Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

first couple of
centuries in voices raised to cope with the slight hearing
impairment that comes with age; a gang of lads around a big table
were gambling for pennies, and several pairs of other lovers were
intent only on each other; and the singer’s song floated
high notes over them all.
    „You were about to say?’ I said. My own voice was
shakier than Menial’s had been at any point in the whole
incident. At the same time I felt giddy with relief at our
escape, and a strange exciting mixture of dread and exaltation at
the sure knowledge that my life was henceforth unpredictable.
    ‘I wasn’t,’ Menial said, ‘but
I’ll tell you anyway. That thing we saw was the deil that
guards the files. But,’ she added brightly, ‘blowing
fuses for several blocks around was the worst it could
do.’
    ‘Hey, that’s comforting.’
    ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, in a very definite tone.
‘Better that than an electric shock that burns your hands
or a fire that brings down the whole building. Or –
’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’ve heard of worse. Ones that attack your mind
through your eyes.’
    ‘And there you were laughing at the very idea, back at
the yard.’
    ‘Aye, well,’ she said. ‘It was just me that
had to face them. No sense in getting you worried.’
    ‘Oh, thanks.’
    She took my hand. ‘No, you were brave in
there.’
    ‘Ach, not a bit of it,’ I agreed.
     
    ‘So, after all, we didn’t get much,’ I said,
returning to our table with refilled glasses about two minutes
later. Outside, I could hear a growing commotion of militia
rattles and whistles and fire-brigade bells. Somewhere across the
street, a vehicle with a flashing light trundled slowly past.
    Menial looked up from riffling through the folders.
    ‘Well, you got the 2050s and the 1990s,’ she
said.
    ’That’s something. What I got – ’ she
patted her bag, grinning ‘ – was a whole lot more.
Maybe everything, I don’t know yet’
    I put the glasses down very carefully.
    ‘The… um, barrier… didn’t work,
then?’
    ‘Up to a point. Like I said, my machine, and the logic
on it, are stronger than the other one. It just couldn’t
stop that thing from doing what it kept warning it would do. You can steal a bone from a dog if you ignore the barks and
don’t mind the bites.’ In a less smug tone, she
added, ‘But it all depends on how much I pulled out before
I had to…’
    Tull out!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So what do we do now?’ I looked down at the
folders. ‘I suppose I’ll have to try and square
things with Dr. Gantry.’ Confused thoughts fought in my
mind, like those programs Menial talked about. One sequence of
impulses made me think through a scheme of grovelling apology and
covering up and smoothing over. Another made me realize that I
was almost certainly in very deep trouble with the University
authorities, and had quite possibly affronted Gantry in ways that
he might find hard to forgive.
    ‘Oh, and how are you going to do that?’ Merrial
asked. ‘I reckon he won’t be too pleased about your
running off with this lot.’
    ‘That he won’t,’ I said gloomily. ‘But
I could always say I grabbed them to save them, or something, and
that I’ll return them in a few days. After photocopying
them, of course. No, it’s the other thing that’ll
have him pissed off. Heaven knows what damage that thing did
– I doubt it was just a power cut. More like blown fuses
all over the place, maybe worse. That’ll be looked into,
and not just by theUniversity. And he’s going to want to
know who you are and what we were up to.’
    ‘Hmm.’ Menial blew out a thin stream of smoke,
observing it as though it were a divination. ‘Well, seeing
as he knows my name, and where I work… tell you what,
colha Gree. Assume he does make a fuss, or somebody else asks
questions. What I do not want getting out is that this has
anything to do with the ship, or with… my folk. What we
can say, and with some truth, is that you were led by excess of
zeal to poke around in… the dark place. That you inveigled
me into helping you. That you’re very sorry, you got your
fingers burned, and you won’t do it again. And that of
course the files you took will not be seen by anyone outside the
community of scholars. Their photocopies, now, they might
be seen, but you need say nothing of that.’
    I had been thinking of counting Menial as an honorary scholar
in my own version of