The Sky Road tfr-4

by Ken MacLeod

  Juniper Bear shook her head. She was an old woman, not as old as Myra; she looked about thirty, by pre-rejuvenation reckoning, when her face was in repose, but the weight of her years showed in her every facial expression, if you were old enough to notice these things. You learned to transmit and to receive those non-verbal tics, in parallel processes of increasing wisdom.

  “That’s what our opposition are saying,” the woman said. “No more New World Orders!’ Well, I’m sorry, but we need a real new world order, one on our side this time. It’ll be only temporary—once we get enough forces out there, there’s no way anyone can keep central control. Once the emergency is over, it’ll just…” She made a downward-planning gesture.

  “Wither away?”

  Juniper’s creased eyes registered the irony, her compressed lips her refusal to let it deflect her. “Speaking of states that wither away,” she said, changing the subject adroitly, “if any of you find yourselves looking for new opportunities, when all this is over one way or another…”

  Valentina and Andrei said nothing, at least not in Myra’s presence; but Myra herself smiled, and nodded, and said she’d bear it in mind.

  “Well!” said Andrei Mukhartov, when the function was over and the guests had departed, the diplomats, the apparatchiks and captains of industry. Andrei, Valentina, Denis and Myra had retired to one of the hotel’s smaller and quieter bars. Hardwood and mirrors, leather and glass, plush carpets and quiet music. There were plenty of people in the bar who’d had nothing directly to do with the funeral. This made for a degree of security for the four remaining Commissars, huddled as they were around a vodka bottle on a corner table, like dissidents. “Thanks for your intervention earlier, comrades. I thought I was getting somewhere until you turned up.”

  “You thought wrong,” said Myra. She didn’t feel like arguing the point. “I know Juniper, she’ll seem to agree with you and then start talking about the war. Which is where we came in. You didn’t lose anything.”

  “Huh,” grunted Andrei. He knocked back a thumbnail glass. “Tell me why you need a Foreign Secretary at all.”

  “Because I can’t do everything myself,” Myra told him. “Even if I can do every particular thing better than anyone. Division of labour, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”

  Andrei and Valentina were looking at each other with eye-rolling, exaggerated bafflement.

  “Megalomania,” said Andrei sadly. “Comes to all the dictators of the proletariat, just before the end.”

  “Think we should overthrow her before it’s too late?” Valentina straightened her back and sketched a salute. “Get Denis in on it and we can form a troika. Blame all the problems on Myra and declare a clean slate.”

  “That is not funny,” said Myra. She poured another round, watched the clear spirit splash into the crystal ware, four times. “That is exactly how it will be. One day all the problems of the world will be blamed on me.” This was not funny, she thought. This was her deepest suspicion, in her darkest moments. She grinned at her confederates. “To that glorious future!”

  They slugged back the vodka shots and slammed down the empty glasses. Myra passed up an offer of a Marley or a Moscow Gold, lit up a Dunhill from her last trip out. The double foil inside the pack, the red and the gold of its exterior—there was still, to her, something wicked and opulent about the brand, which she’d first smoked when duty-free still meant something.

  “So, what’s the score, Andrei? Apart from today’s subtle approaches.”

  “Ah.” Andrei exhaled the fragrant smoke through his nostrils. “Not good, I have to say. Kazakhstan’s still keeping out of it—after all, they have Baikonur to think about, and the Sheenisov threat. If it weren’t for previous bad blood between them and the space movement, I think they might be tempted to side with it. So their neutrality is something, when all’s said and done. As for the rest—1 have canvassed every country, I have checked with our delegates in New York, and frankly it looks as if next week’s vote will go through.”

  “Valentina?”

  Myra didn’t need to spell anything out. Kozlova had spent days and nights tracking reports from agents in the battlesats and the settlements. She replied by holding out her spread hand and waggling it.

  “Nothing much we can do up there,” she said. “The other side have all the resources to tip the balance their way, whichever way the argument is going.”

  “Not all the resources,” Myra said.

  “Oh, come,” said Valentina, with careful calm. “We couldn’t.” She might have been talking about cheating at cards.

  “But they don’t know we couldn’t,” Myra said. “We do have a hard reputation, after all. Most of the new countries, not to mention the settlements, probably think we’re some kind of ruthless Bolsheviks.”

  They shared a cynical laugh.

  “I’m sure Reid is disabusing them of that notion right now,” said Andrei. He seemed to have picked up on what they were talking about; and as for Denis Gubanov, he was leaning back with a smug smile, as if he’d known it for years. Probably had.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Myra said. “He’s a devious son of a bitch. He says his side don’t know what we’ve got, and he might still hold out a hope of winning us over—or using us as a threat to keep his own side in order.”

  She inhaled again.

  “Besides,” she added, “he doesn’t know all we’ve got. Or so I gathered. He thinks it’s all in Earth orbit.”

  “It isnW Denis’s smile faded instantly. “So where is it?”

  “Good question,” Myra said. “See if you can find out.”

  Valentina was intently studying the reflection of the chandelier in the bar mirror.

  “Is this a joke, or what?” Denis demanded.

  Myra shook her head, laid her palm on the back of his hand. “Easy, man. Don’t waste too much time on it—just treat it as an exercise, see what you can find out about what people know or suspect—”

  “And I’m not to know myself?”

  “Double-blind,” Myra said firmly. “And double-bluff. I’ll let you know after you’ve brought back some results, but I don’t want your investigation dropping any inadvertent hints.”

  Denis scowled. “OK,” he allowed, “I see the point of that.” He looked at his watch, sighed and stood up. “Three-fifteen,” he said. “Time I was back at the office.”

  “The unsleeping sword of the Cheka,” Myra said. “Time we all went back, I guess.”

  “No,” said Andrei. Tou and Valentina stay here and get drunk.” He pushed back his chair and raised himself ponderously to his feet. “We Russian men will take care of the rest of the day’s business.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Relax, Davidova. The coup won’t come today, or tomorrow.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But we just lost one more commissar today—”

  “Alex, huh, son of a bitch. No loss. I cleared his desktop and locked him out the second he mentioned he was leaving us.”

  “He was good at his job, and we don’t have a replacement.”

  “The economy can get along fine without a commissar for a while,” Andrei said. “The free market, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”

  The two men walked to the bar. Andrei gallantly laid a wad of currency on it, indicating Myra and Valentina with a glance, nodded to them and left with Denis.

  “So,” said Valentina, looking after them, “what do you suppose they’re up to?”

  “Anything but going back to work, I hope,” Myra laughed. “Hitting the spaceport bars, or plotting our demise. Whatever. What the fuck.” She downed another vodka; stared at the tip of a cigarette that had burnt down, unregarded; lit another.

  “You’re drunk already,” Valentina accused.

  “And bitter and twisted. Yeah, I know.”

  “I’ll tell you why they left,” Valentina said. “Apart from the space-port attractions, that is.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah?”

  “They’re giving us space, my dear. For a caucus.”

  “Women’s caucus? Bit dated, that.”

  Valentina loosened her uniform jacket, removed her tie and rolled it up carefully. “Not—what was it called?—feminism, Myra. Socialism. A Party caucus.”

  “But I’m not even in the Party!”

  “Are you so sure about that?” Valentina asked. “I’ve never seen a resignation letter from you. And I would have, you know. I’m sure you’re at least a sympathiser, even if—” she giggled “—you’ve been missing branch meetings lately.”

  Myra had to think about it. She supposed there was still a direct-debit mandate paying her dues to some anonymous Caribbean data-haven account. She still got the mailings, filed unread. She still wrote for Analysis, the International’s online theoretical journal. (Its contributors had nicknamed it Dialysis, because of its insistent theme that everything was going down the tubes.)

  Myra frowned at Valentina. The noise in the bar was louder than it had been. People were drifting in from other functions going on in the hotel: a business conference, an anime con, and at least two weddings.

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “We’re nothing, we’re probably among the last Internationalists in the whole fucking world,”

  “Indeed we are,” said Valentina. “But there’s still a couple of things we can do. One is give our comrade a good send-off, by getting absolutely smashed in his memory.”

  They knocked glasses, drank.

  “And the other thing?”

  “Oh, yes. We can see if there’s anything the International is planning to do about the coup.”

  Tou must be fucking joking.”

  “I am not. If you want my guess, that’s what they wanted the assets for.”

  “Whoever thought of that must be out of their tiny fucking minds. Talk about adventurism.”

  “I’m not so sure. Remember, there may not be many of us left in the world, but—” Valentina leaned closer “—there isn’t only one world.”

  “Oh, don’t be—” Myra gave it a second thought. “Oh,” she said. “Our friends in the sky.”

  “Yeah,” said Valentina. “The space fraction.”

  “I don’t want to discuss this right now,” Myra said. She looked around, wildly. The place was jumping. One beautiful Kazakh girl whom she’d thought was a bride yelled something in what sounded like Japanese. Her big white dress shrank like shrink-wrap to her body, changing colour and hardening to a costume of pastel-shaded plastic armour. A smart-suit—made from, rather than by, nanotech—was a heinously expensive novelty, offering a limited menu of programmed transformations. Myra wondered how long it would be before its price plummeted, its repertoire exploded; how long it would be before people could as readily transform their bodies. A world of comic-book super-heroes—it didn’t bear thinking about. The girl struck a combative pose, to a scatter of applause from the other anime fans.

  “Let’s get drunk,” Myra said.

  5

  The Church of Man

  Merrial was, as promised, waiting. She sat on the plinth, as I had done, under the Deliverer’s equestrian statue. She wore a loose summer dress with a colourful tiered skirt. Something stirred in my memory, then vanished like a dream in the morning. She was in animated conversation with a man sitting beside her. They both looked up as I arrived.

  “Hello,” I said warily.

  He was a tall, thin man, about thirty, I reckoned; quite brown, with sharp features and dark eyes which had a sort of quirky, questioning look in them; black hair curly on top, short at the back and sides; dressed in leather trousers and jacket and a white cotton T-shirt with a red bandana. A fine chain hung around his throat beneath the bandana, its pendant—if any—below the T-shirt’s round collar.

  “Hello,” Menial said warmly. “Clovis, this is Fergal.”

  The man stuck his right hand out and I shook it, noticing as I did so that one of his thumbs pressed the back of my hand and that he held on, as though waiting for some response, for about a second longer than I subconsciously expected, before letting go.

  “Pleased to meet you, Clovis,” he said. His voice was low and deep, his accent was hard to place: correct, but by that very correctness of intonation in each syllable, somehow foreign; it reminded me of a Zanu prince I’d once heard speak at the University.

  “Let’s get some drinks,” he said, rising to his feet. We strolled to the nearest vacant table outside The Carronade. Fergal took our requests and disappeared inside.

  “Who is that guy?” I asked.

  Merrial favoured me with a slow smile. “You sound jealous,” she teased.

  “Ah, come on. Just curious.”

  “I’ve known him a long time,” she said. “Nothing personal. Just… one of us.”

  “Well, I had kind of figured he was a tinker.”

  Menial’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, that’s it,” she said.

  Fergal returned in a few moments, taking his seat beside me and opposite Merrial. I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted with an oddly ironic smile.

  “Well,” he said, lighting it, “you know about the… concern, for the ship?”

  I nodded. Tes, but Merrial said nothing about its being shared.”

  He grinned. “Oh, it’s quite widely shared, I can tell you that. It’s a brave offer you’ve made, and—” he spread his hands “—all I can say is, thanks.”

  I was more puzzled than modest about this reference to the bravery of my offer, so I just shrugged at that.

  “Are you on the project too?”

  He seemed amused. Tm not on site, but I am on the payroll, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “All of—” he glanced at Menial “—our profession are very much involved in the project as a whole.” He took a long swallow of beer, and a draw on his cigarette, becoming visibly more relaxed and expansive as he did so. “Its success matters a lot to us. We’re very keen to see the sky road taken again.”

  “I like that,” I said. “ ‘The sky road’.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, it took you people long enough to get back on it.”

  “Back?”

  “You walked it once.” Another glance at Menial, then a smile at me. “Or we did.”

  “Our ancestors did,” I said.

  “That’s what I meant to say,” he said idly. “But to business. I’ll have to get a piece of equipment that you—or rather, Menial—is going to need. That’s going to take some time, but I’ll manage it this weekend. You’ll have to book some time off and seats on the Monday train.” He smiled wryly. “Not much point trying to travel on the Saturday or the Sunday, anyway. No trains and damn slow traffic, even if you wanted to drive.”

  I nodded. “And the University would have all its hatches battened anyway.”

  Yeah, that’s a point. Still, can’t complain—the free weekend is one of the gains of the working class, eh?”

  “You could call it that,” I said. “Mind you, whether what goes on at the University should count as work—”

  We went on talking for a bit. Fergal was cagey about himself, and I didn’t press him, and after another couple of beers he got up and left. We had the evening, and the weekend, to ourselves.

  Menial slept, leaning against my shoulder, all the way from Carron Town to Inverness. It seemed a shame for her to miss the journey, but I reckoned she must have seen its famously spectacular and varied scenery before, many more times than I had. Besides, I liked watching her sleep, an experience which, in the nature of our past three nights, I had hitherto not had much time to savour.

  We had caught the early train, at 5.15 on the Monday morning. Each of us had separately arranged to have the first two days of the week off, by seeking out our different supervisors in the Carron bars on the Friday evening. It was to be hoped that Angus Grizzlyback would remember that I was not coming in this morning; but if he didn’t, I was sure my loyal friends would remind him, with predictable and�
�as it happened—inaccurate speculation as to how I intended to spend the day.

  We had, in fact, spent the Saturday and the Sunday in just that way, very enjoyably, in bed or out on the hills. On the Saturday afternoon Merrial had guddled a trout from a dark, deep pool in the Alt na Chuirn glen; leapt up with the thrashing fish clutched in her hands and danced around, surefooted on the slippery stones. Again, something had moved in my mind, like a glimpsed flick of a tail in the water, which had—as soon as the shadow of my thought fell on it—flashed away.

  The sun rose higher, the shadows shortening, apparently in the face of the train’s advance. We stopped at all the small, busy towns built around forestry and light industry and—increasingly as we moved east—farming: Achnasheen, Achnashellach, Achanalt, Garve… The electric engine’s almost silent glide surprised the short-memoried sheep, rabbits and deer beside the track, and set up a continuous standing wave of animals, sauntering or lolloping or springing away. I saw a wolf’s grey-shadowed shape at Achanalt; as we rounded the cliff-face at Garve I saw a wild goat on a shelf; and spotted an eagle patrolling the updrafts above the slope of Moruisg.

  I didn’t wake Merrial for any of them.

  I smoked, once, with a coffee brought around on a rattling trolley by a lass in tartan trews. Neither the sound nor the smell nor the smoke stirred Merrial at all, except to a few deeper breaths, long ripples in the spate of her hair across her breast and over my chest. I let her head nestle in the now awkward crook of my left arm, and alternated the cup and the cigarette in my right hand. It was a quiet train, for all that it was busy, with clerks and traders on their weekly commute from their coastal homes to their work in Inverfefforan or Inverness.