Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

you’re to let him go,’ said
Menial.
    ‘What have they been doing to you?’ I asked.
    Druin stood up and stretched. ‘Och, nothing to speak
of,’ he said. ‘They have merely been boring me with
an account of my sins. I have not yet found it in my heart to
confess.’ He deftly retrieved his weapons and kit. Til
thank you to escort us out, gentlemen.’
    One of the tinkers found his voice. ‘I want this
confirmed by Fergal.’
    ‘You do that if you like,’ Menial said. ‘But
I warn you, he’s not in a friendly mood.’
    The tinker opened his mouth and closed it again. He smiled at
Menial in a surprisingly complicit way, which made me suspect
that he and Menial had some shared experience of Fergal’s
moods. ‘Oh, well, it’s your responsibility,’ he
said.
    We stepped outside the room.
    ‘Wait a minute,’ said Menial.
    She skipped away up a stair-ladder and ran along a walkway,
her feet setting the metal ringing. We waited in uneasy silence
until she returned, the two file-folders hugged to her chest.
    ‘That’s us,’ she said. ‘All
set.’
    The two men walked ahead of us down a long central passage
through the machine shop to the building’s ancient green
copper doors, then turned sharply left and showed us out through
a rather less imposing wooden door.
    ‘Goodbye,’ said Druin balefully.
    The tinkers ignored him.
    ‘Are you leaving?’ one of them asked Menial.
    Tm going home,’ she said. ‘I hope I see you
again.’
     
    Drain’s truck was just over a kilometer away. We
hastened along the quiet road, the late sun in our eyes. Drain
strode briskly in front. Menial’s hand was clasped in mine,
fingers intertwined. None of us said very much; we had too much
to say all at once.
    At last we reached the track. Drain stopped and looked at the
rifles.
    ‘Och, I forgot, we have some deer to kill.’
    He laughed at my face, and took the two rifles and racked them
again on the back of the track. We went around to the cab and
climbed in. Menial shared the double passenger-seat with me; it
was comfortably crowded. For a minute we all slumped gratefully.
I passed Menial a cigarette and lit for both of us. The Kyle
train clattered past.
    ‘You know,’ Drain said reflectively,
‘I’ve never before had a gun pointed at me, thank
Providence. It isn’t an experience I’d want to
repeat.’
    ‘I don’t think they’d really have killed
either of us,’ I said. It was us who marched in with
rifles, after all.’
    ‘Aye,’ said Drain indignantly, ‘and
I’ve carried a rifle into The Carronade many’s the
time, and nobody ever took it ill.’
    ‘Different situation – ’
    Tergal could have killed you!’ Menial interrupted.
‘If he was in the mood. It was only the possible
consequences that stopped him. You did something stupidly dangerous going there.’
    ‘Well, we went there to get you, and to get yon papers
that Clovis makes such a fuss about,’ Drain grinned.
‘And that’s what we’ve come out
with.’
    ‘What a charming way to put it,’ said Menial,
un-offended. I leaned past her and frowned at Drain.
    ‘What about you? Fergal said you were workingfor site
security, spying on the unions and on the tinkers. And that you
argued for getting me sacked. Is that true?’
    ‘I don’t spy on anyone,’ Druin said.
That’s just the tinkers’ way of putting it, at least
those three who caught us. There’ll be the deil to pay for
that, you know!’
    ‘How?’ Drum’s non-denials hadn’t
passed me by, but this was more urgent.
    Druin turned the engine on and began to steer the truck back
on to the road west. Talse imprisonment!’ he said.
‘And assault with a deadly weapon, which is what
threatening someone with a gun is. You and me, Clovis, we could
sue the bastards.’ He glanced across at me sharply.
‘You haven’t any idea, by any chance, why they kept
us in the first place, and why they let us go when they did? I
mean, with me they just kept banging on about what a scab I was.
What did Fergal have to say to you? And, come to think of it,
what are you two up to anyway? I know you’re up to
something, and that it concerns the ship. Which means it concerns
me.’
    I slid my arm around Menial’s shoulders. She smiled at
me, then gazed straight ahead.
    ‘Tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him it
all.’
    So I did, as we pulled out of Dark and drove into the
sunset.
     
    ‘Aye, well,’ said Druin, ‘you’ve told