Her grandmother was waiting in the station parking lot. Joona let go of his arm and waved frantically as she ran forward. Preconceived notions Lawrence had built up about Granny Beaumont being some quiet little old lady with her gray hair wrapped in a bun and wearing a long tartan skirt vanished there and then. The woman was only as tall as Joona, but she was a picture of health, with dark red hair only slightly tidier than her granddaughter's. She was wearing tough cord trousers and a long olive-green coat splashed in mud. He didn't see how she could be a grandmother to anyone in their twenties; she couldn't possibly be past fifty.
"So you'll be Lawrence, then." Her accent was thick, but easy enough for him to understand. They shook hands.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And we'll have none of that nonsense. I'm Jackie. Now come along with the pair of you, into the van. I've to pick up a few things first; then we'll go straight home." She ushered them forward. The van was a three-wheel pickup, with an egg-shaped driver's cab ahead of an open cart section. It must have been twenty years old, composite bodywork fraying along the edges with fiber strands bristling out of the cracks and odd-colored patches epoxied over the larger splits. The cab's curving windshield had yellowed with age and ultraviolet, reducing the visibility considerably. There was no steering wheel, just a broad handlebar.
"Still works, then?" Joona said.
"Of course. Sugarhol is the easiest fuel you can brew, and no duty on it, either. That's why they stopped making cells that could burn it."
Lawrence kept a perfectly straight face as he climbed into the rear of the pickup. The chassis rocked about as he tried to find a reasonably clean piece of floor to sit on. Joona passed their luggage over the tailboard to him, then climbed up. She pulled a thick woolen hat out of her coat pocket, then produced some gloves. "Don't worry, it's not far."
"Great." He zipped the front of his coat right up to his chin, then jammed his hands into the pockets.
Jackie climbed into the cab and fired up the converter cell. A cloying smell of burned sugar burped out of the exhaust, swirling around the vehicle. Lawrence wrinkled his nose up; his eyes started to water.
"There's a still up at the cottage," Joona said. "She ferments her own fuel. See what I mean about people hanging on to their independence?"
"Absolutely."
She laughed and gave him a hug before the pickup lurched off. Jackie Beaumont drove them north along the A82, which ran through the middle of Fort William. This section of town had large civic buildings on both sides of the road. He saw the hospital first, a modern two-story complex with an arched silver roof, its geothermal power turbine housed in a small igloo at the side. Two search and rescue helicopters were parked on their pads behind the accident and emergency annex. The information and heritage center was opposite. Next to that were several sports pitches, each covered by big translucent domes, similar enough to Amethi's nullthene to give Lawrence an unexpected twinge of nostalgia. The town administration office resembled a Georgian mansion with its vivid ginger brick and broad white stone windows. Only arches leading to the underground vehicle bays gave away its true century of origin. A line of buses had drawn up outside the secondary school. Kids in smart gray-and-turquoise uniforms were running around them, chasing balls and snatching each other's bags.
Just past the theater, Jackie turned into a parking lot serving a single-story wooden building that resembled a long barn. It had wide windows under the overhanging eaves, with displays of just about every kind of camping and walking gear ever manufactured. A carved sign over the door said Grimmers. Jackie hopped out of the cab and headed inside. Lawrence and Joona climbed down and followed her in. A cleaning robot was rolling through the nearly deserted parking lot, sweeping up leaves and mud.
"Looks like a good little community," Lawrence said as they went through the door.
She nestled up beside him. "A rich one, you mean. They can afford the facilities. A lot of companies combined to build the reclamation plants. There's a lot of tourism as well. The other end of town is virtually all hotels. Between them, they bring a lot of money into the area."
"That's good, surely?"
"Only if you've got a stake in it."
Jackie was picking up several boxes from a counter while the assistant chatted to her. Lawrence hurried over and took a couple of the boxes from her. She smiled her thanks and gave him a further two. They were heavier than he expected. The labels said they contained some kind of dyes.
"For the wool," Jackie said as they went back out to the van.
"Wool?"
"I'm part owner of a flock."
"Of sheep," Joona said, grinning.
"Right" It was a bizarre notion.
The rain had arrived, a thick, heavy downpour driven by strong winds. Turbulent clouds boiled overhead. Lawrence could see the last of the day's sunlight shining over the mountains on the other side of the loch. There was no sign of a rainbow. He put the boxes next to his own bag and clambered back into the van.
It was another ten minutes' drive back to Jackie's cottage, which was a few kilometers out of town. She drove them along the side of the Caledonian Canal before finally turning off onto a dirt lane that led through woodland of silver birch, oak and sycamore. Her cottage sat in a rambling garden, a long building with sturdy stone walls and lead-rimmed windows. A diamond brick chimney stack at one end was crowned by tall clay pots, with smoke curling away into the darkening sky. He expected to see a thatch roof, but the blue slate was just as acceptable.
Jackie drove the van into a wooden lean-to outbuilding on the gable end, which served as a workshop and garage. Water was overflowing from the guttering, sending a thick curtain pouring down across the doorway. The final deluge finished the soaking that the rain had been persevering with. Lawrence squelched down onto the concrete floor.
"Inside with the pair of you," Jackie said as she swung the big doors shut. "Go on now."
Joona led him through a side door into the cottage's kitchen. It was a wide room, taking up at least a third of the ground floor. The brick hearth was filled by a four-door Aga: its racing-green vitreous enamel had darkened down the decades, and there were plenty of little chips in it. But it was still functioning, throwing off a welcome heat Joona shrugged out of her coat and went to lean against it, gripping the tarnished chrome bar along the front.
"Good to be home," she said, and beckoned him urgently.
He stood in front of the ancient iron monstrosity, not quite sure what it was. Jackie took his hands and pulled him closer to it. Heat crept back into his dripping fingers.
"That's better," he said. "That wind chill was killing me."
"I spent many an hour drying out in front of the Aga. We've even used it to save some lambs."
"Huh?"
"If their mother dies, the plate-warming oven is just right for keeping them warm. Poor wee things need all the help they can get for the first few days."
"This is a stove?"
"It is that," Jackie said. She stood in the doorway, taking her boots off. "Installed over three centuries ago, I'll have you know, and still going strong. The burner ring was modified to use methane, but other man that, as sound as the day it left the factory."
Lawrence gave the stolid behemoth a suspicious look. If she was telling the truth, it predated the human settlement of Amethi. Amazing.
"You two had better have a hot shower and change your clothes," Jackie said. "You've turned blue. There's plenty of hot water. I'll have some tea for you when you come down."
Joona nodded. "This way." She took Lawrence's hand again and started to lead him playfully out of the kitchen.
"He's a big healthy lad you've got yourself, there," Jackie called after them. "You'll be needing the double bed tonight."
"Gran!" Joona yelled back. But she was smiling up at Lawrence, hunting his approval. He managed to smile back.
A kettle was whistling away on top of the Aga when he came back downstairs. He'd managed to find a clean T-shirt in
his bag, and Joona had given him a thick apricot-colored sweater to wear on top. The arms were only a few centimeters too short.
He sat at the big oak refectory table in the center of the kitchen, watching Jackie make the tea. She used a china pot, spooning in dark flakes before pouring the water in. He'd never seen tea textured that way before.
"It takes longer, but it tastes better than your microwaved cubes," she said when she caught him staring. "Life's not so fast up here, we've time to let tea brew as it should."
"Fine by me, I could do with some slow living." Jackie sat in a chair in front of a new-model desktop pearl. Its pane was showing a sweater with an elaborate pattern of bright colors. She told it to switch off, and the pane folded itself back into the casing. "I expect our Joona has been filling your head with stories of glorious revolution."
"Not really. She just has a real bug about the companies."
"Aye, well, she blames the companies for splitting up her parents. Her mother used to work for Govett; they handle a lot of the transport for the reclamation plants in town. Trouble was, Govett has an enlightened social policy; they move their personnel around every five years so they don't get stale or deadended. Her father, my Ken, there was no way he was going to leave the Highlands. How that woman didn't realize his commitment to the area I'll never understand." She sighed. "Then he went and got himself killed over in Glen Coe, a skiing accident. Joona was twelve at the time."
"And after that you brought her up here by yourself?"
"Aye. She refused to have anything to do with her mother. Stubborn, she is. Her mother helped us out with money and got her into the Prodi, but that's the only contact they've ever really had."
"I can see why she's so attached to this place."
Jackie poured some milk into a big mug, then used a strainer to add the tea. "Not just to Fort William, it's our whole way of life she's devoted to."
He waved a hand round the kitchen with its age-darkened wooden furniture and scrubbed flagstone floor. Plates, cups and glasses stood along the shelves of a big Welsh dresser, probably all antiques. Copper pots and pans hung above the Aga, along with bundles of dried rosemary that gave off a mild scent. Despite the room's old-fashioned appearance, he could see a modern dishwasher and fridge built into the fitted cupboards. There had been a small cleaning robot in the lean-to outside. The only thing the kitchen really lacked was a texturalizer unit to make up basic food from raw protein cells. He suspected Jackie simply bought precomposed packets from town. A lot of people couldn't be bothered with home preparation these days. "You seem to be doing all right I was worried I was going to be spending my holiday in a mud hut."
"I've a few interests, but the flock brings in enough to get by."
"How does that work?"
"There's a lot of land up here that they can't plant their damn forests on, you know. So we still have mountain sheep, and shepherds, and even sheep dogs. That part of our lives is the same as it has been for centuries."
He frowned. "You don't like the forests?"
"Oh, I don't mind them. But there's a difference between restoration and uberretrogression. These days if the ecological agency finds a clear piece of land bigger than a patio they want to plant a tree on it. It's a direct continuation of the Greenwave policy that came in after protein cells were developed. The old radical Greens saw that as their chance to finally repair the damage that farming had done. It's all a load of bull. Farmers were good for the countryside; they took care of their land. They had to, they depended on it. And I swear there was never so much woodland in Europe before, no matter how far back you go into prehistory to try to justify today's acreage. What we've got now is no more natural than the intensive arable farming that went on in the second half of the twentieth century and first half of the twenty-first."
"What I've seen of it looks magnificent."
"It certainly does, aye. Though you've no idea how many walkers get lost around here every year. And that includes the ones that have full navigation and communications functions in their bracelet pearls. Idiots, every last one of them. Our rescue teams are busy practically the whole year round. And we reckon to lose at least fifty sheep in the trees each season. There's supposed to be fencing, but even the robots can't keep it all maintained."
"Don't forget the wolves," Joona said. She came into the kitchen wearing a baggy blue robe, a big green towel wrapped around her hair. She sat next to Lawrence and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "They take dozens of sheep each year."
"Aye," Jackie said ruefully as she poured tea for her granddaughter. "Another species reintroduced courtesy of the environmental agency. As if we didn't have enough to contend with up here. But we get by. There's a fair weight of fleeces collected each year, and they keep the likes of me busy."
"You turn the fleeces into wool here?"
"Not directly. There's a couple of small local mills, cooperatives that we keep going; they wash the wool and weave it into yarn. Then it gets sent out to me and all the other crofters that are left up here. I knit it into sweaters like that one you're wearing. There's some that do blankets, and ponchos, and hats, and gloves. All sorts, really."
Lawrence looked down at his sweater, feeling it. "You knit these?"
Jackie laughed. "We're not Luddites, you know. I design the patterns. I've an old barn down at the end of the garden where I've got three cybernetic knitting machines. They do the hard work. I know how to maintain them, mind. I'm quite handy with an Allen key and diagnostic program, I'll have you know."
"All the tourists buy them," Joona said. "Natural wool sweaters sell for a premium. Those damn factory texturalizers can't get the artificial fibers quite right, they just feel wrong. And Gran's designs are best of all."
"So where's the problem?" Lawrence asked. "You're doing what you want, and the rest of society appreciates that."
"The corporations and district parliament tolerate us because there are so few crofters," Joona said. Her earlier good humor had faded. "They wouldn't welcome too many of their kind taking up our lifestyle."
"Now don't go getting her started, young Lawrence," Jackie said. "And you, my lady, can forget about politics for an evening. I get quite enough of that at the association meetings. Boring old farts, they are. So, Lawrence, were you really born on another planet?"
The evening that followed was one of the most pleasant he'd had for a long time. There was no pressure on him at all, no worry. He didn't have to go out hunting girls or drink. It was, he thought, what a real family evening should be like. Nothing like the ones he'd endured in his own home back on Amethi, not forced and littered with expectation. More like the ones he would have wanted his own family to enjoy, the ones they would have enjoyed if things had worked out between himself and Roselyn.
He gave Joona a quick, guilty look. But she just smiled at him. She was helping Jackie make the pasta for supper.
"Traditional Scottish spaghetti," Jackie had announced. They both laughed when he nodded eagerly and said: "Great."
They turned down his offer of help, for which he was quietly thankful. He was left to stroke a huge black cat called Samson, while they busied themselves up at the long counter. A bewildering variety of ingredients were produced from big earthenware pots that were fitted with wide cork lids. The bolognese was mixed, cooked, tasted, remixed.
He did make himself useful lighting the log-burning stove in the parlor. It was soon roaring away, throwing out such a heat he had to take his borrowed sweater off. Jackie produced a malt for supper, which he had to water down to drink.
The spare bedroom—with the double bed—had an uneven floor. When he walked across it cautiously he realized the oak boards were so old they'd hardened into something approaching steel. They creaked occasionally, but they were totally solid. There was no quilt on the bed, only sheets and blankets, which he was dubious about. But the blankets were obviously produced by Jackie and her fellow crofters, brightly colored with a thick weave, so he expected they'd be warm
enough. A single light fitting hung from the low ceiling, its cone a lambent yellow, casting mellow shadows. Wind soughed stealthily round the cottage's gable end; he could hear the trees rustling around the garden.
He grinned expectantly at Joona after she shut the door, and hurriedly started pulling his clothes off. Her own movements as she undid the buttons of her blouse were hesitant, which he took as modesty. Which was arousing. By the time she'd finished undressing he was already waiting for her on the bed, determined that, finally, tonight should be good fun.
"Are we having the lights on or off?" he asked.
A troubled expression fluttered briefly over her face. "Off." There was an unspoken of course. She flicked the switch by the door. The faintest moonlight seeping through the curtains allowed him to see her as a dark, flowing shape as she moved toward him. The bedsprings bent and shifted as she climbed on.
Lawrence reached for her immediately, sliding his hands over her body. He cupped her small breasts and began teasing the nipples with his fingers. He licked at her neck, her shoulders, her face. Her breathing quickened and they kissed, his mouth smothering hers.
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