Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

reference to the
bravery of my offer, so I just shrugged at that.
    ‘Are you on the project too?’
    He seemed amused. Tm not on site, but I am on the payroll, if
that’s what you mean,’ he said. ‘All of
-’ he glanced at Menial ‘ – our profession are
very much involved in the project as a whole.’ He took a
long swallow of beer, and a draw on his cigarette, becoming
visibly more relaxed and expansive as he did so. ‘Its
success matters a lot to us. We’re very keen to see the sky
road taken again.’
    ‘I like that,’ I said. ‘ „The sky
road“.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, it took you people
long enough to get back on it’
    ‘Back?’
    ‘You walked it once.’ Another glance at Menial,
then a smile at me. ‘Or we did.’
    ‘Our ancestors did,’ I said.
    ‘That’s what I meant to say,’ he said idly.
‘But to business. I’ll have to get a piece of
equipment that you – or rather, Menial – is going to
need. That’s going to take some time, but I’ll manage
it this weekend. You’ll have to book some time off and
seats on the Monday train.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Not
much point trying to travel on the Saturday or the Sunday,
anyway. No trains and damn slow traffic, even if you wanted to
drive.’
    I nodded. ‘And the University would have all its hatches
battened anyway.’
    Yeah, that’s a point. Still, can’t complain
– the free weekend is one of the gains of the working
class, eh?’
    ‘You could call it that,’ I said. ‘Mind you,
whether what goes on at the University should count as work
– ’
    We went on talking for a bit. Fergal was cageyabout himself,
and I didn’t press him, and after another couple of beers
he got up and left. We had the evening, and the weekend, to
ourselves.
     
    Menial slept, leaning against my shoulder, all the way from
Carron Town to Inverness. It seemed a shame for her to miss the
journey, but I reckoned she must have seen its famously
spectacular and varied scenery before, many more times than I
had. Besides, I liked watching her sleep, an experience which, in
the nature of our past three nights, I had hitherto not had much
time to savour.
    We had caught the early train, at 5.15 on the Monday morning.
Each of us had separately arranged to have the first two days of
the week off, by seeking out our different supervisors in the
Carron bars on the Friday evening. It was to be hoped that Angus
Grizzlyback would remember that I was not coming in this morning;
but if he didn’t, I was sure my loyal friends would remind
him, with predictable and – as it happened –
inaccurate speculation as to how I intended to spend the day.
    We had, in fact, spent the Saturday and the Sunday in just
that way, very enjoyably, in bed or out on the hills. On the
Saturday afternoon Merrial had guddled a trout from a dark, deep
pool in the Alt na Chuirn glen; leapt up with the thrashing fish
clutched in her hands and danced around, surefooted on the
slippery stones. Again, something had moved in my mind, like a
glimpsed flick of a tail in the water, which had – as soon
as the shadow of my thought fell on it – flashed away.
    The sun rose higher, the shadows shortening, apparently in the
face of the train’s advance. We stopped at all the small,
busy towns built around forestry and light industry and –
increasingly as wemoved east – farming: Achnasheen,
Achnashellach, Achanalt, Garve… The electric
engine’s almost silent glide surprised the short-memoried
sheep, rabbits and deer beside the track, and set up a continuous
standing wave of animals, sauntering or lolloping or springing
away. I saw a wolf’s grey-shadowed shape at Achanalt; as we
rounded the cliff-face at Garve I saw a wild goat on a shelf; and
spotted an eagle patrolling the updrafts above the slope of
Moruisg.
    I didn’t wake Merrial for any of them.
    I smoked, once, with a coffee brought around on a rattling
trolley by a lass in tartan trews. Neither the sound nor the
smell nor the smoke stirred Merrial at all, except to a few
deeper breaths, long ripples in the spate of her hair across her
breast and over my chest. I let her head nestle in the now
awkward crook of my left arm, and alternated the cup and the
cigarette in my right hand. It was a quiet train, for all that it
was busy, with clerks and traders on their weekly commute from
their coastal homes to their work in Inverfefforan or
Inverness.
    On Merrial’s