Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

realised I’d said them without
thinking, and that it wasn’t the answer.
    Menial laughed. ‘We have power to spare!’
    It was my turn to stop suddenly. We’d taken a right and
were going down a path past the power-station. I knew for a fact
that it could, when called upon in a rare emergency – such
as when extra heating was required to clear snow from a blizzard
-produce enough electricity to light up Canon Town several times
over.
    You’re right,’ I said. ‘So why don’t
we do it? I’veseen pictures of the great cities of
antiquity, and you’re right, they shone. They
looked… magnificent. Perhaps it was so bright they
didn’t need to see the stars – they had the city
lights instead! They made their own stars!’
    Menial was slowly shaking her head.
    ‘Maybe that was fine for them,’ she said.
‘But it wouldn’t be for us. We all get – uneasy
when we can’t see the night sky. Don’t you, just
thinking about it?’
    I took a deep breath, and let it out with a sigh. ‘Aye,
you’re right at that!’
    We walked on, her strides pacing my slower steps.
    ‘You’re a strange woman,’ I said.
    She smiled and held my waist more firmly and leaned her head
against my shoulder. I found myself looking down at her hair, and
down at the scoop neckline of her dress and the glowing stone
between her breasts.
    ‘Sure I am,’ she said. ‘But so are we all,
that’s what I’m saying. We’re different from
the people who came before us, or before the Deliverer’s
time, and nobody wonders how or why. The feeling we have about
the sky is just part of it. We live longer and we breed less, we
sicken little, sometimes I think even our eyes are sharper} these
changes are hardwired into our radiation-hardened genes –
’
    ‘Our what?’
    I felt the shrug of her shoulder.
    ‘Just tinker cant, colha Gree. Don’t worry.
You’ll pick it up.’
    ‘Oh, I will, will I?’
    ‘Aye. If you stay with me.’
    There was only one answer to that. I turned her around and
kissed her. She clasped her lips to mine and slid her hands under
my open waistcoat andsent them roving around my sides and back. I
could feel them through my silk shirt like hot little animals.
The kiss went on for some time and ended with our tongues
flickering together like fish at the bottom of a deep pool; then
she leaned away and gripped my shoulders and looked at me and
said, ‘I reckon that means you’re staying, colha
Gree.’
    Suddenly we were both laughing. She caught my hand and swung
it and we started walking again, talking about I don’t know
what. Out on the edge of town we turned a corner into a litde
estate of dozens of single-storey wooden houses with chimneys.
Some of the houses were separate, each with its own patch of
garden; others, smaller, were lined up in not quite orderly rows.
Even in the summer, even with electricity cables strung
everywhere, a smell of woodsmoke hung in the air. Yellow light
glowed from behind straw-mat blinds. A dog barked and was
silenced by an irritable yell.
    ‘Hey, come on,’ Menial said with an impish
smile.
    I hadn’t realised how my feet had hesitated as the path
had changed from cobbles to trampled gravel.
    ‘Never been in a tinker camp before,’ I
apologised.
    ‘We don’t bite.’ Another cheeky grin.
‘Well, that is to say…’
    You really are a terrible woman.’
    ‘Oh, I am that, indeed. Ferocious – so I’m
told.’
    ‘I’ll hold you to that’
    ‘I’ll hold you to more.’
    She held me as she stopped in front of one of the small houses
in the middle of the row, and fingered out a tiny key five
centimetres long on a thong attached to her belt but hidden in a
slit in the side of her skirt. The lock too seemed absurdly
small, abrass circular patch on the white-painted door at eye
level.
    ‘So are you coming in, or what?’
    Lust and reason warred with fear and superstition, and won. I
followed her over the polished wooden threshold as she switched
on the electric light. I stood for a moment, blinking in the
sudden 40-watt flood. The main room was about four metres by six.
Against the far wall was a wood-burning stove, banked low; above
it was a broad mantelpiece on which a large clock ticked loudly.
The time was half past midnight. On either side of the stove were
rows of shelves with hundreds of books. In the left-hand corner a
workbench jutted from the wall, with a microscope and an unholy
clutter of