Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

to much, with a more impressive
contingent of performers than were here now, as well as
travelling players, whirling mechanical rides and, of course,
tinkers; the last pursuing their legitimate trade of engineering
and their less reputable, but often more lucrative, craft of
fortune-telling.
    The train pulled away, trailing its sparks along the
Canon’s estuarial plain and around the Carron
sea-loch’s southern shore.
    Menial returned with a full jug, a bottle of whisky and a tray
of small glasses. Without a word she placed the tray and the
bottle in the middle of the table and sat down, this time
opposite me. She filled our tall glasses, put down the jug and
gestured to the whisky bottle. ‘Help yourselves,’ she
said.
    My friends became more friendly towards her after that. We all
found ourselves talking together, talking shop, the inevitable
gossip and grumbles of the project, about this scandal and that
foreman and the other balls-up; ironically, the girls seemed to
feel excluded, and fell to talking between themselves. Menial,
showing tact enough for both of us, noticed this and gradually,
now that the ice was broken, returned her conversation to me.
Jondo and Machard took up again their neglected tasks of
seduction or flirtation. When, a couple of hours later, she asked
me to see her home, their ribaldry was relatively restrained.
     
    The square was noisier than ever; the only people heading for
home, or for bed, were like ourselves workers on the project who,
unlike the locals, had to work on the following day, a Friday. We
walkedthrough the dark street to the north of the square and
across the bridge over the Carron River towards the suburb of New
Kelso. Merrial stopped in the middle of the bridge. One arm was
tight around my waist. With the other, she waved around.
    ‘Look,’ she said. ‘What do you
see?’
    On our right the town’s atomic power-station’s
automation hummed blackly in the dark; to our left the
fish-farms, warmed by the reactor’s run-off, spread down to
the shore. I looked to left and right, and then behind to the
main town, ahead to New Kelso, across the loch to the other small
towns.
    She smiled at my baffled silence.
    ‘Look up.’
    Overhead the Milky Way blazed, the aurora bo-realis flickered,
a communications aerostat glowed pink in a sun long since set for
us. The Plough hung above the hills to the north. A meteor flared
briefly, my indrawn breath a sound effect for its silent passage.
To the west the sky still had light in it: the sun would be up in
four hours.
    T can see the stars,’ I said.
    ‘That’s it,’ she said, sounding pleased at
my per-ceptiveness. ‘You can. We’re in the very
middle of a town of ten thousand people, and you can see the
Milky Way. Not as well as you could see it from the top of Glas
Bhein, sure enough, but you can see it. Why?’
    I shrugged, looking again back and forth. I’d never
given the matter thought.
    ‘No clouds?’ I suggested brightly.
    She laughed and caught my hand and tugged me forward.
‘And you a scholar of history!’
    ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
    She pointed to the street-lamp at the end of the
bridge’s parapet. Its post was about three metreshigh; its
conical cowl’s reflective inner surface sharply cut off all
but the smallest upward illumination. ‘Did you ever see
lamps like that in pictures of the olden times?’ she
asked.
    ‘Now that I come to think of it,’ I said,
‘no.’
    ‘A town this size would have had lamps everywhere,
blazing light into the sky. From street-lamps and windows and
shop-fronts. The very air itself would glow with it. You could
see just a handful of stars on the clearest night.’
    I thought about the ancient pictures I’d peered at under
glass. You know, you’re right,’ I said.
‘That’s what it looked like.’
    ‘Some people,’ Menial went on, in a sudden gust of
anger, ‘lived their whole lives without once seeing the
Milky Way!’
    ‘Very sad,’ I said. In fact the thought gave me a
tight feeling in my chest, as if I were struggling to breathe.
‘How did they stand it?’
    ‘Aye, well, that’s a question you could well
ask.’ She glanced up at me. ‘I thought you might
know.’
    ‘I never noticed, to be honest.’
    ‘And why don’t we do it?’ She gestured again
at the electric twilight of the surrounding town.
    ‘Because it would be wasteful,’ I said. As soon as
the words were out I