Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

plan their economy with steam-driven computers,
that’s their problem, and if it turns out to be popular in
your country, that’s yours.’
    Myra stared at him, rocked back. ‘Jeez. That’s me
told.’
    ‘Hey, nothing personal. It had to be me – or
someone like me – who told you this, because at the level
you’re gonna be dealing with in NY or DC it’d
be… undiplomatic and impolitic to put it to you so
bluntly. I’m not saying you won’t get anything. You
will, just – maybe not as much as you’d
like.’
    She narrowed her eyes, leaning forward again. He looked so
straightforward, so frank. He couldn’t know about the
nuclear card up her sleeve.
    ‘OK, OK,’ she said, as though not too bothered,
which she wasn’t. ‘So, you’re more worried
about the Turkish Federation expanding than you are about the
SSU?’
    ‘You got it. And, well, there are bigger concerns than
that. The coup attempt has – let’s say it
hasn’t made things easier for us.’
    ‘How?’
    Jason compressed his lips. ‘You’ll find
out,’ he said gloomily.
    ‘All right,’ said Myra. She swirled her beer,
looked in it, divined no clues. She looked up and smiled at
Jason. ‘Nothing personal, point taken. So let’s get
back to personal.’
    Jason relaxed suddenly. ‘Yeah, OIL’
    ‘And it’s from the Gaelic, by the way.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The name – Sheenisov. I think it was David Reid
who coined it’
    ‘Well, whaddaya know.’
    ‘What I want to know,’ said Myra, draining her
glass and getting up, ‘is what’s this about them
having steam-driven computers?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Jason, as they returned to the jeep,
‘I can tell you all about that.’
    ‘Should you be driving?’
    ‘Ah, I guess not’Jason switched the jeep over to
autopilot, and as it took them back down the long road to Olu
Deniz he told her all about the Sheenisov’s strange
machines.
     
    It was a strange machine that took her to America.
    On her last morning she woke before Jason did, lay for a
while, then reached automatically for her contacts. She was on
the point of putting the disposables in when she noticed that she
could see clearly, all around the room. A quick look out of the
window confirmed that she wasn’t myopic any more. She
brought her hand within two inches of her face, and it stayed in
focus; she didn’t have long sight, either.
    In the shower she looked down at her body, but apart from
seeing her toes clearly she couldn’t see any difference.
Towelling her head afterwards, shefound a loose hair in her hand.
She stared at it.
    Jason, lookit that, lookit that!’
    ‘Wha?’ He sat up, looked at her, examined the
hair.
    ‘It looks like… a hair.’
    ‘No, look at the end. No, the other end.’
    ‘There’s something to see?’
    Was he awake? She shook his shoulder again.
    ‘There’s a quarter inch of blonde there! Not
grey!’
    ‘Oh, Jesus. I’ll take your word for it’
    ‘Hah,’ she said. ‘Obviously the fix
hasn’t done anything for your eyes. I’d have
them checked, if I were you.’
    ‘They’re good enough for the road,
anyway.’
    He helped her load her luggage on the jeep, disappeared
politely – probably for another surreptitious phone-call
– while she sweated through a final check-up by Dr Masound,
and was waiting at the wheel of the jeep when she skipped out of
the clinic and hopped in beside him.
    ‘All set?’
    ‘Yup. All clear.’
    ‘Welcome to eternity,’ he said, gunning the engine
and slewing the jeep out of the driveway in a spatter of
gravel.
    ‘Just don’t send me there first!’
    ‘Ah, I’ll be fine,’ Jason said, turning
right on to the road up into the hills, towards Fetiye. They
climbed and climbed, overtaking taxis and trucks and dolmushes,
being carefully polite to the troop-carriers. The valley farms
and roadside stalls were almost all worked by astonishingly old
people, who looked as though they’d had the basic metabolic
rejuvenations but couldn’t afford the cosmetic ones.
Instead of being small and stooped they were talland straight,
but their faces were like Benin masks, dark and corrugated, with
bright eyes glittering out.
    So, as Jason remarked, no change there.
    They crested a rise and Myra could see again before and below
them the impossibly blue, the Windolene-dark sea. A mile or so
offshore, visible even from that distance, that height, was the
ekran-oplan. Smaller craft buzzed around its