Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

the slightest
embarrassment. ‘Oh, you’re not so bad yourself, colha
Gree,’ she said in a judicious tone. ‘But you have a
lot to learn.’
    ‘I hope you’ll teach me.’
    ‘I’m sure I will,’ she said. ‘If you
want to stay with me, that is.’ She waved a hand, as if
this were a matter yet to be decided.
    ‘Stay with you? Oh, Merrial!’ I couldn’t
speak.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing could make me leave you. Ever.’
    I was almost appalled at what I was saying. I had not expected
to hear myself speak such words, not for a long time to come.
    ‘How sweet of you to say that,’ she said, very
seriously, but smiling. ‘But – ’
    ‘But nothing!’ I reached sideways and put the mug
on the floor and shifted myself down the bed towards her. Without
looking away from me, she put her mug down too, on a trunk at the
end of the bed, and rocked forward to her knees to meet me. We
knelt with our arms around each other.
    ‘I love you,’ I said. I must have said it before,
said it a lot of times through the night, but now there was all
the weight in the world behind the words.
    ‘I love you too,’ she said. She clung to me with a
sudden fierceness, and laid her face on my shoulder. A wet, salt
tear stung a love-bite there. She sniffed and raised her head,
blinking her now even brighter eyes.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
    Tm happy,’ she said.
    ‘So am I.’
    She regarded me solemnly. ‘I have to say this,’
she said, with another unladylike sniffle. ‘Loving me will
not always make you happy.’
    I could not imagine what she meant, and I didn’t want
to. ‘Why are you saying this?’
    ‘Because I must,’ she said. Her voice was
strained. ‘Because I have to be fair with you.’
    ‘Aye, sure,’ I said. ‘Well, now you’ve
warned me, can I get on with loving you?’
    She brightened instantly, as though some arduous
responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders.
    ‘Oh yes!’ she said, hugging me closer again.
‘Love me as much as you like, love me for ever!’ She
pulled back a little, looked down, then raised her gaze again to
mine.
    ‘But not right now,’ she added regretfully.
‘You have to go.’
    ‘Now?!’ We had fallen out of our mutual dream into
the workaday world, where we were two people who didn’t,
really, know each other all that well.
    ‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘You have to get back
across town, get… washed, and ready for work and catch the
bus at half past six.’
    ‘I can catch it from here.’
    ‘The hell you can. People will talk.’
    ‘They’ll talk anyway.’
    ‘People around here, I mean.’
    I climbed reluctantly off the bed. Menial slipped lithely
under the covers and pulled them up to her chin.
    ‘What about you?’ I asked, as I searched out and
sorted my clothes.
    I’m an intellectual worker,’ she said smugly as
she snuggled down. ‘We start at nine.’
    She watched me dress with a sort of affectionate curiosity.
‘What have you got on your belt?’
    I patted the hard leather pouches and fastened the buckle.
‘The tools of a tradesman,’ I told her, ‘and
the weapons of a gentleman.’
    ‘I see,’ she said approvingly.
    ‘So when will I see you again?’ I asked, as I
recovered the sgean dhu and stuck it back down the side of
my boot.
    ‘Tonight, eight o’clock, at the statue? Go for
something to eat?’
    I pretended to give this idea thoughtful consideration, then
we both laughed, and she sat up again and reached out to me. We
hugged and kissed goodbye. As I backed away to the door, grudging
even a moment without her in my sight, a flickering from the big
seer-stone caught my eye. I stopped beside the table and stooped
to examine it. As I did so I noticed Menial’s two pendants:
the talisman -the small seer-stone – now showing a vaguely
organic tracery of green, and on the silver chain a silver piece
about a centimetre in diameter which appeared to be a monogram
made up of the letters ‘G’ and T’ and the
numeral ‘4’.
    The table’s centre-piece was all black within, except
for an arrangement of points of light which might have been
torches, or cities, or stars. They flashed on and off, on and
off, and the bright dots spelled out one word: HELP.
    I glanced over at Menial. ‘It’s reached the end of
its run,’ I remarked.
    ‘Reset it then,’ she said sleepily from the
pillow.
    I brushed the stone’s chill surface with my sleeve,
restoring it to chaos, and with a