The Sky Road tfr-4

by Ken MacLeod

  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—pronounced something like “Yillirrih”—in the Gaelic) looked like a rocket-propelled grenade buried 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 platform’s southwest leg. It was like going into a lighthouse: up and up, around and around the winding stair. The air smelt of wet metal, hot oil, damp concrete. 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 disappeared into—in fact appeared to merge with—the unfinished structure of struts joining the support 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 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 disassembled welding-torches, a small tin of kerosene and a few now very dirty seagull quills. He stood and glowered 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 surname, 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.

  “ And you can get started right away, colha Gree,” he added.

  I nodded brightly, winced at the effect of this sudden 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 Grizzlyback combined the functions of entrepreneur and foreman, which partly cut across, and pardy complemented, the job of the shop steward (in our case, Jondo) who held the equivalent position in the parallel pyramid of the union.

  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 cigarettes, 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 allusion 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 suitable 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 centralisation 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 anticipations 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 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 considered 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, womanish, oriental superstition that it is. Metempsychosis (though undoubtedly within the power of Omnipotence) has no place in the natural and rational religion.

  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 Reason 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 privileged 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 second 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 objections 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 childhood selves, and as elusive; and as capable of innocent, shameless deceit.

  The brute-force approach suggested itself: interrogate my parents, brothers and sisters; ransack family photographs… not yet. Already, the conscious thought that I sought the memory would have released the insensible agency
in my mind that I privately 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 welcome 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 took it in good part but was relieved when they’d all clambered away into the support structure, leaving 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 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 followed, 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 sculpture some eccentric artist had made in his back garden 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.

  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 Deliverer? 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 consider 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 happened 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 revolution. The Second World Revolution, or the Deliverance, 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 whatever cleared the near heaven of folk and machines 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 rejected it. There’s no evidence of anything up there that could do the ship any harm. There’s no evidence that the loss of the space habitations was anything but what you’ve said.”

  “So why do you think I might know anything about this—” I waved my hand dismissively “—supposed 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 rumour, 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, sickened, yet fascinated despite myself. The natural religion 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 Khomeini 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 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 feelings 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 published. 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 realistic attitude among themselves. It’s true, the Deliverer 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?”

  “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.