
'Why ever not? The alternative is to fight your way
through Kazakhstan! All you have to do instead is
not fight us! What more can you ask of us?'
Se-Ha shook his head sadly. 'It is not that, Myra,'
he said. 'It is not aggression, or animosity. It is sim-
ply the imperative of our mode of production. It will
be global or it will be nothing, as your Trotsky always
said. We have to keep running, or fall over, until we
meet ourselves, on the other side of the world.'
He saw this wasn't getting anywhere with her.
'More concretely,' he continued, 'we can't have ...
unassimilated areas within the Union. It would be
too much of an opportunity for our enemies. And
we can't stop for long, because that would force us
to engage in internal class struggle, particularly with
the small-property owners, which we do not want'
He smiled. To put it mildly! We have so far been
able to avoid the whole dictatorship of the proletar-
iat scenario by simply carrying the remaining small
and large businesses along with us. The machine-
based common-property economy expands, and
they expand in its interstices. They can live like nits
in our hair, as long as we are running. If we stopped,
the itch would be intolerable. We would have to . . .
scratch'
'Oh, come on,' said Myra. *You can run a mixed
economy indefinitely. We've been doing it in Kapi-
tsa for years.'
'A mixture of state capitalism and private, yes,'
said Nok-Yung, 'as you've just reminded me. A mix-
376 KEN MACLEOD
ture of a real non-commodity economy and a mar-
ket is much more unstable. Conflicts arise very
rapidly - if they're both confined to the same eco-
nomic space/
An unstable system, that had to expand at just the
right speed to stop itself falling over; not too slow,
or too fast. . . there were plenty of natural and ar-
tificial and social analogies to that. Myra almost gig-
gled at the thought of what would happen to them
if Kazakhstan just surrendered, if the Sheenisov sud-
denly found themselves pushing at an open door
and fell flat on their collective faces.
But that wasn't an option. She looked around,
checking that her guards were still bored and watch-
ful, then back at the two new recruits to the Sheen-
isov. The absurdity of the situation struck her - she
was doing diplomacy by just talking to two guys on
the street. For all she knew they could be as deluded
as UFO contactees, and not really ambassadors from
an alien intelligence at all. Again she felt the urge
to giggle - it was just another silly idea; she was feel-
ing light-headed, flighty, as though her problem
had been solved. She couldn't see any solution. She
was in deeper trouble than ever, but still she felt
relieved.
'There is a certain urgency to it,' Se-Ha was saying,
a litde apologetically. 'Green factions are experi-
menting with plague vectors. The spacer groups, the
Outwarders, have a radically post-human vision. Be-
tween them, they threaten humanity with extinction.
Our advance is in essence defensive . . .'
She looked sharply at him. 'Tell me, Se-Ha,' she
said, 'just who it was you consulted, back there.'
He looked uncomfortable. 'It was . . . a distrib-
uted decision. A consensus.'
''BuHlshitV she snapped. 'Don't give me that. I
THE SKY ROAD 377
didn't see a vote being taken in the streets around
here. Did you? So there must be a leadership some-
where, a council. I want to talk to it'
'You are talking to it,' he said, 'when you talk to
us. To the extent that it exists. The policy parame-
ters have indeed been set democratically, but the
implementation, the ... administrative decisions,
are made .. .' He chewed his lower lip. 'It's hard to
say,' he finished lamely.
'Let me guess,' said Myra, standing up. 'Expert
system. AI.'
Se-Ha looked up at her, eyes dark and blank un-
der his thin black brows. 'That is possible, yes.'
Myra straightened and sighed. She was convinced,
paranoically perhaps, that the mad preacher Jordan
had been right: the General, the Plan, was at the
bottom of all this, that it had implemented itself on
the Sheenisov's machine ecology and was in the pro-
cess of taking over the world. With the best inten-
tions, no doubt.
'God, yes, you're right,' she said. 'It's you or the
Outwarders. Both sides are like the fucking Borg.
'You will be assimilated" - isn't that what you're tell-
ing me?'
Nok-Yung shrugged. 'It's not something sinister.
We all live in the world machine. Why not live in a
world machine that is on our side?'
Myra had to smile. *You want me to imagine the
future,' she said, 'as socialism with a human face -
for ever?'
'Yes!' they both said, pleased that she'd got the
point at last.
It really would be hard to end this conversation
politely, but she would try.
'I'll take your message back to President Sulei-
378 KEN MACLEOD
manyov,' she said. 'No doubt you will await our re-
sponse.'
Se-Ha and Nok-Yung stood up and shook her
hand gravely.
'Goodbye,' she said.
'Goodbye,' they both said.
Se-Ha smiled mischievously. 'I hope I see you
again.'
They'd rented the plane, an executive jet that had
seen better days, in Almaty. Just as well; Myra could
not have borne to displace any passengers on the
commercial flights out of Semipalatinsk, standing
room only and a strict baggage allowance.
As soon as they were beyond Sheenisov airspace —
and Sheenisov jamming - Parvus made a priority
over-ride and poked his virtual head over the back
of the seat in front of her.
'Sorry about this, Myra,' the AI murmured. 'Ur-
gent messages.'
'Patch 'em through,' she said.
The message queue consisted of calls from Sulei-
manyov, Valentina Kozlova and someone with an
anonymous code identifier. She worked through
them one by one.
As soon as she blinked on the President's identi-
fier, he was through, live from his office. Various
aides and ministers hovered in the periphery of the
shot.
'Hello,' he said. 'Results?'
Myra grimaced. 'They're adamant that they won't
accept it I was as surprised as you are. In fact, I was
shocked. I have a suspicion that the secret of their
military and economic co-ordination is a military AI,
and that it is . . . calling the shots.'
Chingiz took this with unexpected aplomb.
THE SKY ROAD 379
'It was worth trying,' he said. He waved his hand,
downwards. 'However, the Sheenisov are no longer
our most immediate problem.'
'What's happened?'
He smiled wryly. 'As we expected. It's all gone
public now - everyone knows about the nukes. Our
generous offers to the United States, and to other
countries, have been referred up to the UN - and
referred back to the Security Council, for immedi-
ate action. We are to turn over our nuclear weapons
to forces under UN authority within twenty-four
hours - twenty-three and a half, now - or face aerial
and space attack. Specifically, on Kapitsa, which they
have rightly identified as the focus of the problem.
After Kapitsa, Almaty.'
Myra thought for a moment that the virtual view
had gone monochrome, and that the plane had
turned over. Then everything was normal again.
'If they carry through their threat against Kapitsa -
well, I would hope for air support.' She smiled wanly.
'But please, Chingiz. Don't let them ruin Almaty.'
'I have no intention of letting them do that,' he
said. 'I suggest you return to Kapitsa. You have prob-
lems of your own. Evacuate the town, if you can. Let
them hit an empty shell. We'll send transport and
cavalry.'
'Cavalry?'
'For . . . internal security. The stand-off around
the government building is very tense.' He glanced
away. 'Your own Defence Minister is trying to get
through to you. She can explain the situation better
than I can. Goodbye for now.'
'Goodbye, Chingiz.'
Before taking the next call, Myra turned to Nurup
and Mustafa.
380 KEN MACLEOD
'We're diverting to Kapitsa,' she said. *I may be
going into a very volatile situation. Street violence,
at least. And possible bombing, maybe up to nuclear
level. This is not what I hired you for. We can drop
you off at Karaganda first, if you wish.'
The two mujahedin looked deeply offended.
'Our job is to keep you safe until you return to
Almaty, or until you tell us to go,' Nurup said.
'OK,' she said. 'I'm telling you to go.'
She reached for the intercom toggle. Mustafa was
out of his seat in an instant, and placed a hand
across the switch. His expression and tone were
apologetic. 'We stay,' he said. 'It's God's will.'
And a matter of honour too, she guessed.
'Kapitsa it is, then,' she said.
The two men beamed at her as though she had
done them a favour. Perhaps she had; they probably
believed she'd just issued them two free passes to
heaven. There were times when she envied the de-
vout.
As the plane banked around she took the call from
Valentina. This one was v-mail, recorded in one of
the offices in the government building. Behind Val-
entina, men with Kalashnikovs lurked at windows.
Bureaucrats turned desks into makeshift barricades.
Somebody was operating a byte-shredder, wiping
computer memories, setting up a blizzard of inter-
ference.
'Hi, Myra, hope this gets through. Jesus, did you
hear that the nuke thing's all over the media? We've
got news collectors - warm bodies as well as re-
motes - coming in all the time, and the demonstra-
tors are acting up for them so they can watch them-
selves being heroic on CNN. Fucking classic media
feedback howl. The nuke thing has really freaked a
lot of them out - in all the factions, the lefty head-
THE SKY ROAD 381
bangers and the pro-UN types and the fucking spa-
cists. Not to mention our very own patriots. Our
agents in the crowd - hell, even the reporters — are
picking up talk about storming the building. We
want you back as soon as you can; we'll have a militia
driver on standby at the airport.'
The message was time-stamped at 1.35 p.m., and
it was now 2.50. Myra blinked up a split-screen of
television news channels while taking the third call.
The seatbelt light came on; the aeroplane was be-
ginning its descent to Kapitsa. Thank God for ultra-
precise radio tuning - Myra could remember when
you couldn't even take a call in level flight. The pi-
lot's voice was raised slightly as he argued with air-
traffic control for precedence, throwing diplomatic
weight and Kazakh curses about equally. Myra looked
out of the window. More aircraft than usual - hastily
hired jets, she guessed - were parked beside the run-
ways. The media circus was in town.
Her anonymous caller flickered into view.
'Jason!'
The CIA agent gave her a tense smile, but warm
around the eyes. 'Hello, Myra. Good to see you.
Wow, you look amazing. Just in time for your global
stardom, huh?'
4
Hah!'
'Almost as much excitement as the coup. Anyway
... I'm here to tell you that we've got somewhere
with the investigation.'
Undercarriage down, thump.
'What - oh, Georgi's—'
*Yup. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Myra, but -
shit, we got this out of the black labs, it's bleeding-
edge stuff. We did an autopsy on a goddamn cell
sample - don't ask how we got it'
382 KEN MACLEOD
A bump, a rocking forward, another bump, and
the incline of deceleration.
'The point is, Myra, we found traces of a very spe-
cific, very subtle bit of nanotech. It's not exactly a
poison, that's the clever thing. It builds up into a
little machine, then disintegrates when it's done its
job. We found a few gear trains, but that was
enough.'
The aircraft came to a halt and the seatbelt light
went off. The door banged open and the steps an-
gled down. Myra stood up and shuffled forward, be-
hind Nurup and in front of Mustafa, still talking and
listening. She waved absently to the pilot, left him a
handful of gold coins as a bonus. She was thinking
ahead.
'Enough for what?'
'Enough to identify it. It's a spacer assassination
weapon. A heart-stopper.'
A heart-stopper. Yes. It was that.
She blinked away the floating image of Jason to
concentrate on her surroundings. No signs of actual
incoming fire. She followed Nurup towards the ter-
minal building, about a hundred metres away. Ja-
son's voice in her head continued.
'So there's no doubt any more - it was murder.
Now, there's no proof the space movement had a
hand in it, beyond supplying the weapon, but the
circumstantial evidence is kind of strong.'
You could say that,' Myra agreed, making a con-
scious effort to unclench her jaw. Having her sus-
picions confirmed after all this time of indulging
then dismissing them was a shock.
Fucking heart attack. . .
'They don't exactly throw that sort of kit around,'
she mused aloud. 'Too easy to reverse-engineer, for
one thing. But why would they do it?'
THE SKY ROAD 383
Through the long corridor, letting Nurup and
Mustafa do the lookout. Out of the corner of her
eye she could see the adjacent, outbound corridor,
packed from end to end with a slow-moving queue.
'Well, the obvious motive would've been to stop
him making the offer to the Kazakhstanis.'
4
And how do you know about that?'
*Uh, that's classified.'
Myra had to laugh.
'But how would they have known about it, I mean
before—?'
'You tell me.'
They'd reached the concourse. It wasn't quite as
crowded or frantic as she'd begun to expect; most
of those intent on leaving must have already left, or
at least be in the exit queue. Much to her relief, no
newshounds or reporters had spotted her yet,
though she identified one or two by their flak-
jackets and communications clutter and vaguely fa-
miliar faces. Scanning the crowd, she saw a man in
the uniform of the Workers' Militia, who caught her
eye, saluted and started pushing towards her.
'It was as much of a surprise to everyone else in
the government as it was to me,' she said. 'We fig-
ured it was Georgi's own bright idea, which he'd
spring on us once he'd got some provisional - oh!'
Mustafa bumped into her back.
Jason waved to her, over heads.
'You never told me you were hereV
*Yeah, well. .. thought I'd surprise you.'
It was strange seeing his lips move, and hearing
the words, beyond earshot. Like lip-reading, like te-
lepathy.
'Who is that guy?' Nurup asked suspiciously.
'He's OK,' said Myra. She wasn't sure whether in-
384 KEN MACLEOD
troducing Jason as a CIA agent would be a good
idea, so she didn't.
And then they met up, and to everyone's surprise
she and Jason met in a long embrace.
Jesus, man!'
She broke loose and turned to the militia driver.
'Thanks for coming. Room for these three guys?'
The driver nodded. 'This way please.'
He led them to a service door which Myra knew
she must have passed hundreds of times and never
seen. Their progress was less inconspicuous - the
two muj weren't the only armed passengers, but they
were the most noticeable. As the driver fiddled with
the push-bar latch Myra noticed heads bob and a
little buzzing camcopter swoop from the con-
course's rafters.
They hurried along a passageway of corrugated
iron and unplaned, splintery joists, and emerged be-
side a jeep in a small bay of the car park.
'Ah, now that's sensible transport,' Myra said as
they all piled in. The Militia jeep had a light
machine-gun mounted on its rollbar. Mustafa made
that his post. Nurup sat in the front with the driver,
rifle propped in the crook of his elbow, pointing
up. Myra and Jason sat in the back, with Mustafa's
legs and the ammo belt between them. As the jeep
careered out of the carpark and swerved on to the
main road into town, Jason leaned over and said,
loud above the noise and the slipstream, *You were
saying?'
'About Georgi's great plan, yeah. As far as we can
tell he never told anyone else, not even Valentina.
That was him all over - he was a bit of a Kazakhstani
patriot, and he still tended to act like this whole
place was his personal fief. Which it once was!'
The jeep was making good progress - most of the
THE SKY ROAD 385
traffic was in the other direction, towards the airport
or — judging by the amounts of luggage and house-
hold goods piled on top of cars and trucks - towards
Karaganda. Her relief at seeing the evacuation al-
ready under way was dampened by flashback images
of other roads, other columns of vehicles: the road
to Basra, the road out of Warsaw, the perimeter of
Atlanta. . .
But no, not here! They had their own air cover -
Kazakhstan's elite aerospace defence force would
surely shield these refugees. She thought briefly of
setting up a conference call with Valentina and
Chingiz, but decided against it. This conversation
with Jason was the most urgent she could have right
now, for reasons that were more than personal.
'OK,' Jason was saying, 'as to the motive, right,
did anyone else approach you for some kind of sim-
ilar deal, after Georgi's death but before the coup?'
'Only the fucking space movement!' She swal-
lowed hard. 'David Reid himself, at Georgi's fu-
neral.'
'Jesus H. That kind of fingers them, doesn't it?'
Myra found the question of who knew about what
bugging her.
'Well, there's a problem with that,' she said.
'Whoever killed Georgi, or had him killed, must
have known that that would make us suspicious of
the spacers. I mean, even before you found the ev-
idence, I had them in the frame. And it's a bit hard
to reconstruct now, you know how it is, but when I
refused to give Dave any hands-off guarantees, let
alone any more . . . active support, well, that suspi-
cion must have been in the scales. Might even have
tipped them.'
Mustafa shouted something and brought the
machine-gun down and around to the rear. Myra
386 KEN MACLEOD
shifted her legs smartly away from the ammo belt
and twisted her head around. Five hundred metres
behind them was a small, jockeying pack of cars and
jeeps, in front of a cloud of dust and beneath a halo
of camcopters. She clapped Mustafa's thigh.
'Leave them alone!' she yelled.
He replied with some Uzbek profanity, but de-
sisted, swinging the machine-gun muzzle skyward
again.
'So you're saying killing Georgi was counter-
productive for the spacers?'
'Damn right!'
'OK.' Jason leaned back in the cramped seat and
closed his eyes for a moment. 'Cui bono? Who ben-
efited?'
'Ah, shit,' said Myra, realizing, just as the jeep
turned the corner into Revolution Square, and
stopped. Myra grabbed the rollbar and pulled her-
self up. Long practice in estimating the size of de-
mos clicked into place automatically, like eyeband
software.
About ten thousand.
'Oh, Jeez,' she said.
It was not a particularly militant or angry crowd,
at that moment. Tents and shelters and stalls had
been set up, and many of the banners were propped
against them or leaning on street furniture, or stuck
in the patches of now trampled grass or beds of
flowers that chequered the square. People stood or
sat about, in small groups, chatting, drinking coffee,
reading news off broadsheets or eyebands or han-
dhelds, listening to speeches and songs, arguing
with each other or with the scattered ones and twos
of the Workers' Militia. Some were dressed casually,
others in their best outfits or in national costumes
or street-theatre radiation overalls.
THE SKY ROAD 387
'Looks pretty dangerous,' said Jason.
She gave him an appreciative nod. 'Yeah, that's a
mass demo if ever I saw one. Not to mention a big
fraction of the remaining population. Shit'
The kids back in Glasgow had been right: her
small state was having a big political revolution. The
two mujahedin glowered uncomprehendingly at the
mingled banners of Kazakhstan, the ISTWR, the old
Soviet Union, the International, the red flags and
the black.
She ducked and placed a hand on Nurup's shoul-
der.
'Stand up,' she ordered. 'Look cheerful. Wave
your rifle high above your head. Mustafa, for
heaven's sake smile, man, wave your arms and keep
your hands off the LMG. No matter what, you got
that?'
To the driver, 'Around the inside edge of the
crowd, towards the entrance. Slow and careful.'
She lifted herself up, swung her ass around and
perched on the rollbar, feet on the back of Nurup's
seat. The driver engaged first gear, then second.
The jeep rolled towards the corner of the front of
the building. It had about fifty metres to go, then
another fifty when it would have to turn right and
inch along to the entrance. They went unremarked
for about half a minute. Then the people stepping
out of their way started calling and pointing. A mo-
ment later the pursuing reporters caught up and all
chance of discretion was gone.
She could see the news of her arrival spread
through the crowd like a gust of wind on a field.
The camcopters circled at a safe distance, zooming
in on her and on reaction shots of the people look-
ing at her. Their only chance, she'd decided, was to
look confident and triumphant She grinned and
388 KEN MACLEOD
waved, meanwhile blinking up a call to Valentina.
'You can see us?'
Yeah, we've got you covered. We'll open the door
for you when you reach it.'
Cheers and jeers echoed off the government of-
fice's glass and concrete walls. No organised chant-
ing or coherent mood as yet - people were still
unsure what to make of her return. She smiled des-
perately at every individual face that came into fo-
cus, and quite a few smiled back. The hovering
camcopters had their directional mikes aimed at
her, but she didn't speak to, or for, them.
'It's all right, folks, comrades, we're getting it all
sorted out, we've got a strong alliance with Kazakhs-
tan, we're negotiating with the UN and we'll hold
off the Sheenisov, I'll be talking to you all soon,
once I've had a chance to consult—'
The jeep came to a gentle halt outside the main
door. Myra glanced sideways, saw a couple of mili-
tiamen holding it, ready to open, their rifles in their
other hands.
'Go in, guys, all of you, I'll keep talking.'
They hesitated.
'Go go go!'
One by one they ran up the steps and disap-
peared inside. Myra stepped from the seat-back to
the dash, over the windshield and on to the engine
hood, then hopped backwards on to a step, keeping
in view all the time. She backed up the steps, smiling
and waving, and through the doors.
Jason's arms wrapped around her from behind.
'Well done.'
She leaned against him for a moment, tilting her
head back on his shoulder, then straightened up
and stepped away, turning to smile.
'That was scary.' She laughed. 'It's weird being
THE SKY ROAD 389
the target of a demonstration - I feel I should be out
there helping to organise it.'
Jason's eyes narrowed. 'That,' he said, 'might be-
come an option.'
'Ah, fuck off, you Machiavellian spook!' She
caught his hand, swept an encircling arm at Nurup
and Mustafa. 'Come on, guys, let's sort out this
mess.'
They held the emergency meeting in Myra's office
whose broad window overlooked the square. Denis
Gubanov had suggested using the Sovnarkom room,
but Myra had dismissed the security man's idea. No
way did she want to be in a windowless room.
Everybody was sitting on or lounging against in-
appropriate furniture - desks and filing cabinets
and comms junctions. Myra perched herself on the
highest convenient surface, the top of a book-case
full of unread yellowing hardcopy. She cradled her
Glock in her lap. Somehow sitting in a chair seemed
frivolous. Two militia guards stood watchfully at the
sides of the windows, using their eyebands to sample
camcopter views from the news services. Andrei Mu-
khartov, Valentina Kozlova and Denis Gubanov all
looked sleepless and unkempt: the men unshaven,
Val's collar and tie loosened, her uniform rumpled.
Myra introduced the two mujahedin and Jason.
Denis raised his eyebrows, but made no comment.
Myra unobtrusively made sure that her three men
were in a position to protect her - she wasn't at all
sure who, if any, of those present were leaving the
room alive, whether or not the room was stormed
by an angry mob. She'd once interviewed an unre-
pentant old Stalinist who'd been in the Budapest
Party offices in October 1956 ...
'OK, comrades,' she began. 'First things first. You
390 KEN MACLEOD
know the Western powers have refused our offers.
I've just today been on the shortest diplomatic mis-
sion ever, and I can tell you the Sheenisov aren't
interested in a deal either. So it's only a question of
time before they're rolling down the road from Se-
mey. But that's just background. We have some ur-
gent matters to discuss.
'I'm going to start with something that may not
seem like the first item on the agenda, but bear with
me.' She waved a hand at the window. 'These peo-
ple can wait. It's about Georgi's death. Jason Niko-
laides here has told me the results of a CIA
investigation - murder, using a spacer nanotech
weapon. Hard to detect traces, but Jason says they've
done it, and I believe him. What I don't believe is
that the spacist bastards did it. Whoever did it
wanted two things - one, that Georgi's offer didn't
get through to the Kazakhstanis before the coup.
Two, that we wouldn't co-operate with the space
movement in the coup. Now, seeing as nobody ex-
cept Georgi knew he was planning to make that of-
fer, our range of suspects is a bit narrow. Basically,
it has to be someone that Georgi would run the idea
past, someone outside the government information
loop - maybe in the Sovnarkom, maybe not'
She looked down, playing with the Glock's slide
for a moment, then looked up. She'd been thinking
aloud, she hadn't had time yet to go through all the
possibilities.
'Val!' she shouted. Everybody jumped. 'If I
thought it was you, I'd slam you against the wall till
your teeth rattled to get the truth out of you. You
and Georgi were both in the Party, unlike anyone
else here.'
She smiled, pleased to see her colleagues off bal-
ance. 'But as it happens, I trust you. Same with An-
THE SKY ROAD 391
drei, who's never been into that sort of shit anyway.
Denis, now—'
The secret policeman looked up and moistened
his lips.
T swear, Myra—'
Tt's all right,' Jason interrupted. 'The Company
checked him out. He's clear.' He glanced at Myra,
then grinned at Denis Gubanov. 'Bit of a commie
son-of-a-bitch, but he's on your side.'
'Good,' said Myra, winging it. 'I'm going through
this to confirm that nobody here is a suspect. That
leaves only one possibility. Georgi must have shared
his idea with somebody, and it can only have been
the FI Mil Org. The General.'
She let them think about that while she explained
to Jason, Nurup and Mustafa about the nukes and
the AI.
'It has its own agenda,' she concluded, address-
ing everyone again. 'And it's working through the
Sheenisov. It wants those nukes, very badly. So do
the spacers. Whether they used each other - the infor-
mation on one side, the weapon from the other -
knowingly or not, Georgi's murder was a move in
that rivalry. Whoever controls these weapons has a
gun at the head of everyone and everything in Earth
orbit and at Lagrange - which adds up to about
ninety-five percent of the human space presence.
And I would remind you that, thanks to the coup
and counter-coup, the General controls most of the
Space Defense battlesats. Now, this has a bearing on
what we do about the UN ultimatum. Which is ' she
grinned ferally ' - the second item on the agenda.'
'Excuse me,' said Jason, standing up. 'Just who
does control these nukes, at the moment?'
'We do,' said Valentina and Myra, at the same
time. Myra gave Val an especially warm smile, hop-
392 KEN MACLEOD
ing that her apparent - and partly paranoically real —
earlier suspicion hadn't wounded their friendship
beyond repair.
'It's dual key,' Valentina explained. 'Defence Min-
ister and Prime Minister have to go into the
command-center workspace at the same time.'
'And, well, it's not hardcoded in, but right now
obviously we have a treaty commitment to give the
President of Kazakhstan the final say,' Myra added.
'And his strategy, at the moment, is to stonewall un-
til the last minute, to try and get some military aid
concessions out of the Western powers and/or the
UN against the Sheenisov.'
'So he intends to turn them over eventually?' Ja-
son asked.
Myra hesitated. 'OK,' she said at last. 'This doesn't
go beyond this room, and that goes for everyone
here. You guys at the window, too - military disci-
pline, death penalty under the Freedom of Infor-
mation Law if you breathe a word of it. Everybody
clear?'
They all were.
'All right then - yes, he does intend for us to turn
them over, eventually. What else can we do?'
'We can use the weapons,' said Denis. 'In space.'
Val's lips set in a thin line. Myra shook her head.
'Massacre,' she said. 'I won't do it, except as a last
resort'
'You're all missing the point,' said Jason. He
looked around at all of them, as though unsure
whether he had a right to speak.
'Go on,' said Myra.
'OK,' said Jason, 'I'm just speaking for myself
here, not for the CIA or East America. I don't know
if I'll ever get back to either of them. Anyway . . . the
point you're all missing is: who are you going to sur-
THE SKY ROAD 393
render your weapons to? Formally, no doubt, it'll
be the UN. But physically, somebody's gonna have
to dock with them, bring them in, disarm them.
Space Defense, and maybe some of the space set-
tlers, have the equipment and expertise to do that.
There must be ways of getting past the software
of your controls - there always are. Believe me,
there are no uncrackable codes any more. Your co-
operation would be useful, but it's not essential.'
Myra lit a cigarette. 'OK,' she said. 'So?'
Jason paced over to the window, peered out. 'Still
quiet,' he said. He glanced at his watch. 'We've been
in here, what? Half an hour? Soon be time to talk
to the people, Myra.'
'That's cool,' Denis said. 'We've got agitators out
there, they're keeping people more or less up to
speed. The line is that the President is negotiating.'
'As I'm sure he is,' said Jason. 'But what does ei-
ther side have to negotiate? Both sides have hit the
bottom of the tank. You have nothing to offer, and
the West has nothing to offer you. They will not save
you from the Sheenisov. So if I were any of the other
players - in particular, the spacers and your FI Mil
Org, rogue AI or not - I'd be working very fast right
now on two objectives. One is taking you guys and
your wonderful dual-key command-centre out phys-
ically. The other is lining up rendezvous with the
nukes in space. You can bet that while you think
you're smart, stringing them along, they are string-
ing you along, and they're both going after the same
things.'
He looked around again, more confident now.
'This is endgame. Not just for us, but for them. One
side or the other - the West-stroke-spacers-stroke-
Outwarders, or the East-stroke-the-General-stroke-
394 KEN MACLEOD
Sheenisov - is going to grab these weapons and use
them, sooner rather than later.'
'But—' shouted Val, shocked. 'The ablation cas-
cade!'
'Not a problem for either of them, at the level
we're talking about. The Sheenisov's horizons are
strictly Earthbound, for the next few centuries. And
their computers are invulnerable to EMP hits-
they're mechanical, not electronic. As to the spacists
and the Mil Org, neither of them is dependent on
going back to Earth, or on anything else getting off.
And each unit of these forces probably calculates
that they can cut and run for a higher orbit, or La-
grange. Of course, they'd rather avoid it, but if they
have to they'll take it on the chin.
'So my advice to you all,' he concluded, 'and to
those people out there, is get the hell out And warn
everybody that at the first sign of any messing with
you, or Kazakhstan, or the nukes - you'll blow them
all to hell. Use the nukes against battlesats or deto-
nate in place - either way you'll set off the ablation
cascade.'
'Christ,' said Myra, shaken. 'That means the end
of satellite guidance, global positioning, comsats,
the nets, everything! It'll be like the world going
blind!'
*Yeah,' said Jason grimly. 'And every army in the
world, too. They're so dependent on space-based
comms and sims that they'll be fucked. Except for
the marginals, the Greens, the barbarians and the
Sheenisov.' He laughed. 'If that doesn't scare them,
nothing will.'
The guards at the window were moving from the
sides to the centre, gazing out with complete lack
of concern for cover. One of them turned around.
'The cavalry has arrived,' he said.
THE SKY ROAD 395
For a moment Myra thought he meant the Sheen-
isov. Then she realised that Chingiz had come
through on his promise, and that the cavalry was
their own.
The steppe at nightfall was a moving mass of vehi-
cles and horses. As far as Myra knew, every last per-
son in Kapitsa was moving out. She rode somewhere
near the front; she tried to ride at the front, but she
kept being overtaken by people in vehicles faster
than her black mare. The Sovnarkom rump, and
Jason and her mujahedin, rode in jeeps beside her.
With her eyeband image-intensifiers at full power
she could see the Kazakhstani cavalry - horse and
motorised - outriding either flank of the evacua-
tion, or migration. The scene was biblical, exodus
and apocalypse in one. Banners and flags from the
Revolution Square demonstration floated above the
crowd, used as rallying points and mobile land-
marks. The news remotes and reporters were follow-
ing the process in a sort of stunned awe, not sure
whether the angle was Road People (refugees, pa-
thetic) or Kazakh Rouge (menaces, fanatic).
Something similar, though not as yet so drastic,
was happening in Almaty and other towns across the
greater Republic. Chingiz Suleimanyov had pitched
the appeal to evacuate as the ultimate protest
march, against the West's threats and its refusal of
aid against the Sheenisov. If they were to be aban-
doned to the communists, they had nothing to lose
by fleeing in advance to a place that claimed it
would be defended. The threat of this avalanching
into an unstoppable migration was already spread-
ing panic in Western Europe. Northward, in the
Former Union, regional and local chiefs were con-
396 KEN MACLEOD
ferring on their own fragmentary networks, bruiting
inflammatory talk of joining in.
'Come in, come in, ya bastard,' Myra muttered.
She was riding in a hallucinatory ambience of virtual
images, some of them pulled down from CNN and
other services, others patched up from the command-
centre, whose hardware they'd stripped from the of-
fices and jury-rigged in the back of the Sovnarkom
jeep. She could see a satellite image of herself from
above - she could wave, and with a second's delay
see one of the dots on the ground wave back. (The
reassuring thing was that it was the wrong dot, a
hologram fetch of herself and her surroundings
seamlessly merged with the images from several kil-
ometres distant.) She could see her own face, pro-
jected to visual displays around the world by the
camcopter hovering a few metres in front of her.
Right now she was trying to raise Logan. A resid-
ual loyalty to her former comrades in space im-
pelled her to warn them of the probable imminent
disaster. The scanning search of the Lagrange clus-
ter wasn't picking up New View. At length, frus-
trated, she switched to a broader sweep, and to her
surprise connected almost immediately.
'Jesus fuck, Myra,' Logan said, without prelimi-
nary pleasantry. 'This is your biggest fuck-up since
the Third World War.' He didn't make it sound like
an accusation.
'Thanks for the reminder, comrade,' Myra snarled.
'I'm going against my better judgement telling you
this, but I've fallen out with your General. That little
electric fucker has had the bright idea of making
his own bid for world revolution, and I don't intend
to wait around to see how it all works out in practice,
thank you very much.'
THE SKY ROAD 397
Tes, I had heard,' Logan said heavily. The delay
seemed longer than usual; Myra guessed because
she was strung out, running on stretched time. 'You
called to say that?' He sounded distracted. A very
pretty black girl who looked about ten years old
stuck her face past his, grimacing at the camera, fill-
ing its field with her microgravity sunburst of frizzy
hair. Logan shoved at her.
'Oh, push off, Ellen May,' he said, not unkindly.
'Go and pester your mum, OK? Or Janis. She'll have
something for you to do, you bet.'
The girl stuck out her tongue, then flicked away
like a fish.
'Kids,' Logan grinned, indulgent despite himself.
'Yeah, they're great,' Myra said, with a pang.
'What I called you for is about that, actually. If that
kid's gonna have a future, you guys better get your
ass out of Lagrange.'
'We have,' said Logan, five seconds later. 'We
raced through our preparations after the coup. We
haven't got as much gear as we'd like, but the as-
teroid miners are going to swing in and join us
there. We finished the burn twelve hours ago.' He
looked about. 'Made a real mess of stuff I didn't
have time to lash down,' he added sadly.
^You're on your way to Mars?'
'Yes, at last.' His grin filled the screen. 'Free at
last!'
'What does the General think about this?'
'Ah,' said Logan. 'When I found it was bidding to
use your orbital nukes in the coup, I figured the
same as you did. Not safe to stick around. You re-
member I said we'd have to leave a few hundred
tons behind? Well, it's among them, still in the clut-
ter at Lagrange. We ditched the bugger.' His tri-
398 KEN MACLEOD
umphant smile faded to a bleak inward gaze. 'I
hope.'
Ts it still in control of the Mil Org?'
'I guess so. We couldn't do anything to it, beyond
discarding the section the hardware was in. Its soft-
ware is a different matter, it gets everywhere, but,
hell—'
'What do you mean "it gets everywhere"? I've got
a suspicion it's downloaded to the Sheenisov's weird
Babbage engines, but—'
Logan nodded. Teah, and it's probably copied its
files to anything of yours that's been in contact with
it, like your phone, but it's just the source code, it
can't do any harm so long as you don't open the
file—'
At that point the connection ended.
Myra took her phone from her pocket and was
about to jerk its jack from her eyeband, just in case,
when she realised the precaution was irrational. If
the bugger was actually running on her phone they
were doomed already. She thought about the time
the General had appeared right in her own
command-centre, and could only hope that Logan
was right, and that only its source code, and not its
live program, had been secreted there. And in other
places.. .
Someday, somebody would open a file stored in
the Institute at Glasgow, and find Parvus, and the
General behind him. She wished that person luck.
Then she remembered Menial MacClafferty, and
realised she'd have to do more.
She had just finished rattling out her urgent mes-
sage when she heard a dull, distant bang behind
her, and turned. Through the eyeband's night vi-
sion she saw on the horizon the expanding green
THE SKY ROAD 399
glow of the first cruise missile to hit Kapitsa. It
was not the last.
Hours later, in the twenty-below midnight, when
most of the migration had camped around fuel-
dump fires, Myra was sitting with Jason in front of
a portable electric brazier, in the shelter of the doz-
ing horse. She was simultaneously in the command-
centre with the others, and with Chingiz. The UN
and US had never intended to negotiate, and even
the pretence had been dropped.
The Kazakhstani airforce was expending missiles,
planes and lives above Almaty now. From space the
command-centre was pulling down images of moves
from the battlesats. Tiny, manned hunter-gatherer
probes were burning off, matching orbits and veloc-
ities with the cached nukes. They had hunter-killer
escorts, and they were obviously from opposed co-
alitions - already their exchanges of fire were being
replayed on CNN, now that the Kapitsa bombard-
ment had stopped for lack of remaining targets.
' . . . no choice,' Chingiz was saying. 'Our first re-
sponsibility is to defend our people, the people
we've taken on the duty to protect, even if that
means killing more innocent people on the other
side than would die on ours if we don't.'
That's talking, thought Myra, that's the way to
look at it, that's right. Screw the greatest good of
the greatest number. Or maybe not.
'That's the end of the world,' said Valentina.
'It's ending anyway,' Myra said. She looked up
from the fire. 'That's my final analysis! We may even
save lives in the long run, if we blind and cripple
the forces that are getting ready for the last war.'
She laughed bitterly. 'In both senses of the phrase.'
An officer leaned into the visual field around
400 KEN MACLEOD
Chingiz, and spoke urgently in his ear. Chingiz nod-
ded, once, then raised his hand.
This is it/ he said. 'Some of the space settlers'
diamond ships have just entered the atmosphere.
They're heading for—'
Connection lost.
Myra jumped up, and to her utter horror and
amazement she saw them, jinking and jittering
through the sky towards her. Their infrared radia-
tion signature was arrogantly clear - they didn't
need to bother with shielding, unlike the stealth
fighters they resembled. One moment they were
dots on the horizon, the next they were discs over-
head, swooping past at a thousand metres. Their la-
ser lances slashed the vast encampment, and were
countered seconds too late by futile fusillades of sky-
ward machine-gun fire. Then they were at the other
horizon, and-
- banking around for a second run-
- screams of people and beasts in the night, dying
under the laser beams and the humming rain of
their own misdirected, falling ordnance-
Earth versus the flying saucers! Way cool!
Myra shook off that mad thought and reached for
the command-centre controls as though through
thick mud. Valentina's eyes shone in the firelight for
a moment, and Myra saw in them a reflection of her
own resolution. Then she and Valentina stooped to-
gether to their task. As Myra rattled through the
codes, she waited for the laser's hot tongue on her
neck.
The diamond ships were far too fast for human
control, or even for their enhanced, superhuman
occupants. Their main guidance systems were real-
time uplinks to the space stations, which a few good
nuclear explosions could disrupt.
THE SKY ROAD 401
The sky went white, and the black discs fell like
leaves.
The ablation cascade did not happen all at once.
Lagrange went to eternity instantaneously, in one
appalling sphere of hell-hot helium fusion, but
Earth orbit was a different thing. Hours, perhaps
days, would pass before the last product of human
ingenuity and industry was scraped from the sky.
Even so, the comsats were among the first to fail.
Most, indeed, were taken out by the electromagnetic
pulses alone. Riding into the first dawn of the new
world, Myra knew that the little camcopter dancing
a couple of metres in front of her might well be
relaying the last television news most of its watchers
would ever see.
Behind her, in a slow straggle that ended with the
ambulances and litters of the injured and dying, the
Kazakh migration spread to the horizon. The sun
was rising behind them, silhouetting their scattered,
tattered banners. There was only one audience,
now, that was worth speaking to: the inheritors.
'Nothing is written,' she said. 'The future is ours
to shape. When you take the cities, spare the sci-
entists and engineers. Whatever they may have done
in the past you need them for the future. Let's make
it a better one.'
The camcopter spun around, soared, darted
about wildly and dived into the ground. The horses'
hooves, the worn tyres of the vehicles, crushed it in
seconds. Myra wasn't worried; she could see her own
image, with a few seconds' delay, appearing in the
corner of her eyeband where CNN still chattered
away. The rest of the field was filled with bizarre
hallucinations, the net's near-death experience.
God filled the horizon, bigger than the sunrise.
15
THE HAMMER'S HARVEST
I sat on the plinth of the statue of the
Deliverer, and smoked a cigarette to fight my
stomach's heaves. Gradually my mind and my
body returned to some kind of equilibrium. The din
of the launch celebrations, the lights of the houses
and pubs, became again something I could regard
without disgust and hear without dismay. I stood
up, and the ground was steady under my feet. I
looked up, and the sky was dark and starry above
my head.
I walked a few steps from the statue and turned
around. The Deliverer on her horse reared above
me. Menial had told me, a couple of weeks earlier,
the reason why the Deliverer's features varied on all
the statues I'd ever seen. She was a myth, a multi-
plicity. Her hordes had never ridden from far Ka-
zakhstan to Lisbon's ancient shore, as the songs and
stories say. They had never swept all before them.
Instead, each town and city had been invaded by a
horde raised closer to home, on its very own hin-
terland. How many hundred, how many thousand
towns had met the new order in the form of a wild
THE SKY ROAD 403
woman on a horse, riding in at the head of a ragtag
army to proclaim that the net was thrown off, the
sky was fallen, and the world was free?
It was that final message, the last ever spoken
from the net and the screens, that had identified
them with that singular woman, the Deliverer. I
leaned forward, to read again the words chiselled
on this plinth, as it is on them all, from far Kazakhs-
tan to Lisbon's ancient shore:
NOTHING IS WRITTEN. THE FUTURE IS
OURS TO SHAPE. WHEN YOU TAKE THE
CITIES, SPARE THE SCIENTISTS AND EN-
GINEERS. WHATEVER THEY MAY HAVE
DONE IN THE PAST YOU NEED THEM FOR
THE FUTURE. LET'S MAKE IT A BETTER
ONE.
The last words of the old world, and the first of the
new.
I thought of Menial, and took another step back,
still drawing on my cigarette. She was older than I
had ever imagined possible. But she was also, I real-
ised, still as young as she'd seemed when I'd first
seen her. Nothing had changed, nothing could
change that lovely, eager, open personality. She was
not old, she had merely ... stayed young.
As I would.
What did I have to complain about?
I laughed at myself, at my own youthful folly. In
the long view of history, in the promise of a long
life to come, the difference in our chronological
age, however great, could only be insignificant.
A step, a swish, a scent. Her warm, dry hand
clasped mine.
'Are you all right, Clovis?'
404 KEN MACLEOD
I turned and looked at her, and drew her towards
the plinth. We sat down.
'Menial,' I said, 'I know who you are.'
'Oh,' she said. 'And who am I?'
I handed her the booklet, open at the page.
She sat for a long moment looking down at it,
with a slight smile and a slowly welling tear.
'Ah, fuck,' she said. 'Everybody else there is long
gone, as far as I know. But maybe I wouldn't know,
as they wouldn't know about me.' She sniffed, and
handed the booklet back. 'So now you know. I never
wanted to be what people would expect of me, if
they knew.'
'But you are,' I said. You knew about the AI, and
you expected Fergal to do what he did. I saw your
face when he said it, and it was like you'd just
cracked a piece of white logic'
'Or black! Aye, I knew. The Deliverer told me
about it herself, just before the end. She warned me
that it was a dangerous thing, though benign ac-
cording to its lights. Like Fergal!'
'But why did you give it to him?'
Menial leaned back and looked up. 'Because the
deadly debris is up there, colha Gree. I know what
happened at the Deliverance, because I lived
through it. I saw the flashes. I was there when the
sky fell. I knew the ship would never get through
without a much better guidance system than the one
I was working on - well, I knew by the time I'd fin-
ished testing it, which was not that long ago. I
needed someone to find the AI under cover of seek-
ing something else, and I needed someone who'd
put it on the ship - for good reasons or bad.'
She lowered her gaze and smiled. 'So here we are.
And now it's you who has to decide, mo grdidh. That
ship's success will stimulate others, from other lands
THE SKY ROAD 405
as well, from the Oriental and the Austral states.
Competition between companies and continents,
great revolutions to come, and the sky road before
us. If it's not launched, or its new mind is ripped
out and it fails, or if indeed the AI is not smart
enough to save it, then it'll be a long time before
it's tried again. And the next to try might not be as
benevolent as the International Scientific Society. It
could be an army, or an empire.'
She grabbed my shoulders and gazed at me. 'If
you walk in there and tell Druin and his boys, that's
what could still happen.'
I closed my eyes. T can see that,' I said, 'but I'm
more concerned about the power Fergal, or some-
one like him, might have.'
'Open your eyes,' Menial said.
She was looking very serious. 'That thing, the AI,
the planner, it can only do what people let it tell
them to do. Fergal said there are no such people
yet. What he should have said is, there are no such
people any more. Your people, colha Gree, they are
not the types to let themselves be ordered about by
communists - because they have never been or-
dered about by anyone!'
'Ah!' I said, suddenly understanding. 'Because of
the Deliverance, and the Deliverer!'
Menial laughed.
" 'No saviours from on high deliver",' she said
wryly. *Your people delivered themselves. That's an-
other thing I saw, and I'll tell you about one day. If
you're still with me.'
'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I'm still with you.'
'Good,' she said. 'We have a lot to do and a long
time to do it in.'
She looked around pointedly. The square was
jumping.
406 KEN MACLEOD
'So, colha Gree, are you going to ask me for a
dance?'
'Of course/ I said. 'Would you do me the hon-
our?'
For a second before we whirled away I stared at
the scene before me, fixing it in my memory. Be-
hind the statue Mars was rising, a blue-green dot in
the East. Whatever became of the ship, whether it
soared to a safe orbit or was blasted to smithereens,
other ships would get out there somehow, on the
sky road.
Whatever the truth about the Deliverer, she will
remain in my mind as she was shown on that statue,
and all the other statues and murals, songs and sto-
ries: riding, at the head of her own swift cavalry, with
a growing migration behind her and a decadent,
vulnerable, defenceless and rich continent ahead;
and, floating bravely above her head and above her
army, the black flag on which nothing is written.