Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

chair into placeon the opposite
side of the table and gestured to the other.
    ‘Have a seat.’
    He put the weapons he’d taken off me on the
draining-board, keeping his own rifle trained on me all the
while. Then he sat down, not at the table but tilting his chair
against the far wall, and cradling the black rifle with its odd,
curving ammunition clip.
    ‘OK, man,’ he said. ‘Looks like I
underestimated you, Clovis.’ I let this flattery pass. He
rocked the chair forward again, gazing at me intently.
You’ve got yourself into a bit of a mess,’ he
continued in a confidential tone, ‘and the others are
pretty riled with you, but I think I can square it with them. We
can sort this out.’
    I said nothing.
    ‘Do you know what Drain is?’
    After waiting a moment for some response, he went on,
‘He’s a management spy, that’s what. He works
for the site security committee of the ISS at Kishorn. He reports
on union activists, among other things.’
    Fergal said this in such a tone of loathing that I was
surprised. The minor hassles between the unions and the
contractors and subcontractors seemed to me hardly a matter for
such moral outrage, let alone death threats. I folded my arms and
cocked my head slightly to one side. Fergal leaned back
again.
    ‘He pushed to have you sacked, you know,’ he said.
‘That’s why he was in the bar at The
Carron-ade.’
    I admit I felt slightly shaken by this, because it was
entirely plausible and because it implied that someone in the bar
had been watching us, but I still made no reply.
    ‘He has not come here, with you, to spy on us.
He’s here to spy on you, to find out what your real
connections to us are.’
    ‘If that’s what he’s doing, it sounds
reasonable enough to me,’ I said, goaded at last.
‘I’m sure none of what you’re doing is a threat
to the project, anyway. That’s why I helped Menial in the
first place. So what’s the problem with his being
here?’
    ‘Oh, it has nothing to do with that. Menial told you the
truth – we think there’s a possible threat to the
ship, we’re investigating it urgently and if we find
evidence for it we’ll present the evidence to the
project’s management. No. Druin – and whoever is
behind him – are looking for any stick to beat the tinkers
with. He’s out to discredit us, and arouse hostility to
us.’
    I shook my head. ‘No – he’s never shown any
hostility to the tinkers, as far as I know.’
    ‘Naturally,’ Fergal said derisively.
    ‘Why should he or anyone want to do that,
anyway?’
    ‘God, you are so fucking naive!’ Fergal waved a
hand to indicate everything outside the room and inside the
building. ‘We’re a somewhat privileged group, by
virtue of our monopoly on skills which, frankly, are not hard to
learn. Why should you depend on us to build and run your
computers?’ He laughed. ‘You’ve seen how we
make them. It’s an ancient technology, called nanotech. We don’t understand it, but we can apply
it. A farmer could do it, just as a farmer can grow crops without
understanding how the molecular genetics and replication work. A
competent mechanic, with maybe a skilled jeweller or watchmaker
for the fiddly bits, could incorporate the seer-stones, as you
call them, into machinery.’
    ‘They’d have to know the white logic’
    ‘That too is not hard to learn. So what’s stopping
you?’
    ‘Me?’
    Tour peopled he said impatiently.
    ‘Funnily enough,’ I said, ‘I asked Druin
that very question. He said it was – well, tradition, you
would call it. It works, it goes back to the Deliverance, no
point questioning it. That’s what he said.’
    ‘No doubt. And it wouldn’t have been long before
he was complimenting you, saying he’d mulled it over and he
thought it was a good question.’
    ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked. I wanted to
give the impression of weakening; my craving made it
credible.
    ‘Sure, go right ahead,’ said Fergal.
    I took the materials from my pocket and lit up.
    ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘is
why you’re so bothered by his turning up here. You even
threatened to kill him. Maybe that was a bluff –
’
    ‘It wasn’t!’
    ‘But why? Even if he’s as hostile as you say,
he’ll have people searching for him if he doesn’t
return, and it won’t take anyone long to think of looking
here.’
    Fergal flicked his fingers. ‘We could make it look like
an