Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

genuine
concern about the problem she thought she’d uncovered, and
myown desire for the knowledge and for the adventure of obtaining
it – even with all that, my whole training and my natural
caution came rushing back, and I wavered.
    ‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to think
about it.’
    ‘Can you get your thinking about it over by eight
tonight?’ Merrial asked drily.
    ‘Maybe. And what if I say no?’
    She held me in her level gaze. ‘I won’t think any
the less of you. It won’t change a thing about
that’
    ‘Sure?’ I said, not anxiously but mischievously. I
had already decided. She had seduced me into a frame of mind that
feared neither God nor men nor devils. ‘Then what will you
do?’
    She shook her head. Til find some other way, or at the worst
just register my protest in the record, and go on with my work as
I’m told.’
    ‘That sounds like a more sensible course in the first
place.’
    ‘It is that,’ she said. ‘But I’d
rather have the satisfaction of knowing the ship is safe, one way
or another, than of saying „I told you so“
afterwards.’
    I couldn’t argue with that, and I didn’t want to.
What she said must have had some deeper effect on me, because
when we descended the perilous steps down from the heathery
eyrie, each of us one stumble away from the welcoming arms of
Darwin, I wasn’t afraid at all.
     
    My room was narrow and long, under the slope of the roof.
After the heat of the day it was full of the smell of old varnish
and warm rust and the sound of creaking wood. The westward-facing
skylight let in enough light to see by, and enough air to
breathe.
    I came in from work and threw off my overallsand shirt, tossed
my temporarily heavy purse on the bed, and uncapped a chilled
bottle of beer I’d bought at the bus-stop. I opened the
skylight to its fullest extent and sat myself under it on the
room’s one tall chair, and leaned my elbow on the
window’s frame as though sitting at a bar. Beside my
forearm tiny red arachnids moved about on the grey and yellow
lichen like dots in front of my eyes.
    Merrial and I would meet again in two hours. Plenty of time to
wash and shave and dress, to consider and reconsider. I was
almost tempted to have a brief sleep, but decided against it,
attractive though the barely straightened bedding seemed at this
moment. After soaking up the beer I’d get a good jolt of
coffee. I lit my fifth cigarette of the day and gazed out over
the rooftops towards the loch, my parched body gratefully
absorbing the drink, my tired brain riding the rush of the
leaf.
    Merrial’s disturbing but alluring proposition had
preoccupied me all afternoon, and although my decision was made I
had plenty of doubts and fears. I would not be the first to mine
the dark archives in the interests of history, or of engineering
for that matter; it was neither a crime nor a sin, but it had
always been impressed upon me that it was a dangerous folly. And,
to be sure, I could think of no good reason for doing it, other
than the ones which motivated myself and Merrial; no doubt
everyone who had taken that path had felt the same about their reasons. Rationally, it was obvious why the dangers
were better publicised than the benefits – those who found
only madness and death in the black logic could not but be
noticed, whereas those who found knowledge or wealth or pleasure
discreedy kept their sinister source to themselves.
    What hypocrisies, I wondered, did the tinkerspractise, if they
themselves would on occasion turn their hand to the leftward
path? Until Menial had mentioned it, I’d suspected no such
thing: but then, with the tinkers’ virtual monopoly of an
understanding of the white logic, it was in their interests to
publicly disparage the black. Optical and mechanical computing,
and more especially the delicate interface between them –
the seer-stones set like gems in the shining brass of the
calculating machinery -were their speciality and secret skill.
What would happen if people outside their guild were to start
exploring the left-hand path in earnest, as a public enterprise
rather than a private vice, heaven only knew. A new Possession,
perhaps; in which case the tinkers might have to engineer a new
Deliverance. It was not a reassuring thought.
    I stubbed out the cigarette and sent the butt tumbling down
the slate roof-tiles to the dry gutter. The sounds of people
going home, of