Lie of the Land

by Michael F. Russell

  Carl did as he was told.

  Eddie put on a pair of rubber gloves, then set to work. From the open case he unwound two thin black wires that ended in crocodile clips. Under the bonnet he grunted and footled about in the guts of the engine.

  ‘So how’s life treating you, Eddie?’

  ‘Could be worse. Countermeasures is the place to be.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  With a bit of effort, Eddie found the contacts and attached the clips. ‘It puts food on the table.’

  ‘How’s the family?’

  ‘Still giving me grief, but I wouldn’t change them for the world.’

  ‘That true?’

  ‘I’m always open to offers.’ Eddie grinned. ‘But so far none have come in.’ He touched the screen in the little black case, some kind of meter, and watched the results. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now. I’ve inserted an impedance circuit into the RF tracker, to create a feedback current. Wait until you’re past the emergency perimeter and out near Loch Lomond. Keep an eye on your bars and when you hit a notspot keep above forty and switch the engine off for a couple of seconds, then back on. You might smell a bit of burning, but don’t worry. It’s only the RF tracker circuit shorting. If you get stopped by CivCon, which is highly unlikely outside the cities, it’s just a burned-out circuit and you had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Nice one,’ said Carl. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Thank Eric, he paid for it. He must have friends on the board.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I suppose he must . . . if only you could give me a new ID.’

  ‘There’re guys that can do that for you, no bother. But I doubt if the paper’s budget will stretch to it. CivCon are sharp, but not as sharp as they think. There’re ways round most things, even who you are. So what’s the scoop, scoop?’

  ‘Not sure. A tip-off. It might be nothing.’

  Eddie handed over the ignition key. ‘The usual, then. This should get you up north and back. There’s a full month’s quota of carbon credits on there as well.’

  Carl got into the car, inserted the key, and opened the window. Over the internal speakers an expressionless female voice said: ‘Autodriver engaged. Smart screen display on. Fuel quota at maximum. Tyre reflation in progress. Pressure now optimal. EMS at 95.6 per cent efficiency. Have a safe journey.’

  Thumbs up to Eddie. Let’s burn rubber.

  ‘Not today, honey,’ said Carl, switching off the autodriver. It was easy enough to feel powerless without a car doing all the driving into the bargain.

  ‘Autodriver disengaged. Smart screen display off,’ the female voice told him in a disapproving tone. He slipped into first gear, and the car went lurching forward. The engine stalled. Carl looked rueful and started the car again.

  Smoother, and for the first time in a very long time, Carl drove out of the car park and onto the streets of Glasgow. His hangover, not the worst he’d ever suffered, made him jittery.

  But there was driving. Music. Control. Purpose.

  They’re not as clever as they think.

  As he drove along Waterloo Street and onto the Kingston Bridge, he couldn’t help smiling. The warm weather had brought the people out onto the streets. People, patrols, CivCon, coppers, pigeons, bouncing tits in small tops, council workers, assorted city centre misfits, and the few who still had cash to spend. Everything more or less normal, in an abnormal kind of way.

  •

  There weren’t many other cars. Electric cabs, but not many. Lamppost scanners would already have clocked his car; maybe the drones would keep an eye on him, the city beneath laid out for their inspection. Next month they were launching the aerostat, bristling with sensors, to do the job even better than the fleet of hover-drones.

  By now, the first CivCon perimeter would have been alerted; Sentinel’s multivariable analysis would have produced a response. Maybe it had already allocated the appropriate resources to deal with him.

  The machinery of control would swing into operation, unless it was broken, like the cameras on the South Side. In the old days he would have headed up Woodlands Road, but that now took him too close to Kelvingrove Park and the rationing centre. No chance was he going near there, not at this time of day; the road would be packed, queues out the park gate; maybe trouble, answered by microwave pain sticks with calibration issues. At least he’d written the story, albeit missing most of what he would like to have said. But there was something out there, a blip on the flatline of controlled reality.

  Today he was going to leave it all behind. Today he only had one thing in mind and it was going to happen, surely it was, just like he prayed it would. As he approached the sliproad for the Kingston Bridge he saw the sign: CIVIL CONTINGENCIES ENFORCE MENT. CHECKPOINT AHEAD (INNER RING) BY ORDER OF THE EMERGENCY AUTHORITY. A few years ago CivCon had been known as the Civil Contingencies Rapid Reaction Force. Now rapid reaction had morphed into a permanent presence. This subtle descriptive shift always made him smile. By degrees was the screw tightened, turning always, by those in the background, who now took silence and compliance for granted.

  Halfway over the Clyde, there were seven other cars in front of him, a few pedestrians on foot, being body-scanned in and out of the Inner Ring. He licked his lips and strained to see ahead, nervous. CivCon could put the kibosh on his drive before it even started.

  The cars in front went through okay, each one sprayed in the biosec booth, and the barrier came down again. Darth Vader’s Stormtroopers waved and barked, no helmets today because of the baking heat. He slid the window down and held out his ID, took off his sunglasses and waited for the iris scan. The CivCon grunt, Scottish regimental tattoo on his bare forearm, smiled when his hand-held scanner revealed the next driver to be a ‘fucking journalist’.

  Carl smiled right back. Without a hint of reaction, he said, ‘Yes. I’m off to cover the opening of the new hydroelectric scheme in the Highlands. An on-the-spot interview with the Minister.’

  His goofy smile broadened. This bull-necked prick could pull him in for no reason, find a way to block his progress. The merest suspicion would be enough. Playing it sullen never worked. They loved to pull up people who tried to ignore them. This one looked at his terminal, saw the letters SIP – Surveillance In Progress – and followed his training to the letter. He looked at Carl, checked inside the car, then stood up to look at his scanner again.

  The smile was there, the sly smile around the eyes. I know about you, Mr Carl Shewan, right down to when and where you bought your last pair of socks, every preference and perversion.

  ‘Transit clearance in order,’ said the grunt, glancing up at the sky and handing Carl his ID. ‘Follow the instructions in the biosecurity booth. Have a safe day.’

  An awareness passed between them. Carl knew what was going on in the background, and so did the guard. He pocketed his ID and slipped the car into gear. If he’d been heading south, towards white rust instead of away, he’d have to allow himself to be disinfected as well as the car in case of white rust. Doing three miles an hour he followed the green light into biosec, stopped when the red showed, and drove off when the spray had finished, a trail of disinfectant glistening on the road behind him.

  He was over the first hurdle and onto the M8; the beginning of the great arterial arc that didn’t really stop; that just went on into the Highlands until there was no more road.

  He knew CivCon hated a good summer because it brought people out onto the streets, and that was a very bad thing. Being outside was unsafe, as any risk management manual could tell you. Better for order and security if the unemployed stayed in their pits and played the Lottery.

  At every major exit there were CivCon Humvees parked up, the new J7 models, unless Carl was mistaken, fresh from the Solihull factory. The guys inside gave him the eye as he passed. He was part way out of the shithole, though he had a nagging doubt about the Outer Ring checkpoint on the Erskine Bridge. Making it through the Inner Ring didn’t mean he had escaped altogether. Maybe this was part of their
game: let him through the Inner Ring, turn him back at the Outer.

  After eight years controlling the streets, CivCon knew their turf by now, knew where and how to squeeze, always tighter, like a bully not satisfied until he heard a cry of pain. They were here for the long haul and their grip would not easily be loosened. But clearance is clearance, so play the game, you fuckers. Play by your own rules.

  Past the airport the buildings thinned out, more land than concrete. Almost there. Fingers and toes crossed. To feel a little freer, to breathe a little easier.

  From the Inchinnan industrial estate a column of black smoke rose. Two helicopters hovered on either side of it.

  None of it mattered.

  Another few minutes and the road started to climb into being the Erskine Bridge. The Clyde estuary shimmered and the northern hills were massing. Right now, he was the only vehicle breaching the biosec cordon at Checkpoint 24.

  There were supposed to be a minimum of twenty CivCons at each of the twenty-eight exit points in the city’s Outer Ring. Most of them were arseholes: ex-army, Special Forces, the best coppers, private security from overseas; all on decent pay and food. There were meant to be twenty, but today he could only see five. Maybe there was trouble somewhere, and they were overstretched.

  Same as before, he told himself. Hand the thing over. Don’t get smart. Give him the spiel and the smile.

  Thrash metal was blasting from the sentry booth, the singer screaming over white noise feedback. The five CivCons had their helmets off; tunics open in the warmth. An older one, South African by the sound of it, moaned about the shit music.

  A black guy, English, did the honours.

  Pulse quickening, Carl held out his ID card for scanning. He tried to look impassive, bored even, for his retinal scan. This time the guy didn’t spit the word ‘journalist’. Maybe the surveillance drone had watched him since the city centre, seen that he hadn’t stopped near any known subversives. Maybe nothing had watched him at all, and he was just imagining it. He drummed his fingers lightly on the steering wheel. ID’s fine, man. Transit clearance has been given. Pull a fast one or let me out.

  The CivCon didn’t say a word, just nodded, handed back the ID, with the same sly smile as the first. He walked away and, after what seemed like an age, the barrier floated upwards. Stop had become an invitation to go. Just the disinfectant spray-booth, and he was away. Carl followed the arrows, stopped in the booth, and waited. The nozzles started spraying, and then they stopped.

  The light was red.

  Red. That meant stop. No go.

  Shit.

  He looked up, hands trembling, at the figure striding towards him.

  The CivCon bent down. ‘Have you had a shower this morning, sir?’

  Carl felt panic rising. ‘Eh . . . what? I don’t unders—’

  Please. Let me go. Let me get out.

  The guard bent down, grinning, and looked Carl straight in the eye. ‘Close your fucking window. The spray won’t work if it’s open.’

  And he walked away.

  Relief made Carl feel like laughing. He understood, did as he was told, felt tension draining from his body.

  The spray-booth went to work, and the light turned green. He put the car in gear and drove away from the checkpoint, the road ahead straight and empty. For a while, he kept checking the rear-view mirror, casting anxious glances behind. There was no sign of activity at the checkpoint, nothing to indicate a change of mood, no sudden alert; only the dayshift, hot and listless.

  The checkpoint disappeared behind him and he was back on the north side of the River Clyde.

  Carl took a deep breath. Then he screamed at the top of his voice until it hurt, thumping the steering wheel. He cranked the music up loud. For the first time since the Glasgow Emergency Order had been imposed, he was outside the city. An exit had been engineered. Ordinary coppers and the old laws were the worst that he would encounter unless he went near Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Stirling or Inverness, and he had no reason to go to any of those places.

  8

  The sun was shining. For a few days he could relax. CivCon had enough trouble in the cities to contend with to go chasing after him, though Sentinel would doubtless keep a locus on him, just in case. In any event, outside the urban emergency zones CivCon were supposed to leave everything to the police, stretched and under-resourced though they were. As he sped towards Luss and Loch Lomond, Carl kept reminding himself of that. Older laws were now in operation.

  Speeding past the Luss turn-off, trees drooped their lush branches over the road, and he had to swerve every so often to avoid them. Every few minutes there was a grey patch, like mould, on a far hillside where the conifers had been harvested for wood-chip fuel. He drove, loving the feel of the car, unbelieving. There were only a few other vehicles on the road, and the occasional truck from one of the few haulage firms still in existence. A bus came towards him: folk going to Glasgow to see friends and relatives, after waiting weeks for a three-day entry permit.

  The car in front of Carl turned off the main road. He was on his own now, nothing in front or behind, taking the tight curves by Loch Lomond like a rally driver, dodging the potholes. On and up towards Tyndrum he went, cloud-shadows passing across hills that reared on either side; gates and fences, old cars by the side of the road; long grass and signs for closed hotels. Then the hills relaxed, settling down for a spell, stretching out, and the sky broadened. On a straight he made sure he was above forty, then followed Eddie’s instructions.

  After restarting the engine, he caught the whiff of burning plastic as the circuit in the engine burned out. Maybe some blip of light on a screen back in Glasgow or Edinburgh or London had gone out. Maybe someone in Command and Control had looked away as it happened, and was now scratching his or her head at the amazing vanishing car. Maybe they were alerting the rural police right now.

  ‘Fuck them,’ Carl shouted over his music. Second-guessing what the authorities had in mind for him was a pointless, stress-inducing exercise. The people who would make life unpleasant were there, watching and waiting. If they were going to pull him in for a Category 1 offence, keep him in a black site for as long as they pleased, then that’s what they were going to do. No point in worrying about it.

  Easier said than done.

  At Tyndrum there was an automated biofuel station. The sign was missing a few letters. Most of the other buildings that looked like they might once have housed a business were boarded up and in the same condition. He sped past.

  After another half an hour he pulled over into a lay-by. The last time he’d been to Glen Coe, many years before, the weather had been foul and the cloud low. But now the sky was higher and, miles ahead, the towering land was dark under cloud, spears of sun being doused as the steel sky rolled in over Rannoch Moor. The place was a gateway to somewhere else, the jaws of the earth waiting to swallow you whole. He sat for a few minutes, watching the change of light and shade, each movement of cloud casting a shifting intensity over hill and moor.

  ‘Engage autodriver,’ he said. With autodriver on, the safety parameters governing the smart screen were switched off, and the windscreen lit up with object-tags and insets, a brief history of Glen Coe, its geology, and a tag for the one hotel. Still trading, but there was no information on a menu. He switched settings and the smart screen flipped into weather mode, displaying cloud types, atmospheric pressure, humidity and the chances of the rain continuing. There was a 64 per cent likelihood that a shower would fall within the next hour.

  He started the car and drove on. Within the chasm of Glen Coe itself, just twelve minutes later, the rain hit, like a hose being turned against the windscreen. It lashed down, turning the road into a river, potholes invisible, drowned. Water hammering and scorching and furious, wipers barely able to clear the windscreen. Then, as quickly as it started, the rain stopped; the tap turned tight in the off position. The smart screen was bang on the money.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Carl breathed, glad to be throug
h the downpour. He could look up at scree-strewn slopes now. He stopped the car again, getting out this time. Fresh air, damp and earthy; he could hear the river now, down below, gushing and rushing through the rocks.

  Where he was headed, the blue-grey hills faded by degrees into the blue-grey sky until it was hard to say where the hills ended and where the sky began. He was hungry. Sitting on a stone, he scoffed his sandwiches, gazing up at the high tops, the ragged drops. When had the massacre been? What were the causes? He couldn’t quite remember. He tried to imagine women and children being stabbed to death in the snow.

  He finished his lunch and drove on. The smart screen told him about rock types and a brief sanitised version of what had happened in 1692.

  •

  He passed scarred hillsides where conifer plantations had been levelled for biofuel and which now resembled First World War battlefields. He passed shuttered hotels, overgrown verges and, deep into the north, empty glens and the gaping ruins of old stone houses.

  Wind turbines turned on a summit or two and some stretches of road were so bad with potholes that he had to slow to walking speed to weave through them. Two buses and four cars had passed him, heading south; one big Jag had overtaken him, going north. He had not seen a single police car north of Fort William.

  And everywhere, he would spot a mast on some hilltop, skeletal metal and antennae against the sky. Nothing tagged with RFID moved without being monitored, and most of the under-18s had theirs implanted for ‘safety’ reasons. Sentinel sensed everything and everyone, except those who had the means to avoid it.

  He drove through Fort William without stopping. SCOPE was just another tool in the state’s outsourced security toolbox, another supply chain driver. No single journalist, he knew, could ever hope to slow that juggernaut as it moved up through the gears. The masts and the miles and the silent villages came and went. Afternoon eased into drowsy evening. He’d long passed Ullapool, still plenty of north left.

  ‘Tourist coastal route’ said a faded road-sign. Now there was a laugh.