Ken MacLeod - The Fall Revolution 4 - The Sky Road

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THE SKY

ROAD

KEN MACLEOD

TOR

ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed'* to

the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any

payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are either products of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously.

THE SKY ROAD

First published in Great Britain by Orbit

thereof, in any form.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-57759-0

First U.S. edition: August 2000

First mass market edition: August 2001

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

For Mic Contents

1The Light and the Fair

2Ancient Time

3The Ship o the Yird

4Paper Tigers

5The Church of Man

101

6Light Weapons

132

7The Claimant Bar

163

8Western Approaches

193

9The Sickle's Sang

219

10 Forget Babylon

240

11 The Rock Covenant

273

12 Dark Island

300

13 The Sea Eagle

340

14 Final Analysis

359

15 The Hammer's Harvest

402 1

The Light and the Fair

So it came that Menial found him in

the square at Carron Town

he walked through the fair in the light of a

northern summer evening, looking for me. Of the

hundreds of people around her, the thousands in the

town and the thousands on the project, only I would

serve her purpose. My voice and visage, mind and body

were her target acquisition parameters.

I sat on the plinth of the statue of the Deliverer,

drained a bottle of beer and put it carefully down

and looked around, screwing up my eyes against the

westering sun. The music faded for a moment, then

another band struck up, something rollicking and

loud that echoed off the tall buildings around three

sides of the square and boomed out from the open

side across the shore and over the water. The still

sealoch was miles of gold, the distant hills and is-lands

stacks of black. The air was warm and shaking with the

music and heavy with scent and sweat,

2Ken MacLeod

alcohol-breath and weed-smoke. People were al-

ready dancing, swinging and swirling among the

re-maining stalls of the day's market. I caught glimpses

and greetings from various of my workmates, Jondo and

Druin and Machard and the rest, as they whirled

past in the throng with somebody who might be

their partner for the hour, or for the night, or for

longer.

For a moment, I felt intensely alone, and was

about to jump up and plunge in and seek out

some-one, anyone, who would take me even for one

dance. It was not normally this way; usually at such

occasions through the summer I had got lucky. Like

most of my fellow-workers, I was young and - of

ne-cessity - strong, and my vanity needed no flattery, and

we were most of us open-handed strangers, and therefore

welcome. But I was in a serious and ab-stracted mood,

the coming autumn's study already casting its long

shadow back, and in all that eve-ning's gaiety I had

not once made a woman laugh, and my luck had

fled.

She walked through that dense crowd as if it

wasn't there. I saw her before she saw me. Her long black

hair was caught around the temples by two narrow

braids; the tumbling waves of the rest showed traces

of auburn in the late sun. That golden light and

ruddy shadow defined her tanned and flushed face:

the large bright eyes, the high cheekbones, the curve

of her cheek and jaw, the red lips. She wore a gown of

plain green velvet that seemed, and probably was,

made to show off her strong and well-endowed figure.

Her gaze met mine, and locked. Her eyes were large and

a little slanted, and they caught my glance like a trap.

There is, no doubt, some bodily basis for the

crude cartoon of such moments - the arrow

The Sky Road 3

through the heart. A sudden demand on the sugar

reserves of the cells, perhaps. It's more like a thorn than

an arrow, and passes in less than a second, but it's

there, that sharp, sweet stab.

A moment later she stood in front of me, looking

down at me quizzically, curiously, then she came to

some decision and sat down beside me on the cold

black marble. The hooves of the Deliverer's horse

reared above us. We stared at each other for a

mo-ment. My heart was hammering. She appeared

younger, more hesitant, than she'd seemed with her

first bold gaze. Her irises were golden-brown, ringed

with green-blue. I could see a faint spatter of freck-les

beneath her tan. A fine gold chain around her neck

suspended a rough mesh of gold wire contain-ing a

seer-stone the size of a pigeon's egg. It hung

between her breasts, its small world flickering ran-domly

in that gentle friction. An even thinner silver chain

implied some other ornament, but it hung below

where I could see. The dagger and derringer and

purse on her narrow waist-belt were each so el-egant

and delicate as to be almost nominal. There was

some powerful undertone to her scent, whether

natural or artificial I didn't know.

'Well, here you are,' she said, as though we'd

ar-ranged to meet at this very place. For a couple of

heartbeats I entertained the thought that this might

be true, that she was someone I really did know and had

unaccountably, unforgivably forgotten — but no, I had

no memory of ever having met her before. At the

same time I couldn't get rid of a conviction that I

already knew her, and always had.

'Hello,' I said, for want of anything less banal.

'What's your name?'

'Menial,' she said. 'And you are . .. ?'

'Clovis,' I said 'Clovis colha Gree.'

4Ken MacLeod

She nodded to herself, as though some datum had

been confirmed, and smiled at me.

'So, colha Gree, are you going to ask me for a

dance?'

I jumped to my feet, amazed. 'Yes, of course.

Would you do me the honour?'

'Thank you,' she said. She took my hand in a

warm, dry grasp and rose gracefully, merging that

movement with her first step. It was a fast dance to

a traditional air, 'The Tactical Boys'. Talking was

impossible, but we communicated a great deal none the

less. Another measure followed, and then a slower

dance.

We finished it a long way from where we'd started -

fetched up close to the outside tables of the big-gest

pub on the square, The Carronade. Some of the lads

from work were already at one of the tables, with their

local girls. My mates gave me odd looks, compounded

of envy and secret amusement; their female partners

were looking lasers at Menial, for no reason I could

fathom. She was attractive all right, and looking more

beautiful to my eyes with every passing second, but the

other girls were not obviously less blessed; and she

wasn't a harlot, unless she was foolish (harlotry being a

respected but reg-ulated trade in that town, its plying

not permitted in the square).

Introductions were awkwardly made.

'What will you be having, Menial?' I asked.

She smiled up at me. She was, in truth, almost as tall

as I, but my boots had high heels.

'A beer, please.'

'Fine. Will you wait here?'

I gestured to a vacant place on the nearest bench,

beside Jondo and his current lass.

'I will that,' Menial said.

The Sky Road 5

Jondo shot me another odd look, a smile with one

corner of his mouth turned down, and his eyebrows

raised. I shrugged and went through to the bar,

re-turning a few minutes later with a three litre jug

and a couple of tall glasses. Menial was sitting

where she'd been, ignoring the fact that she was

being ig-nored. I put this unaccustomed rudeness

down to some petty pretty local quarrel, of which

Carron Town - and the yard and, indeed, the project -

had plenty. If one of Menial's ancestors had

offended one of Jondo's (or whoever's) that was no

business of mine, as yet.

The table was too wide for any intimate

conver-sation to be carried on across it, so I sat down

beside her, setting off a Newtonian collision of hips all

the way along the bench as my friends and their girl-

friends shuffled their bums away from us. I filled

our glasses and raised mine.

'Slainte,' I said.

'Slainte, mo chridhe? she said, quietly but firmly,

her gaze level across the tilted rim.

And cheers, my dear, to you, I thought. Again her

whole manner was neither shy nor brazen, but as

though we had been together for months or years.

I didn't know what to say, so I said that.

'I feel we know each other already,' I said. 'But

we don't' I laughed. 'Unless when we were both

children?'

Menial shook her head. 'I was not here as a

child,' she said, in a vague tone. 'Maybe you've seen

me at the project'

'I think I would remember,' I said. She smiled,

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摘要：

THESKYROADKENMACLEODTORATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORKNOTE:Ifyoupurchasedthisbookwithoutacoveryoushouldbeawarethatthisbookisstolenproperty.Itwasreportedas"unsoldanddestroyed'*tothepublisher,andneithertheauthornorthepublisherhasreceivedanypaymentforthis"strippedbook."Thisisaworkoffiction.Allthechara...

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