Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’
    He looked at me with some regret, then straightened up and
moved back to his seat. ‘It’s no use trying to
explain it to you now,’ he said. ‘There’s so
much you need to know to make sense of it, and you have no way of
getting – ’
    He was interrupted by a banging on the door.
    ‘Who’s there?’ he shouted.
    ‘It’s me – Menial! Fergal, you’ve got
to – ’
    ‘Wait there!’
    His shouted command came too late. The door burst open and
Menial charged in. She rushed past me and placed something on the
table and then snatched her hands back from it as though it were
a dish too hot to handle. It was a seer-stone apparatus, and the
stone in the middle of it was glowing with colour and alive with
movement, forming a tiny scene under the domed surface, a bubble
of life star-ding in its virtual reality.
    The scene was of a forest glade, in which a man sat elf-like
on a rock. He looked out at us, quite calm and uncanny. He spoke,
and his voice came from a speaker in the side of the surrounding
apparatus.
    The volume was too low to make out what he was saying –
certainly not above Menial’s shouting.
    ‘You never told me there was a deil in it!’
    Fergal had jumped up, and was staring down intently at the
stone. He raised a hand, without looking up.
    ‘Calm down, Menial,’ he said mildly. ‘This
is no deil. It’s what you were looking for.’
    ‘What in hell is that?’ I asked. I too was on my
feet, peering entranced at the amazing, beautiful thing.
    ‘It’s an artificial intelligence,’ the
tinker said, his voice thrilled with awe. He stooped to the
seer-stone and placed his ear close to the speaker and listened.
Menial seemed to have noticed me just as I spoke.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. Her eyes
were reddened, her cheeks pale with fatigue. She looked scared
and puzzled.
    ‘I came here for you,’ I said. ‘I hoped you
might want me to come back.’
    ‘But I thought – ’
    Tou two, please leave now,’ Fergal said. He didn’t
even look up at us. He waved a hand absently to one side.
‘Take your weapons and tools, Clovis, take this woman if
you want and get the hell out of here with your friend, the
company spy.’
    Menial turned and looked down at Fergal.
    ‘You want me to go?’ She sounded hurt, but hopeful
as well.
    Tes, yes,’ Fergal said, impatiendy deigning to spare her
a glance. ‘You’ve done your job, and very well too.
Your skills won’t be needed in the… next phase. Oh,
and Clovis – take the bloody paper files while you’re
at it. We won’t be needing them any more,
either.’
    Menial glowered at Fergal for a moment and clutched my
hand.
    ‘Glovis, what’s going on?’
    ‘I think we’d better do as he says,’ I said.
I let go of her hand and edged around the table, picking up the
rifle I’d carried and the gear from my belt. I buckled them
back on, shoved the sheathed dagger back in my boot and took
Menial’s hand in my left, keeping the rifle in my right.
Together we backed out of the room. Fergal didn’t watch us
go, or even – as far as I could see – notice. He was
talking quietly to the sprite in the stone. I pushed the door
shut with my toe.
    ‘Do you want to come with me?’
    Menial blinked. ‘Of course I do.’
    I hugged her (rather awkwardly with the rifle in one hand, but
I wasn’t letting go of it again) and then said, ‘We
better get out before that bastard changes his mind.’
    ‘Or something worse happens. Yes, come on.’
    The big work-shop space was still busy, with lights coming on
here and there as the evening shadows lengthened – the
time, I was startled to realise, was only ten o’clock
– and the ambient light reddened. A few people on the
overhead walkways glanced down at us curiously, but that was
all.
    The room in which Druin was being held was only a few quick
strides away. I opened the door and walked in, Menial close
behind me. This room had only a chair in the middle, with one
very bright light above it. Druin was sitting on that chair with
a bored, sullen and stubborn expression on his face, while the
two tinkers who’d accompanied Fergal stood, one in front of
him and one behind. Their raised voices fell silent as we
entered. Their rifles -and Drum’s – were propped
against the back wall;mine was pointing straight ahead. It still
wasn’t loaded, but they weren’t to know that.
    Tergal says