Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

nickname (or, for all I know, his surname, local custom being
what it was). He was nearly two metres tall and about a hundred
and fifty years old.
    ‘Ah, good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I
trust you all enjoyed your long lie? Let’s see if we can
think of something to occupy our leisure for the rest of the
day.’
    He drew a sheaf of finger-marked papers from his pocket as we
gathered around the pallet. His pale grey eyes, under white
brows, fixed me for a second.
    ‘And you can get started right away, colha Gree,’
he added.
    I nodded brightly, winced at the effect of this sudden violent
motion, and went off to make the tea.
     
    The morning meeting – twenty minutes of sitting around,
drinking tea and smoking – was the routine start to the
day. Work on the project was organised through a sort of
ecological pyramid of contractors and sub-contractors, from the
great kraken of the International Scientific Society all the way
down to frantically scrabbling krill like myself. Angus
Grizzlyback combined the functions of entrepreneur and foreman,
which partly cut across, and pardy complemented, the job of the
shop steward (in our case, Jondo) who held the equivalent
position in the parallel pyramid of the union.
    Conversation at the meeting, in my two months’
experience, revolved around rumour, the day’s news and
sport. At the end of it everybody would drain their mugs, fold
their newspapers, stub out their cigarettes, glance at some scrap
of paper or doodle of slopped tea, nod to Angus and get cracking
on some complex job to which only the most recondite allusion had
been made. I would clear up the mess, rinse out the mugs if we
were near a tap, and listen to Angus spell out my task for the
day in terms suitable for the simple-minded.
    Today’s agenda was dominated by a motion before the
Strathcarron district council, reported in the West Highland
Free Press, that the locality should delegate its coinage to
the regional council at In-verfefforan. This dangerous proposal
for centralisation found no favour around the pallet. It was
forensically dissected by Angus, vulgarly derided by the
Lewismen, angrily dismissed by the Carronich. I myself pointed
out a recent lesson of history. A few years earlier, a similar
proposal had been passed in Strathclyde. The Glasgow mark had
lost all public confidence, and the scheme was abandoned when
annual inflation reached a ruinous two per cent. The discussion
moved on to the national football league, and my attention
wandered.
    You can guess where. This time, however, my thoughts were more
rational, and troubling, than my previous delighted memories,
eager anticipations and fond fantasies. High as my opinion was of
myself, I could not shake off my impression that Menial had
expected to find me; that she had known me, or known of me; that
her first glance had signified recognition. Love and lust at that
sight there had been, on both sides I was sure; but I was
equally, though more obscurely, sure that this wasnot the first
sight. I had recognised her too, but had no idea from where; with
her it was conscious from the beginning, unconcealed but
unexplained.
    For a moment – I admit with shame – I considered
the notion that we might have known each other in a previous
life, whatever that may mean. On an instant I dismissed the
idea as the foolish, womanish, oriental superstition that it is.
Metempsychosis (though undoubtedly within the power of
Omnipotence) has no place in the natural and rational
religion.
    So I lounged, elbows on the rough wood of the crude table, and
sipped tea and smoked leaf while my companions argued about
finance or football, and tried to apply my infinitesimal portion
of Reason to a problem on which my passions were fully, and
turbulently, engaged. The rational conclusion was that if we
recognised each other we must have met before, not in an imagined
previous life, but previously in this.
    There were a number of possibilities on my side of the
equation. (Menial’s I set aside – there were any
number of ways in which she, from her privileged vantage, could
have observed me, unobserved herself, and investigated me,
undetected.) Was it conceivable that one of the hundreds of faces
I saw nearly every day had been hers, unnoticed at the time? It
seemed unlikely: hers was the kind of face I couldn’t help
but notice. I’d have given her a second look, and more, in
a crowd of