Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

buildings. A
diagonal streak of punched square holes was abruptly stitched
across the reflective glass of the building’s face. The
helicopter paused, hovering; the car swooped from the brow of the
bridge, and the scene passed out of sight.
    ‘Jesus,’ she said, shaken. ‘What was all
that about?’
    The speaker in the partition behind the driver’s seat
came on.
    ‘Greens,’ the man said. ‘They sometimes
shoot at traffic from the airport’ She saw his reflected
eyes frown, his head shake. He wasn’t wearing a peaked cap.
He was wearing a helmet. The car slowed as the traffic thickened.
‘Sorry about that’
    ‘Can’t be helped, I guess,’ Myra said.
‘But -’ she put on her best ignorant-American tone
‘- I thought you folks had that all under control. In the
cities, anyway.’
    Not what she’d call a city – there were taller
buildings in Kapitsa, for fuck’s sake! Even with its
hills Glasgow looked flat. She could see the University’s
bone-white tower above the stumpy office-blocks. The place had
changed considerably since the 1970s, but not as much as
she’d expected, considering all it had been through: the
2015-2025 Republic, the Third World War and the Peace Process;
then the Restoration and the guerilla war against the Hanoverian
regime, and the Fall Revolution and the New Republic, itself now
in its fourteenth year of (what it too, inevitably called) the
struggle against terrorism. The blue, white and green tricolour
of the United Republic and the saltire of the Scottish State flew
from all official or important buildings.
    ‘No, I’m afraid it’s not all under control
at all,’ the driver was saying. ‘They’re right
here in the towns now, and there’s bugger all we can do
aboutthem. Apart fae bombing the suburbs, and it’s no that
bad yet’
    ‘Just bad enough to be strafing tower-blocks?’
    ‘Aye.’
    Myra shivered and setded back in the seat. Her not very
productive mission to NYC had taken up less time than originally
scheduled, leaving her a couple of days before her pencilled-in
meeting with someone from the United Republic’s Foreign
Office. She was beginning to wish that nostalgia – and an
itch to personally sort out the disposal of her archive –
hadn’t made her decide to spend that Saturday and Sunday in
Glasgow.
    The United Republic, though not her first choice of possible
allies, was still the next best thing to the United States. It
was politically opposed to the Sheenisov advance, but
hadn’t done much to stop it because it had a healthy
distaste for entanglements in the Former Union. On the other
hand, thanks to shared oil interests in the Sprady Islands it was
a strong military and trading partner of Vietnam, which was
standing up pretty well against the Khmer Vertes, which…
after that it got complicated, but Parvus had the story down to
the details. The upshot was that with an actual state on offer as
a stable ally, the UR might well be interested in a deal, nukes
or no nukes.
    The taxi exited the motorway and took a few sharp turns to
arrive at the western end of St Vincent Street, slowing down just
across from the New Britain Hotel, where she had a room
booked.
    ‘Bit ay a problem…’ said the driver.
    A crowd of a couple of hundred was outside the hotel, almost
blocking the pavement, and spilling over on to the street. It
consisted of several small and apparently contending
demonstrations; threeseparate loud-hailer harangues were going on
from perilous perches on railings and ledges of next-door
buildings; lines of Republican Guards segmented the groups. The
reverse sides of placards wagged above bobbing heads.
    ‘Ah, no problem,’ Myra said. ‘Just a lefty
demo.’
    Probably protesting the presence of a representative of some
repressive regime, or possibly an unpopular government minister
staying at the New Brit. As the big car described a neat and
illegal U-turn and glided to a halt a few yards from the left
flank of the demonstration, Myra idly wondered what specimen of
political celebrity or infamy she’d be sharing residence
with.
    The driver stepped out – on the wrong side, as she
momentarily thought – went around the rear, pinging the
boot open on his way, and opened the door for her. She gave him a
good flash of her long legs as she swung them out and emerged, in
tall boots, short skirt, sable hat and coat. The rejuvenation was
definitely making her legs