Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

Glasgow. But it wasn’t that, either. It wasn’t
warning me off – it was inviting me in. That’s when I
ran with it to Fergal.’
    ‘Who seems to have accepted its invitation,’ I
said. ‘He lost interest in all else as soon as he saw
it’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Druin. He stood up and stepped overto
the doorway, perhaps to get away from our smoke. The sky, an hour
after midnight, was still light – or growing lighter again
– behind him. ‘Which rather suggests to me that that
was his objective all along. As why shouldn’t it be?’
He turned back to us, his eyes shining. ‘Who wouldn’t
want to talk to an artificial intelligence? The ancients had
them, and even the tinkers have lost them – am I right,
Menial?’
    ‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen
or heard of us having anything like that myself, and I… I
think I would have.’
    Tou know,’ Druin said, ‘this is a relief, really.
All right, the two of you were used by Fergal, maybe put through
a bit of anguish and inconvenience, but no great harm has come of
it. And no, Clovis, I don’t count your little difficulties
as great harm – you’ll have worse trouble than that
before you’re my age!’
    ‘All right,’ I said, holding back some irritation,
‘I can see how it might not seem important to you. But
Fergal has got hold of this thing, and what’s worrying me
is what he intends to do with it.’
    ‘What he intends to do with it,’ said Druin,
‘depends on what it is. Any ideas there, Menial?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was in Myra
Godwin’s files, and we know that some people had these
things back then – it could have been some kind of adviser
or counsellor. Maybe Fergal knows what it is, but I
don’t.’
    ‘I hate to think what Fergal might do with an adviser
that has access to knowledge from the past,’ I said. Druin
shook his head.
    ‘So what if Fergal has found a new toy, or a new friend
for all I know? It’s none of our damn business, and
certainly none of mine – it has nothing to do with the
security of the ship, now has it?’
    ‘You’ve got over your annoyance at being held and
disarmed pretty damn quick,’ I said sourly.
    ‘Ach!’ Druin said. ‘Hot words. Forget it.
Who would sue a tinker, anyway?’
    At that Menial and I both had to laugh. The futility of
‘taking a tinker to court’ was proverbial.
    ‘That doesn’t solve the problem though,’
Menial said.
    ‘What problem?’
    ‘The problem isn’t the thing itself. Fergal is the
problem.’ She frowned, evidently troubled.
‘He’s no exactly evil – his intentions are
good, in a way, and he can be a very… charming man in his
way, on a personal level; but he’s very…
single-minded, you know? He has a tendency to focus on one thing
at a time, and to over-ride anything and everybody
else.’
    Druin snorted. ‘Hah! I don’t know Fergal, but I
know the type. More by repute than experience, thank
Providence.’ He chuckled. ‘Mind you, if ever I run
across a manager like that, he tends to have a short career
thereafter. As a manager, anyway.’ He stomped over and sat
down again. ‘But still – that’s a problem for
your lot, no for mine. I still say we’d best let the matter
drop. The project’s getting awful close to completion,
we’re actually ahead of schedule, and there’s big
bonuses riding on getting the platform out the yard before the
end of August -which could make the difference between getting it
out before the winter and having to wait till the spring.
That’s no small thing, and trouble wi the tinkers is the
one thing that could blow it at this stage.’
    ‘What worries me about Fergal,’ I said, ‘is
not so much his personality as his beliefs. I know you’re
not that kind of person, Menial, but communism isnotoriously
susceptible to characters who are… who can twist it into a
reason for doing what they’d like to do anyway, which is
living outside the covenant.’
    ‘What do you mean by „the covenant“?’
asked Druin.
    ‘Och, what you said – when Fergal seemed to be
threatening to kill you. Blood for blood, death for death –
that’s the covenant, the rock. Or what you said about us
and the tinkers, having to live together -same thing, on the side
of the living.’
    Tergal sometimes says things like that,’ Menial
interjected hastily. That so-and-so ought to be shot, or
whatever. He doesn’t mean it, it’s just hot words, as