Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

I’d left the outside
door key with Menial. I gave her a forced smile and ran up the
stairs, and knocked on the door of the room where I’d left
Menial drowsing. No reply came, so I quietly opened the door.
    Menial wasn’t there. Nor was anything that belonged to
her. Nor were the two file-folders. I looked around, bewildered
for a moment, and then remembered what Menial had said about
photocopying the documents. I felt weak with relief. I gathered
up my own gear, checked again that there was nothing of ours left
in the room, and went downstairs.
    ‘ Aye,’ said the landlady, ‘the lassie went
out a wee while after you did. She left the key wi’
me.’
    ‘Did she ask about photocopying shops around
here?’
    ‘No. But there’s only one, just around the corner.
You cannae miss it.’
    ‘Aw, thanks!’
    I rushed out again and along the street and around the corner.
The shop was there, sure enough, but Merrial wasn’t. Nobody
answering to her – fairly unmistakable – description
had called.
    I wandered down Great Western Road in a sort of daze, and
stopped at the parapet of the bridge over the Kelvin. The other
bridge, which we’d crossed on the tram, was a few hundred
metres upstream; the ruins of an Underground station, boarded-off
and covered with grim warnings, was on the far bank. The
riverside fish restaurant, where we’d eaten last night,
sent forth smells of deep-fried batter. The river swirled along,
the ash of my anxious cigarette not disturbing the smallest of
its ripples.
    She could not have just gone off with the goods; I was loyal
enough to her to be confident in her loyalty to me, and did not
even consider – except momentarily, hypothetically –
that she’d simply used me to get at the information she
sought. The most drastic remaining possibility was that she had
somehow been got at herself, and had left under some urgent
summons, or duress. But the landlady would surely have noticed
any such thing, so it couldn’t have happened in the
lodging.
    Between there and the copy-shop, then. I formeda wild scheme
of pacing the pavement, searching for a clue; of questioning
passers-by. It seemed melodramatic.
    More likely by far, I told myself, was that she’d simply
gone somewhere for some reason of her own. She had her own return
ticket She’d expect me to have the sense to meet her at the
station. I could picture us laughing over the misunderstanding,
even if some frantic calls would have to be made to Gantry.
    Or even, she could have gone to another copy-shop!
    A militiaman strolled past, his glance registering me
casually. I stayed where I was until he was out of sight, well
aware that heading off at once would only look odd; and also
aware that staring with a worried expression over a parapet at a
twenty-metre drop into a river might make the least suspicious
militiaman interested.
    By then, naturally, I was wondering if she’d been
arrested, for unauthorised access to the University, necromancy,
or just on general principles; but then again, if she had been,
it was not my worry on anything but a personal level: as a
tinker, she’d have access to a good lawyer, just as much as
I would, as a scholar.
    So the end of my agitated thinking, and a look at my watch,
which showed that the time was a quarter past ten, was to decide
to go to the station and wait for her.
     
    The train was due to leave at eleven-twenty. At five past
eleven I put down my empty coffee-cup, stubbed out my cigarette
and strode over to the public telegraph. There I tapped out a
message: GANTRY UNIV HIST INST REGRET DELAY IN FILE RETURN STOP
WILL CALL FROM CARRON STOP RESPECTS CLOVIS.
    I was on the point of hitting the transmit key when I smelled
die scent and sweat of Menial behind me. Then she leaned past my
cheek and said, in a warm, amused voice, ‘Very loyal of
you, to him and to me.’
    I turned and grabbed her in my arms. ‘Where the hell
have you been?’
    ‘Just fire off that message,’ she said.
‘I’ll tell you on the train.’ She was grinning
at me, and I felt all worries fade as I hugged her properly, then
stepped back to hold her shoulder at arm’s length as though
to make doubly sure she was there. Her poke looked even larger
and heavier than before.
    ‘You’ve got the paper files?’
    Yes,’ she said, hefting the bag. ‘Come
on.’
    I transmitted the message, and we dashed hand in hand down the
platform. The train wasn’t