Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

one that has crumbled away. It
carried us over the Eighth Motor Way and into Woodlands Road,
which runs along beside the Kelvin Woods. (They, and the river
that runs through them, are named after Lord Kelvin, who invented
the thermometer.)
    We stepped off the tram at the crest of University Avenue, and
stood for a moment looking at the main building, a huge and
ancient pile called Gil-morehill. It looks like a piece of
religious architecture that has run wild, but it is solely
devoted to secular knowledge, a church of Man.
    ‘It’s not as old as it looks,’ Menial said,
as though determined not to be impressed. ‘That’s
Victorian Gothic’
    I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t argue. I had
felt in its chill stone and warm wood the shades of Sco-tus and
Knox and Kelvin, of Watt and Millar and Ferguson, and no disputed
date could shake my conviction that the place was almost as old
as thenation whose mind it had done so much to shape.
    ‘ Whatever,’ I said. ‘Anyway, the department
we’re going to isn’t there.’
    ‘Just as well,’ Merrial said.
    It was actually in one of the small side streets off
University Avenue, all of whose buildings date back at least to
the twentieth century. The trees that line it are probably as
old, gigantic towers of branch and leaf, taller than the
buildings. Their bulk darkened the street, the leaves of their
first fall formed a slippery litter underfoot.
    ‘So we just walk up and knock on the door?’
Merrial asked.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a
key.’
    She glanced down at her leather bag. ‘And you’re
sure we won’t be challenged?’
    ‘Aye, I’m sure,’ I said. We’d been
over this before. As a prospective student, with my project
already accepted even if as yet unfunded, I had every right to be
here – in fact, I should have been here more often, through
the summer. So no one should question us, or our presence in the
old archive. We’d planned how we’d do the job, but
its proximity seemed to be making Merrial more nervous than I
was.
    ‘All right,’ she said.
    The key turned smoothly in the oiled lock, and the tongue
clicked back. I pushed the heavy door aside and we stepped in. I
locked it behind us. The place was silent, and as far as I could
tell it was empty. The hallway was dim and cool, its pale yellow
paint darkened by generations of nicotine, and it divided after a
few metres into a narrower corridor leading deeper into the
Institute and a stairway leading to the upper floors. The place
had a curious musty odour of old paper and dusty electric
lightbulbs, and a faint whiff of pipe-smoke. I checked the piles
of unopened mail on the long wooden table at the side. A few
notes for me, which a quick check revealed were refusals of
various applications for patronage. I stuffed them in my jacket
pocket and led the way up two flights of stairs to the library,
switching on the fizzing electric lamps as we went.
    Menial wrinkled her nose as I opened the library door and
switched on the lights.
    ‘Old paper,’ I said.
    She smiled. ‘Dead flies.’
    I made to close the door after we entered the room, but Menial
touched my arm and shook her head.
    ‘I couldn’t stand it,’ she said.
    ‘You’re right, me neither.’ The still, dead
air made me feel short of breath.
    I held her hand, as much for my reassurance as for hers, as we
threaded our way through the maze of ceiling-high book-cases.
Menial, to my surprise, once or twice tugged to make me pause,
while she scanned the titles and names on cracked and faded
spines with a look of recognition and pleasure.
    ‘The Trial of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and
Trots-kyites!’ she breathed. ‘Amazing! Do you
know anything about that?’
    ‘It was some kind of public exorcism,’ I said,
hurrying her along. I’d once glanced into that grim grimoire myself, and the memory made me slightly nauseous.
‘People claimed they had turned into rabid dogs who would
go out and wreck machinery. Horrible. What superstitious minds
the communists had.’
    Menial chuckled, but shot me an oddly pleased look.
    At the far end of the library the ranks of bookcases stopped.
Several tables and chairs were lined up there, apparently for
study – but no one, to my knowledge, ever studied at them.
The most anyone could do was to put down a pile of books or
documents there for a quick inspection of their contents under
the reading-lights, before rushing out