Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

recruits, so to speak, but I’ve never
heard of such.’
    Jeanna’s giggle broke through. She turned away and moved
down to the other end of the bar. Druin glanced after her and
back at me, smirking.
    ‘Well,’ he said carefully, ‘it is rumoured
that those of the settled people who become tinkers do so through
sexual intercourse.’ He laughed at the look on my face. You
might have been well on the way to becoming one yourself, I
gather.’
    ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘That’s
ridiculous.’
    Druin shook his head. ‘It’s no ridiculous,’
he said firmly. ‘You think about it. A tinker won’t
settle down without ceasing to be a tinker, and damn few do that.
So if you want to be with a tinker, you have to become a tinker
yourself. And wander off, and never be seen again, often as not.
The tinkers don’t stay in the one place more than one or
two year, if that.’
    ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I can see there might
be something in that’ My mind was turning over a lot of
possible implications, none of which I was in any mood to share
with Druin. ‘What about the other questions?’
    He shrugged. ‘As to why they and only they do what they
do? I’ve given that some thought myself, and the only thing
I can say is, it goes back to the Deliverance, and it works fine.
What more can you say?’
    ‘Oh, plenty,’ I said. ‘Like whether
it’s the best way of doing things.’
    ‘Aye, well, like I said. It works.’ He leaned
closer. ‘Here’s a bit of tinker cant I picked up:
„If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.“ Sound
advice, wherever it comes from.’
    He drained his mug and knocked back the whisky, then grinned
and clapped my shoulder. ‘I can see I’ve given you a
lot to think about, but I haven’t the time to talk any
more. I’m off. Home to the wife and the tea, then out on
the hills with the rifle.’
    As he slid off the stool and stood up he gave me a canny look
and asked, ‘You happen to fancy coming along,
Clovis?’
    ‘Deer hunting?’ Suddenly it felt like something I
desperately needed to do to get my head clear. Myfirst inquiries
had already given me far too muchnew information to assimilate.
‘Sure,’ I said. Thanks.’
    ‘Great, well, come along for your tea as well.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t, your wife’s not expecting any
– ’ ‘Ach, man, if you saw how much she tries to
makeme eat, you’d come along out of sheer sympathy.
    Nah, you’ll be welcome.’
    ‘Thanks a lot. See you, Jeanna.’
     
    Druin’s wife’s name was Arrianne. A calm, solid,
dark woman who took my arrival entirely in her stride. We sat
around a heavy table in the living-room, under a loud-ticking
ancient clock, with the two children: a boy of about fourteen
called Ham-ish, already working at the fish-farm, and a girl of
six called Ailey, who unfussily helped her mother to serve the
dinner.
    The dinner – or ‘tea’ as they called it
– consisted of fresh mackerel, limpets boiled in salt
water, new potatoes and carrots and fresh-picked peas. I had to
stop at the third helping, but Druin and Hamish went right on
through it. This kind of feeding didn’t seem to have put an
ounce of fat on either of them; Arrianne insisted that I looked
undernourished, and she may have been right.
    After the woman and the girl had cleared away the plates Druin
stood up and reverently lifted two rifles down from a rack on the
wall. He pushed one across the table to me.
    ‘You know how to handle this?’
    Single-shot, bolt-action, scope. I demonstrated my familiarity
and safety to Druin’s satisfaction.
    ‘Has a hell of a kick,’ he warned, passing me a
half-dozen shells. ‘Still, you’ll no get more than
one shot in even if we’re lucky.’
    He said goodbye, and I said thanks to his family, and then he
led me out the back and to the side of the house where his
pick-up truck was parked. We racked the rifles on the back and
climbed into the cab. The seats were leather, the dashboard
hardwood and stainless steel, all lovingly polished.
    Tusion engine,’ he said proudly as he turned the key and
got an instant low thrum in response. ‘Eighty years old,
and not a thing wrong with it. Been in the family that long. None
of your wood-alcohol or methane stinks for us.’
    The vehicle purred into the main street and on to the road
past New Kelso. Druin caught me craning my neck to look over at
the tinker estate, and laughed.
    ‘Ach, you’ll find her,’