Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

project had started, was a place where
everybody knew everything about everybody else, or at least
talked as though they did. Jeanna’s knowledge of my meeting
with, and parting from, Menial was elaborate enough to suggest
that local gossip was fast catching up with the influx.
    ‘That tinker who was in here – ’ I said,
trying to steer her away from her obvious probing of my side of
the story.
    ‘Oh, aye, Fergal.’
    ‘You know him?’
    She shrugged and made a mouth. ‘To see. He drops in now
and again. Bit of an arrogant sod, but he stands his
round.’
    ‘Any idea where he works?’
    ‘Aye, in the old power-station up at Lochluichart.
It’s no’ a power-station any more, you understand.
But folk still call it that.’
    ‘So what is it now?’
    She grimaced. ‘Not a place you’d like to go to.
It’s said the tinkers make their seer-stones there.
I’ve heard tell it feels… haunted. A creepy place.
Mind you, I’ve never met anyone who’d been there. Or
who’d want to,’ she added pointedly.
    ‘Anyone who wasn’t a tinker, you mean,’ I
said. ‘Presumably Fergal has mentioned he’s been
there.’
    She shook her head, frowning. ‘He’s never said a
word about it, even when he’s drunk. Not that he’s
drunk often! He can hold his drink, that one.’
    ‘So how do you know that’s where he
works?’
    ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ she said, as though
impatient to be off the subject. ‘It’s just –
you know – what people say.’
    I was about to try to get more than that out ofher when
another voice joined our conversation.
    ‘Is this you back on the pull, Clovis, so soon after the
quarrel with your last lassie?’ My workmate Druin sounded
amused. I turned and grinned back at him as the barmaid poured
him a half-litre. Druin was a local man, married and in his
thirties, his wes-kit showing bare brown arms still oil-stained
from his day’s work, and scarred from years of work before
it too.
    That’s not it at all,’ I said. ‘I thought
better of it, as who wouldn’t? But she’s not to be
seen. So I’m trying to find out more about the
tinkers.’
    He laughed. ‘You’re a character. The reading makes
you funny in the head.’ He said this not as an insult but
as a charitable explanation. ‘Mind you,’ he added,
‘that’s a girl I wouldn’t walk out on
myself.’
    I asked Jeanna for another half-litre and, noticing a
temptingly cheap bottle, said, ‘Oh, and a couple of shots
of the Talisker, please.’
    Druin raised his glass. ‘Thanks, mate.’ He took a
sip of the Talisker and asked, ‘What’s this about you
getting the sack?’
    ‘Some trouble with the University,’ I said.
‘I borrowed some papers, and found I had little choice but
to let Fergal take them. The ISS seems to have taken it as a sign
I’m not to be trusted. I take that as an insult.’
    ‘As well you might.’ He looked at me curiously.
‘You don’t seem too bothered about it,
though.’
    I made a twist of my lips, turned my hand over. ‘Aye,
I’m bothered, but there’s no sense letting something
like that get to you. I’ll appeal it, Jondo’s going
to take it up. It’ll get sorted out. I’m more worried
about why Menial isn’t at work.’
    ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘She isn’t taking the
day off, or suspended or anything like that. She’s finished
her contract.’
    ‘How d’you know that?’
    He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Jondo told me, because
naturally he asked Admin if she’d been chucked out as
well.’
    I sighed. ‘I suppose that’s a relief, in a way.
But she said nothing about it to me, even before.’
    Druin nodded. ‘Aye, they’re a close-mouthed lot,
the tinkers. So, what is it you wanted to know about
them?’
    ‘Well, we sort of take them for granted, right? Some
people do one kind of work, and nobody else knows much about it.
How did that start? Why can’t just anybody follow the path
of light? How do people become tinkers in the first
place?’
    Druin looked at Jeanna, and then at his drinks. He scratched
his chin. Jeanna unaccountably blushed a little, and held her
hand over a giggle.
    ‘That’s a lot of questions,’ Druin said.
‘To answer your last one first, most people who become
tinkers are born into it. They’re tinkers because their
parents were tinkers.’
    ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘but look at the tinkers.
They’re not an inbred people, whatever else they may be. So
they must get new