by Ken MacLeod
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 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 MISSING FILES REQUEST RETURN BY SEALED POST TOMORROW TUESDAY OTHERWISE HANDS TIED RE POSS DISCIPLINARY ACTION ALSO INVESTIGATION 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 member of a secret society made her refusal of confidence more understandable, even as the basis of that society filled me with dismay. My historical erudition 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 communist 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 republic.
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 privileges other than representation at a University court, just before the beginning of the academic year. The other was from Gantry, expressing his sympathy and saying that he would APPL THIS OUTRGS DECN.
And it was outrageous—in effect I was being punished before trial, because my chances of sponsorship 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.
“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 University.”
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 University 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. Confident though I was that nothing I’d done could endanger 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,” Angus 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.
“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 generous measure of the malt. Its fortifying fire rushed through my nerves, and I could contemplate my unravelling 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 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 not 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 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 before 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 borrowed 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 suspended 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 people 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 parents 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.”
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 something 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 coming along, Clovis?”
“Deer hunting?” Suddenly it felt like something I desperately needed to do to get my head clear. My 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 Hamish, 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.”
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 hardwood and stainless steel, all lovingly polished.
Tusion engine,” he said proudly as he turne
d 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 craning 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.
“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 fucking 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 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 station, 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 Nostradamus 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 somewhere.”
“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.”