Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

came in on, or even if she
tried to stay out of it, she was likely to get hurt.
    My honour wasn’t at stake in preventing Fergal’s
departure with the papers – it would be at stake in getting
them back – and for now I had no right to risk life and
limb of myself or others over it.
    ‘Take it, tinker,’ I said. ‘I can
bide.’
    He smiled, without condescension.
    ‘I hope I see you again,’ he said, and was out the
door.
    I looked over at a few curious, tense faces at the bar,
shrugged and returned to the table, where Merrial was shakily
lighting one of my cigarettes.
    ‘Some explanation might be in order,’ I said,
ascasually as I could manage. One of my knees was vibrating.
    Menial took a long breath and a long draw with it.
    ‘ Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t,
really.’
    ‘But look,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you
just tell me to hide the files, or say we’d put them back
– ’
    I was getting exasperated and confused, and then the penny,
finally, dropped.
    ‘You agree with him!’ I said. ‘You actually agree that he has some kind of a right to those
papers, and to see the files first, and that nobody else can so
much as look at them without his sufferance. Including
me.’
    She looked levelly back at me.
    ‘And you’re not going to tell me why.’
    A small shake of her head.
    ‘And you knew all along this could happen.’
    A smaller nod.
    ‘All right,’ I said. There were still two
half-litres in the jug; I poured for both of us, and lit a
cigarette myself, leaning forward into Menial’s smoke,
almost into the tent of her hair. ‘All right.’ The
heel of my hand was rubbing beneath my eye; irritated with
myself, I stopped doing that and fiddled with the cigarette
instead. The sound of the laughter and conversation at the bar
was like the noise of a burn over a rock, washing over and hiding
our talk. We could say anything.
    ‘I’m really at a loss,’ I said. ‘I
can’t believe you just set me up, but unless you tell me
what’s really going on – ’
    ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I can’t.
Can’t you trust me on that?’
    ‘Oh, I can trust you on that all right,’ I said.
‘But if I don’t get those files back like I promised,
nobody at the University will ever trust me again.’
    She looked as tense, as torn, as I felt.
    Tm very sorry about that,’ she said. ‘But
there’s nothing I can do about it’
    ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘There must be. Hell, if
I get the files back, I can give your lot copies of all the
files. Isn’t that worth more to them than just what
they’ve got?’
    ‘You don’t understand,’ Menial said.
‘Now that we know about the other files, we’re going
to have to get them all. Like Fergal said, they’re
ours.’
    ‘Ours’, indeed! I was unwilling, or unready, to
challenge her about the society to which that might refer. I
spread my hands. ‘You can’t expect me to accept that
without a damn good reason, which you’re not giving
me.’
    ‘I’ve told you. I can’t. So why don’t
we just forget about all this?’
    ‘Menial,’ I pleaded, dismayed at the depths of her
lack of understanding, ‘these files are part of my work, my
whole career depends on them. So, please – ’
    I reached out, touching her hair.
    Her eyes glinted.
    ‘Oh, fuck off.’ she told me, not quite a
yell but loud and emphatic enough to turn heads.
    ‘I’ll do that,’ I replied, and rose and
stalked out. I glanced back from the door, and saw only the top
of her head, and the forward fall of her hair, and her hands over
her face. The door swung shut behind me.

 
8
Western Approaches
     
     
    ‘It’s over,’ Valentina was saying.
    ‘What’s over?’ Myra asked. She shook her
head, looking around her office. Val and Andrei and Denis were
all there, perched on desks or window sills. The command-centre
screens had vanished like a dream. Parvus hovered on the edge of
her vision, looking as though about to speak.
    ‘The putsch,’ Valentina explained.
    ‘Just like that?’
    Myra stared, blinking through options presented by Parvus. The
personal had its own analysis, and it was busy agreeing with
Valentina. The battlesats seized by the space movement were
enough to guard their beleaguered enclaves and launch sites, but
not to tilt the balance of world power in their favour. The
Security Council nations retained their control over the ReUN,
but the battlesats that had resisted the coup had done so in