A crossbow bolt.
“The house is a hide,” I said to Euan and Murdo, back at the lorry. “For maybe a dozen people. They took the windows out, dragged up chairs and couches or whatever and made themselves comfortable, and just sat there waiting for a herd of deer or maybe a flock of sheep to go and eat the grass. The beasts wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t even smell them. They just had to wait and then let fly with cross-bolts. You could bring down ten at one go that way. Maybe more.”
“Very nice,” said Murdo. I couldn’t tell whether he meant my detective work or the neat slaughter I had detected.
“Why not just smash out the windows?” said Euan.
“To keep it quiet,” said Murdo.
“From who? The deer?” said Euan.
“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t so sure about that.
“Not much sport in the shooting,” said Euan.
“This was not for sport,” I said.
“Aye,” said Murdo. “And speaking of food, my breakfast’s in Lochcarron, and that’s two hours away if we’re lucky.”
“Breakfast? What do you call the bacon roll you had in Dingwall?”
“A snack.”
“A midnight feast,” said Euan. “It was that dark I was expecting to feel my wife.”
“That was just me,” I said. “You had me worried.”
* * * *
II
SMOKING GUN
Euan smoked a roll-up before we got back into the cab. Nobody complained. We’d all got kind of easier on him and his bad habit since the big story came out. Maybe it’s all been forgotten now, when you’re listening to this. But you surely must remember the name of Jin Yang.
Jin Yang, right. The guy who started the whole thing. He was a rock music promoter who’d just made his second visit to the Edinburgh Fringe. Great success by all accounts. Real wheeler and dealer, signed up all kinds of acts to play in Beijing. He was on his way home, on a plane just out of Edinburgh Airport. Jumps up while the seat-belt sign’s still on, gets into an argument with the trolley-dolly. Gets a wee bit physical. He doesn’t know that she’s had martial arts training. Anti-hijack policy, see? She doesn’t know that he is a kung fu master. Things get a bit out of hand and just as he has her in a headlock he gets a soft-nosed bullet in the skull. Turns out there’s this plain-clothes cop travelling undercover on the plane. More anti-hijack policy. A sky marshall, as the Americans call them.
So the Chinese guy goes down, and they’re all kind of looking at each other. There’s blood and bits of bone and brains splattered everywhere. Kids screaming. Adults screaming. Total shock and panic. And the sky marshall sees, right there sticking out of the pocket of the late Mr. Yang’s seat, a couple of books. They’re in Chinese, but they have the titles in English inside. One of them is the Koran. The other is the selected speeches of some Chinese leader.
The sky marshall’s relaying all this to his bosses on the ground, using the plane’s own radio. Everybody’s hearing him. Then another Chinese passenger a few seats back jumps up and starts yelling. The sky marshall turns to him, with his gun levelled. By this time, half the passengers are telling their folks, using their own mobile phones. They all think they’re about to die, and they’re right.
Because yon wee sign that used to warn you not to use mobiles or computers or games while the plane was taking off or landing was there for a reason. Your gadgets really can interfere with the aircraft’s controls. Well, they did this time anyway. The plane’s been called back, obviously. But something goes wrong on its approach. There was a heavy fog that day over the Firth of Forth. Pilot’s flying blind. Flying by instruments. Instruments that have been knocked out of kilter by some computer geek’s fancy new mobile phone, while he’s telling his girlfriend he loves her or what have you.
Controlled flight into terrain, it’s called. In this case, the terrain is the naval dockyard at Rosyth. Where Britain’s top aircraft carrier is in dock for a refit before a mission to the South China Sea. And in the South China Sea there’s been a bit of bother over Taiwan—a breakaway big island that the Chinese are very touchy about.
Kaboom.
A headline the next day says CHINESE AL QAEDA NUKES ROSYTH. And that was The Guardian, man. My lecturer at Telford College had it on his desktop. The Record just said bomb reds now.
Most of the British Army was in Iran already. China wasn’t exactly a long march away. The Yanks took care of the heavy stuff, as usual. Japan kind of weighed in, for no better reason I can see than from force of habit.
Two years into the war our boys were up to their eyebrows in shit. Not knowing where the next attack’s coming from—Communists, Muslims, Japanese, Falun Gong Sect, you name it.
Meanwhile, the official machinery is grinding away. Government inquiry sifts through the wreckage of the Rosyth incident. Plods through every surviving witness. Brings out a report.
It tells us three important things about Jin Yang.
One—he’s from China’s Muslim minority area. Hence the Koran in the seat.
Two—he’s a businessman and a member of the Party. Hence the book of speeches by a Communist official. All about how building up business and getting rich is the way to the glorious future. Jin Yang has to swot up on that sort of thing, and parrot it every now and again to keep his bosses happy.
Three—Jin Yang was a heavy smoker, like lots of Chinese men are. On his first visit to the Festival Fringe, he’d had a very nice time. Deals in smoke-filled rooms and all that. At the airport he got through half a pack of cigarettes in the departure lounge to calm his nerves. There was a special booth just for that very purpose. All’s well. Second time, a good few years later, the smoking ban had come in. He had a much less fun visit. He did a lot of his deals in doorways. On his way home, he’s through security and stuck in aeroplane land when he finds that the Airstream smoking booth has long since been ripped out. His flight’s delayed. Nobody knows just when it’ll be ready. Even if he could get back through security, he’s afraid he’ll miss his flight, and then he’ll miss his connection. So he’s stuck.
For three and a half hours.
It wasn’t a hijack. There was no Al Qaeda connection. No Chinese government connection either.
It was just air rage.
So that’s how the war started.
And that’s why we all stood around quite patient like and waited for Euan to finish his roll-up before we got back in the truck for the long drive to Lochcarron.
* * * *
III
FRANKENFOLK
We pulled into Lochcarron a couple of hours later. The journey hadn’t been bad. The sun glared on the snow when we were up high on the hillsides, but I had good shades. The black ice was murder down in the hollows, but the truck had good tyres. Some new kind of carbon fibre stuff. Their grip was magic. And we didn’t run into any bandits or wolves.
“When I was wee the snow would have melted long ago by now,” said Euan. “Snow-line at fifty metres in March! It used to be nearer two hundred.”
Lochcarron was a mile or two out of our way. We passed the end of the road that led away to where we were going to work. That road cut across the head of the sea-loch, towards the old railway line. A mile along it you could see the bright yellow work cabins, and the big black reel that held the cable that snaked out of the water. Lochcarron is a kilometre of houses along the northern shore. This morning the loch was like glass. The long ranges of hills that rose from both shores were mirrored in it like two wavy blades. The hillsides were black with the ashes and stumps of trees that had been nipped dead in the Big Freeze and burned in the forest fires of the next summer. Tall windmills stood along the hills’ bare snow-covered tops. If any of the blades were turning at all it was too slow to see. Some of the windmill pylons were leaning over. Others lay flat on their sides. I remember when wind-power farms were the next big thing. The wind had other ideas.
I slowed the big truck as we came in, past the grassy patch that used to be a golf course
and the walled patch that’s still a cemetery. Around the side of a hill to the village proper. The brown stones and grey pebble-dash of the old houses were mixed in with the bright colours of the new ones. Blue, pink, yellow, green. They looked more like machines than buildings. Pipes and aerials sprouted from them. Thick insulating mats covered their walls. Steep roofs jutted up like witches’ hats. The roofs of the old houses were covered with solar-power tarps.
The hotel was one of the old buildings. Crumbling concrete patched with insulating mats. Not much of a hotel now. More of a coffee shop and pit stop. A couple of supply trucks and two or three small cars were filling up, with red power cables and green bio-fuel lines plugged into their sides. Behind the thick plastic of the front window the cafe was busy. I parked around the side—our fuel cells were still well charged and the bio-fuel tank was half full. The three of us trooped in. Warm air smelling of coffee steam and frying bacon. About a dozen people sat around the tables. As usual everybody stared at us. It’s these big yellow boiler-suits with highway on front and back that does it. Dead giveaway. I was still throwing back my hood and unzipping the front of my overall when I heard the first nasty remark. One of the guys whose lorry was recharging outside—I could see that by the Tesco jacket on the back of his chair—leaned over and said to the FedEx driver he shared the table with:
“Laggers. Too dumb tae draft.”
Coming from a trucker, that was a bit rich. I ignored it. I didn’t retort with: “Truckers. Too feart tae fight.” I just strolled to the counter and ordered a pot of Java and six bacon rolls.
Thing is, it would’ve been true. Trucking is a reserved occupation. What that means is you can dodge the draft by being a truck driver. But the trucker was right and all. Except that we are drafted. Only not for the army. The army needs people who can handle high tech. Just the same as civilian industries, all that Carbon Glen stuff. People who were good at school. The rest of us—those who can’t or won’t hack it as soldiers or high-tech workers—get swept up by the highway. There’s no going on the dole or the sick these days. It’s my way or the Highway, like the First Minister used to say.
Of course it’s not just building roads anymore. The old Highways Department took over all the public works. One of them was insulation. Lagging pipes was the first emergency job. Loads of insulation had to be laid on in the last summer before the first Big Freeze. That’s why all of us who work for the Highway are called laggers. Well, it’s one reason. The other is that “lagger” used to be the swear word for people like us. It came into fashion just after “neds” went out.
Not that I mind. I always wanted to be a lagger. Ever since I was about eight years old, anyway. That was when some new plastic water mains were laid in the street round the corner. Me and my wee gang were tearaways. We weren’t as bad as folks said we were. OK, we did break all the windows of the JCB digger one night. But we thought the guys who laid the pipes were great. They had yellow plastic helmets and bright yellow plastic waistcoats and big muddy boots. They looked tough. They looked like we might want to be like them when we grew up. Them and fighter pilots and the characters in grand theft auto. Guess what. You need university to be a fighter pilot. Two of my pals died five years later doing grand theft auto in real life. Handbrake turns don’t work so well on country roads. Funny that.
Anyway.
Apart from the truckers the other people in the room giving us the eye were locals. Five natives and five incomers. The natives were in their usual suspicious huddle. They just gave us a long enough glance to figure out we weren’t about to attack them. Then they turned away. Their backs were about as welcoming as rolled-up hedgehogs.
Four of the white settlers sat in a more relaxed way around another table. Two couples, I guessed. English accents, or maybe posh Scottish…
“—so then Malcolm sold his flat in the New Town and bought—“
Sudden pause. They looked at us, and then they looked down their noses. On the bridge of each of these noses was a black squiggle, like the bottom half of a glasses frame. The latest gadget from Carbon Glen. It seemed our faces weren’t online anywhere as bad guys, because the incomers all looked up and blinked and went on talking.
“—an international civil servant with the World Trade Organization, and she’s very worried—“
This checking us out stuff was as much of an insult as what the trucker had said. One look at their faces told me they’d had the Reverse treatment. It’s supposed to turn back the clock, but it doesn’t. Not quite. Smooths out the skin and tightens up the muscles. Helps the bones and joints too, I’m told. But it never wipes away all the signs of age. It’s illegal in Scotland, because it does things to your genes. There’s laws against GM crops, for crying out loud. GM people are an even bigger no-no. But what few cops there are in the Highlands are too busy—or have too much sense—to hunt down Frankenfolk. Place is crawling with them.
The woman behind the counter, a broad-in-the-beam local who for sure had not had the Reverse treatment, was still tonging strips of bacon into rolls so fresh I could smell them when I noticed the fifth incomer checking us out.
This lassie was a crustie. Her black hair was in matted braids. Her face was not bad and had been washed in the last day or two. Over the back of her chair was a hide jacket. She wore a shapeless woolen sweater. Long legs in some kind of tweedy tartan trousers. Feet in buckle-sided boots propped on a plastic chair. She was sitting at a small table by herself, over by the window around the side of the counter. She had a white teapot and a cup of green tea in front of her. Beside them on the table was a scatter of pages printed off from the day’s papers.
She looked us up and down in a lazy way and then looked back at her papers. When we sat down at the empty table beside her she paid us no attention. She did swing her legs off the chair and lean forward over the offprints. I could smell her. It wasn’t a stink. Sweat and wool and something like the sea.
Finished the bacon roll and on to my second coffee. I was fiddling with the cross-bolt, turning it over my fingers. We were talking about the day’s job when I felt a stare on my neck. I turned and saw the lassie looking hard at me, then down at my hands. No, she was looking at the thing in my hands. Then she looked away. She shrugged into her big jacket, picked up a bulging carrier bag, stood up and walked out.
* * * *
IV
AILISS
“Nice ass,” said Euan.
“Well boys,” I said when we’d watched her out, “about time we did the same.”
“Not walking like that,” said Euan, getting back at me.
I nodded to agree we were evens. Euan was already rolling his cigarette. He wagged his tongue back and forth against his top lip. One up to him.
“Move your arse,” I told him. “You can go shotgun. Smoke all you want.”
I couldn’t be sure if this was one up to me.
As we drove back up the street we saw the girl from the cafe trudging along the side of the road. The Tesco bag was weighing her down on one side. I slowed the truck and wound down the cab window.
“Want a lift?”
The girl opened her mouth and said something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two hurtling shapes, black and spiky as ninja knives. As my head whipped round to follow them I saw them skimming above the loch at about twenty metres. The sound of the fighter jets hammered over us a moment after they’d disappeared.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, ‘Where are you heading?’ “
“Strathcarron way,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. She crossed the road and walked around the front of the truck. Murdo opened the door and moved over and squashed into the middle seat. The girl stepped up and swung in. She put the bag down between her boots and slammed the door. As she turned back with a smile and a thank you her hair flicked and I could see she didn’t have a phone on her ear.
I let the engine’s flywheel bite again and released the brake. We slid forward out of the village. I gla
nced sideways. Murdo was wrinkling his nose. I didn’t mind the smell at all.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Ailiss,” she said, looking ahead and around like a kid at the front of the top deck of a bus.
“I’m Jase,” I said. “This is Murdo.”
“You’re not from here,” she said.
I could just about tell she was. Her accent was a bit like Euan’s.
“I’m from Glasgow,” I said. “Murdo’s from Stornoway.”
“The Highway comes from all over,” Murdo announced. “You don’t look like a native yourself.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection Page 93