Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

of ruby light, stood
the figure of a man. He was a tall man, and stout with it, his
antique garb of cream-coloured jacket and trousers flapping and
his shock of white hair streaming in the same invisible gale that
had blown his hat away down some long corridor whose diminishing
perspective carried it far beyond the walls of the room. His face
was red and wrathful, his fist shaking, his mouth shouting
something we couldn’t hear.
    Holding the chair above her head, her forearm in front of her
eyes, chanting some arcane abracadabra, Merrial advanced like one
facing into a fire, and seized her seer-stone and machinery from
the table. Its wire, yanked from its inconveniently placed
socket, lashed back like a snapped fishing-line. The litde peg at
the end, now bent like a fishhook, flew towards me and rapped
against the file-folder. Merrial whirled around at the same
moment, and saw me. She gave me a look worth dying for, and then
a calm smile.
    ‘Time to go,’ she said. She let the chair clatter
down, and turned again to face the silently screaming entity
she’d aroused. As she backed away from the thing, it
vanished. A mechanism somewhere in the computer whirred, then
stopped. A light on its face flickered, briefly, then went
out.
    All the lights went out. From downstairs we faindy heard an
indignant yell. I could hear Merrial stuffing her apparatus back
in its sack. She bumped into me, still walking backwards.
    Holding hands as though on a precipice, we made our way
through the library’s suffocating dark. I could smell the
dry ancient papers, the friable glue and frayed thread and
leather of the bindings. From those fibres the ancients could
have resurrected lost species of trees and breeds of cattle, I
thought madly. Pity they hadn’t.
    After a long minute our eyes began to adjust to the faint
light that filtered in past window-blinds, and from other parts
of the building. We walked with more confidence through the maze
towards the door. On the ground floor of the building we could
hear Gantry blundering and banging about.
    Then, behind us, I heard a stealthy step. Menial heard it too
and froze, her hand in mine suddenly damp. Another step, and the
sound of something dragging. I almost broke into a
screeching run.
    ‘It’s all right,’ Menial said, her voice
startlingly loud. ‘It’s a sound-projection -just
another thing to scare us off.’
    Behind us, a low, deep laugh.
    ‘Steady,’ said Menial.
    My thigh hit the edge of the table by the door. ‘Just a
second,’ I said. I let go of her hand, grabbed one more
file-folder, put it in my other hand and then caught
Menial’s hand again.
    We reached the library door, slammed it behind us and
descended the stairs as fast as we safely could, or faster. Then
we lost all caution and simply fled, rushing headlong past
Gantry’s angry and puzzled face, lurid in the small flame
of the pipe-lighter he held above his head, and out into the
night.
    Night it was – for hundreds of metres around, all the
power was off. We stopped running when wereached the first
functioning street-lamps, on Great Western Road.
    I looked at Menial’s face, shiny with sweat, yellow in
the sodium puddle.
    ‘What in the name of Reason was that?’
    Merrial shook her head. ‘My mouth’s dry,’
she croaked. ‘I need a drink.’
    My feet led me unerringly to the nearest bar, the Claimant. It
was quiet that evening, and Merrial was able to grab a corner
seat while I bought a couple of pints and a brace of whiskies. By
the empty fireplace a fiddler played and a woman sang, an aching
Gaelic threnody of loss.
    Merrial knocked back her whisky in one deft swallow, and
summer returned to her face.
    ‘Jesus!’ she swore. ‘I needed that. Give me
a cigarette.’
    I complied, gazing at her while lighting it, glancing covertly
around while I lit my own. The pub, which I’d patronised
throughout my student years, was a friendly and comfortable
place, though its wall decorations could chill you a bit if you
pondered on them: framed reproductions of ancient posters and
notices and regulations about ‘actively seeking
employment’ and ‘receiving benefit’. It was
something to do with living on public assistance, which is what
many quite hale and able folk, known as claimants, had had to
resort to in the days of the Possession, when land was owned by
lairds and capital by usurers.
    The usual two old geezers were recalling their