Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

years ago, these
same words could have been ranted forth on those very hills.
There was nothing new in what Jordan said, but Myra felt sure it
would not disturb him in the slightest to point this out. He had
probably read Winstanley and Christopher Hill for himself.
    ‘You seem to know a lot about this unknowable God of
yours.’
    That I do.’
    ‘Is God in the machines, in the AIs that you
fear?’
    ‘That too, yes.’
    ‘What’s the difference between a God who makes no
difference and takes no side and no God at all?’
    They had reached the crest of the hill. Jordan reined in his
horse. Myra stopped too, and looked down the hill at the grey
ribbon of the motorway and the white blocks of a
service-station.
    So close, all the time.
    ‘You can walk from here,’ Jordan said dryly. He
took her horse’s reins as Myra dismounted. He soberly
returned her holstered weapon, her passport and her phone.
    ‘Oh, and to answer your question. There is no
difference, in a sense. But to believe that God is in everything,
and is on your side whatever you do and whatever happens, gives
one a tremendous access of energy.’ He grinned down at her.
‘Or so I’ve found.’
    And with that, the agnostic fanatic was gone, swift on his
horse.
    Myra slogged down the hill to the service area, cleaned up,
made some phone calls while she ate in the cafeteria, and hired a
car to take her to London.
    She arrived, through all the obstacles thrown up by the small
battles on the way, on the evening of the following day. She had
long since missed herappointment with the Foreign Office; she had
told them that in advance, and they’d asked her to call
back when she arrived, to make another.
    But, after all she had seen along the way, and all she had not
seen – such as any evidence that people like Jordan’s
band, and worse, operated with anything other than insolence and
impunity, give or take the odd gunship attack – there
didn’t seem to be a whole hell of a lot of a point.

 
13
The Sea Eagle
     
     
    Rain drummed on the roof of Menial’s house. The view
outside was dreich. I’d looked out the window earlier, down
the glen and the loch; ranks of cloud were marching in off the
sea, and one after another shedding their loads on the hills.
Inside, it was warm: we sat huddled together, backs to the
piled-up pillows, sipping hot black coffee.
    ‘No work today, thank Providence,’ I said.
    ‘Not at the yard anyway,’ said Menial. She waved a
hand at the soldering-iron and seer-stones and clutter in the
corner of the room.
    ‘You start learning a different work, here.’
    ‘Aye, great,’ I said.
    ‘What is this Providence you talk about, anyway?’
she asked.
    ‘Urn.’ I stared at the slow swirl of the coffee.
‘It’s… the helpful side of Nature, you might
say. When things work out as we would wish, without an apparent
cause.’ I looked at her. ‘You must know
that.’
    ‘But that’s just coincidence,’ she said.
‘All things come by Nature.’
    ‘Some things are more than coincidence, and Nature is
more than – ’ I was going to say ‘more than
Nature’ but stopped and laughed. ‘You really
don’t know any Natural Theology?’
    ‘No,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ve
always just taken for granted that the outsiders have strange
beliefs. Never gone into the details.’ She put her empty
mug down at her side of the bed and snuggled up to me. ‘Go
on. Tell me the details.’
    ‘Oh, God. All right. Well, the usual place to start is
right here.’ I tapped her forehead, gently. ‘Inside
there. From the outside we see grey matter, but from the inside
we think and feel. We know there are billions of cells in there,
processing information. So thinking and feeling –
consciousness – is something that information does.
It’s what information is, from the inside, its subjective
side. Where there’s information, there’s
consciousness.’
    ‘But there’s information everywhere,’ she
said. ‘Wherever anything affects anything else, it’s
information. The rain falling on the ground is
information.’
    ‘Exactly!’ I slid my arm around her shoulders.
‘You’ve got it’
    ‘Got what? Oh.’ She shifted a little and looked
straight at me. ‘You mean there’s consciousness
everywhere?’
    Yes! That’s it!’
    ‘But, but – ’ She looked around. You mean to
tell me you think that clock, say, has thoughts}’
    The ticking was loud in the