Divisions (64 page)
Authors: Ken MacLeod
‘Not many,’ said Merrial cautiously.
Druin leaned back and took a sip of whisky, then topped up our coffees.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said in a relaxed and expansive tone. ‘Like I said, no business of mine.’ He leaned forward, becoming more concentrated in his expression, fixing us both with his gaze. ‘As to what my business is, Fergal and his two sidekicks were right in one respect—I do have a place on the
site security committee. I’m no spy—I was put there by the union, dammit! And I did push for having your clearance revoked, Clovis. What else could I do, with the information I had? But I can equally well push to have it restored, and I will. You’ll be back at your job in a day or two, if you want it, whatever your University decides about you.’
site security committee. I’m no spy—I was put there by the union, dammit! And I did push for having your clearance revoked, Clovis. What else could I do, with the information I had? But I can equally well push to have it restored, and I will. You’ll be back at your job in a day or two, if you want it, whatever your University decides about you.’
‘That’s—’ I shook my head ‘—that’s great, that’s what I want. Thanks.’
‘But before you return yon files to the University, have another look through them, and try to see if there
is
anything in them about what happened at the Deliverance. Or anything about this artificial intelligence. Tell me what you find, even if it’s nothing, just to put my mind at rest. Put that couple of days to good use, you and Merrial.’ He grinned slyly. ‘I don’t need to tell you to do the same with the nights. Speaking of which, I’m off to my bed. And meanwhile, not a word about all this. Keep the peace with the tinkers, and we’ll get this show on the road.’
is
anything in them about what happened at the Deliverance. Or anything about this artificial intelligence. Tell me what you find, even if it’s nothing, just to put my mind at rest. Put that couple of days to good use, you and Merrial.’ He grinned slyly. ‘I don’t need to tell you to do the same with the nights. Speaking of which, I’m off to my bed. And meanwhile, not a word about all this. Keep the peace with the tinkers, and we’ll get this show on the road.’
‘The sky road,’ I said, quoting Fergal.
‘Aye. Everybody happy?’
We walked to Merrial’s house, and on the way we talked.
‘I thought,’ she said, ‘that you were too committed to your history, your research and your old papers, to be willing to stay with me. That was what I was upset about, not your questions.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And I thought you were too committed to the secrets of your society to trust me.’
‘Aach,’ we both said at once.
I told her what Druin had said, about the tinkers’ methods of recruitment.
She laughed, clinging to my arm and swinging away out on it, looking up at me and looking away, giggling.
‘It’s true!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t what I’d planned.’
‘So you—’
‘Fell for you and hoped you’d join us, yes.’
‘Ah-ha-ha! Become a tinker!’
‘Well, why not?’
She swung around and caught me by both elbows and looked me straight in the eyes.
‘Why not?’ she repeated.
I thought of what I’d seen and felt—and smelt—in the library when I went there with Merrial, and I thought of what I’d seen in the old power-station. This was history, this was the real thing, not dead but living, a continuity with the past and an earnest of the future, the sky road indeed. But
who’s to say it was those considerations that weighed with me, and not the sight of Merrial under the stars, on her way to a bed I could share for all the nights of my life?
who’s to say it was those considerations that weighed with me, and not the sight of Merrial under the stars, on her way to a bed I could share for all the nights of my life?
Not me, for sure.
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
Coming in from the West on the M8, the taxi hired by the Kazakhstani consulate to take Myra from Glasgow Airport was hit by small-arms fire just as it came off the flyover at Kinning Park.
Myra saw white starry marks pock the smoky armoured glass,
did-did-did
, heard the wheels’
whee
of acceleration; her hand went reflexively to the shoulder holster under her coat and got caught in the strap of the seatbelt. For a moment, as she looked down at her recently, newly smooth and now suddenly white hand, she thought death had found her at last—that she was going to die old and leave a good-looking corpse.
did-did-did
, heard the wheels’
whee
of acceleration; her hand went reflexively to the shoulder holster under her coat and got caught in the strap of the seatbelt. For a moment, as she looked down at her recently, newly smooth and now suddenly white hand, she thought death had found her at last—that she was going to die old and leave a good-looking corpse.
Then they were out of it, smoothly away, swinging around up and on to the Kingston Bridge over the Clyde. Myra twisted about and looked back and to the left, where the standard-practice burning-tyres smokescreen rose somewhere among the office-blocks and high-rises into the pale-blue late-May morning sky. A helicopter roared low and fast above the motorway, making the big car rock again, and flew straight at one of the tall buildings. A diagonal streak of punched square holes was abruptly stitched across the reflective glass of the building’s face. The helicopter paused, hovering; the car swooped from the brow of the bridge, and the scene passed out of sight.
‘Jesus,’ she said, shaken. ‘What was all that about?’
The speaker in the partition behind the driver’s seat came on. ‘Greens,’ the man said. ‘They sometimes shoot at traffic from the airport.’ She saw his reflected eyes frown, his head shake. He wasn’t wearing a peaked
cap. He was wearing a helmet. The car slowed as the traffic thickened. ‘Sorry about that.’
cap. He was wearing a helmet. The car slowed as the traffic thickened. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Can’t be helped, I guess,’ Myra said. ‘But—’ she put on her best ignorant-American tone ‘—I thought you folks had that all under control. In the cities, anyway.’
Not what she’d call a city—there were taller buildings in
Kapitsa
, for fuck’s sake! Even with its hills Glasgow looked flat. She could see the University’s bone-white tower above the stumpy office-blocks. The place had changed considerably since the 1970s, but not as much as she’d expected, considering all it had been through: the 2015–2025 Republic, the Third World War and the Peace Process; then the Restoration and the guerilla war against the Hanoverian regime, and the Fall Revolution and the New Republic, itself now in its fourteenth year of (what it too, inevitably called) the struggle against terrorism. The blue, white and green tricolour of the United Republic and the saltire of the Scottish State flew from all official or important buildings.
Kapitsa
, for fuck’s sake! Even with its hills Glasgow looked flat. She could see the University’s bone-white tower above the stumpy office-blocks. The place had changed considerably since the 1970s, but not as much as she’d expected, considering all it had been through: the 2015–2025 Republic, the Third World War and the Peace Process; then the Restoration and the guerilla war against the Hanoverian regime, and the Fall Revolution and the New Republic, itself now in its fourteenth year of (what it too, inevitably called) the struggle against terrorism. The blue, white and green tricolour of the United Republic and the saltire of the Scottish State flew from all official or important buildings.
‘No, I’m afraid it’s not all under control at all,’ the driver was saying. ‘They’re right here in the towns now, and there’s bugger all we can do about them. Apart fae bombing the suburbs, and it’s no that bad yet.’
‘Just bad enough to be strafing tower-blocks?’
‘Aye.’
Myra shivered and settled back in the seat. Her not very productive mission to NYC had taken up less time than originally scheduled, leaving her a couple of days before her pencilled-in meeting with someone from the United Republic’s Foreign Office. She was beginning to wish that nostalgia—and an itch to personally sort out the disposal of her archive—hadn’t made her decide to spend that Saturday and Sunday in Glasgow.
The United Republic, though not her first choice of possible allies, was still the next best thing to the United States. It was politically opposed to the Sheenisov advance, but hadn’t done much to stop it because it had a healthy distaste for entanglements in the Former Union. On the other hand, thanks to shared oil interests in the Spratly Islands it was a strong military and trading partner of Vietnam, which was standing up pretty well against the Khmer Vertes, which … after that it got complicated, but Parvus had the story down to the details. The upshot was that with an actual state on offer as a stable ally, the UR might well be interested in a deal, nukes or no nukes.
The taxi exited the motorway and took a few sharp turns to arrive at the western end of St Vincent Street, slowing down just across from the New Britain Hotel, where she had a room booked.
‘Bit ay a problem …’ said the driver.
A crowd of a couple of hundred was outside the hotel, almost blocking
the pavement, and spilling over on to the street. It consisted of several small and apparently contending demonstrations; three separate loud-hailer harangues were going on from perilous perches on railings and ledges of next-door buildings; lines of Republican Guards segmented the groups. The reverse sides of placards wagged above bobbing heads.
the pavement, and spilling over on to the street. It consisted of several small and apparently contending demonstrations; three separate loud-hailer harangues were going on from perilous perches on railings and ledges of next-door buildings; lines of Republican Guards segmented the groups. The reverse sides of placards wagged above bobbing heads.
‘Ah, no problem,’ Myra said. ‘Just a lefty demo.’
Probably protesting the presence of a representative of some repressive regime, or possibly an unpopular government minister staying at the New Brit. As the big car described a neat and illegal U-turn and glided to a halt a few yards from the left flank of the demonstration, Myra idly wondered what specimen of political celebrity or infamy she’d be sharing residence with.
The driver stepped out—on the wrong side, as she momentarily thought—went around the rear, pinging the boot open on his way, and opened the door for her. She gave him a good flash of her long legs as she swung them out and emerged, in tall boots, short skirt, sable hat and coat. The rejuvenation was definitely making her legs worth seeing again; she’d have to rethink her wardrobe …
The driver lifted her two big suitcases from the boot; she waited for a moment as he clunked it down and closed the nearside door, then she walked towards the hotel entrance, looking curiously at the demo as she hurried past it. There was about three yards of clearance between the shopfronts and the half-dozen or so Republican Guards deployed along the pavement to demarcate the front line of the demo. Behind the Guards the crowd was jumping up and down and yelling and chanting.
She glanced up at a placard being waved above her and saw at the centre of it a blurrily blown-up newsfeed-clip picture of her own face. Suddenly the contending chants became clear, like separate conversations at a party.
‘Victory to—the SSU!’
That one was in a battle of the soundwaves with, ‘Sheenisov—hands off! Viva—Kazakhstan!’
Above them both, not chanted but being shouted repeatedly through one of the loud-hailers, ‘Support the political revolution in the ISTWR!’
A competing loud-hailer was going on in a more liberal, educated and educational tone about the crimes of Myra Godwin’s regime—she caught the words ‘nuclear mercenaries’ and ‘shameful exploitation’ in passing.
For a moment Myra stopped walking; she just stood there, too shocked to move. Her gaze slid past the reflecting shades of a Guard to make eye-contact with a young girl in a tartan scarf. The girl’s chant stopped in mid-shout and Myra couldn’t look away from her disbelieving, open-mouthed face. Then the girl reached over the Guard’s shoulder and pointed a shaking finger at Myra.
‘That’s
her
!’ she squealed. ‘She’s here!’
her
!’ she squealed. ‘She’s here!’
Myra smiled at the girl and looked away and walked steadily towards the steps up to the hotel door, now only about ten yards away. The driver puffed along behind her. The chants continued; it seemed she was getting away with it.
And then a silence spread out, just a little slower than sound, from the girl who had identified her. The chants died down, the loud-hailer speeches ceased. The crowd surged through the wide gaps between the Guards, blocking the pavement. A young man, not as tall as Myra but more heavily built, stood in front of her, yelling incomprehensibly in her face.
Her old understanding of the Glasgow accent restored from memory.
‘Ah despise you!’ the man was shouting. ‘Yi usetae call yirsel a Trotskyist an yir worse than the fuckin Stalinists! Sellin nuclear threats and then sellin slave labour! And noo yir fightin agin the Sheenisov! They’re the hope o the world and yir fightin them for the fuckin Yanks! Ya fuckin sell-out, ya fuckin capitalist hoor!’
He leaned in her face ever more threateningly as he spoke. His fists were balling, he was working himself up to take a swing at her. Three yards behind his back somebody holding up a ‘Defend the ISTWR!’ placard was pushing through the press of bodies. Myra took one step back, bumping into one of her suitcases—the driver was still holding it, still behind her. Good.
She slipped her right hand inside her coat. The yelling man’s clamour, and forward momentum, stopped. Another silence expanded around them. Myra reached into a pocket above her thumping heart and pulled out her Kazakhstani diplomatic passport. She thumbed it open and held it high, then waved it in front of the nearest Guard’s nose.
‘Officer,’ she said without turning around, ‘please escort my driver into the hotel.’
‘Aw right, ma’am.’
‘Thanks!’
The driver passed by on her left surrounded by uniforms. Myra took advantage of the accompanying flurry of distraction to dive behind the man who’d yelled at her, and to push herself into the small huddle of pro-ISTWR demonstrators. She glanced quickly around five shocked but friendly faces, noticing lapel badges with a flashed grin of recognition and pride—the old hammer-and-sickle-and-4, a solidarity-campaign button with the ISTWR’s signature radiation trefoil, sun-and-eagle stickers …
‘Comrades,’ she said, ‘let’s go inside.’
The comrades clustered around her and together they stepped back on the pavement. The angry man was being restrained by some of his own comrades, but still denouncing Myra at the top of his voice. Myra’s group marched up the steps and through the hotel’s big swing doors into the now crowded
foyer. White marble floor, black-painted ironwork, fluted mahogany at the reception and stairwell, a lot of flowers and stained glass. The militiamen and the driver were standing off to one side, some hotel-management chap was hurrying up with a politely concerned look and a mobile phone, and—looking back—she saw that everyone was inside and the steps were clear and the door was being secured.
foyer. White marble floor, black-painted ironwork, fluted mahogany at the reception and stairwell, a lot of flowers and stained glass. The militiamen and the driver were standing off to one side, some hotel-management chap was hurrying up with a politely concerned look and a mobile phone, and—looking back—she saw that everyone was inside and the steps were clear and the door was being secured.
‘Jesus H. Christ,’ she said. By now she was thoroughly rattled. She reached inside her coat again. Everybody froze.
She stayed her hand, and looked around; smiled grimly.
‘Anybody else need a cigarette?’
The iron fire-escape door was spring-loaded and would clang if she let it swing back, so she closed it slowly, letting go of its edge at the last moment.
It clanged.
Myra looked up and down the fire-escape and around the back yard of the hotel. Dripping pipes, rattling ventilation ducts, soggy cartons; moss and lichen and flagstones. She padded down the steps, almost silent in her battered sneakers, old jeans, sweater and padded jacket. At the bottom she pushed her eyeband under the peak of the baseball cap under which she’d piled her still-grey hair, jammed her fists in the deep pockets, feeling the reassurance of the passport and the gun, and strolled across the yard, through another one-way gate, along an alley to Pitt Street then down on to Sauchiehall.
She caught her reflection in a shop-window, and smirked at how like a student she looked. It wasn’t a perfect reflection, so it also made her look flatteringly young—like she’d look in a month or two, she hoped. And she already had the bearing, she could see that as she glanced sideways at the reflection of her walk, jaunty and confident. Her joints didn’t hurt and her heels didn’t jar and she had so much energy she felt like running, or skipping, or jumping about just to burn some of it off. She couldn’t remember having felt this good when she really was young.
And things were coming back, memories of an earlier self, earlier personal tactics, like, before her rejuve, if she’d got caught up in a situation like that outside the hotel she’d have turned to the Guards to protect her, as though by reflex, and no doubt sparked a riot right there; not now, it had been a lightning calculation that the demonstrators, however hostile to each other or to the militia, would not attack an innocent minion like the driver and would not attack her while she was shielded by the comrades. No violence in the workers’ movement, no enemies on the Left—it didn’t work all the time, but by and large the truce was honoured; mutual assured deterrence, perhaps, but then, what wasn’t?
Sauchiehall, Glasgow’s main shopping street, had been depedestranised
since she’d last been here and it thrummed with through traffic, electric mostly but with a few coughing old internal-combustion engines and speeding cyclists and, jeez, yes, cantering horses among them. Myra raced the red light at the end of the street, kept up her jog as she crossed the pedestrian bridge over the howling intersection above the M8 and up into Woodlands Road. There she slowed and strolled again, relishing the old patch, the familiar territory, the nostalgia pricking her eyes. (God, she’d flyposted that very pillar of that overpass for a
Critique
seminar in 1976!)
since she’d last been here and it thrummed with through traffic, electric mostly but with a few coughing old internal-combustion engines and speeding cyclists and, jeez, yes, cantering horses among them. Myra raced the red light at the end of the street, kept up her jog as she crossed the pedestrian bridge over the howling intersection above the M8 and up into Woodlands Road. There she slowed and strolled again, relishing the old patch, the familiar territory, the nostalgia pricking her eyes. (God, she’d flyposted that very pillar of that overpass for a
Critique
seminar in 1976!)
But the area was posh now, full of Sikh men in suits—bankers and lawyers and doctors—and women in saris accompanied by kids and often as not a Scottish nanny; pavements over-parked with expensive, heavy Malaysian cars. Not like old times, not at all, except for the occasional curry aroma and the feel of the wind and the look of the scudding clouds above.
Talking to the comrades in the New Brit,
that
had been like old times. It had been like fucking
time travel
, and far more like homecoming than any encounter she’d had in New York. After she’d thanked the militia officers, flatly refused to press assault charges, and insisted on giving a huge tip to the driver, she’d retired to the hotel’s café for a coffee and a smoke with the five young people who’d escorted her in: Davy and Alison and Mike and Sandra and Rashid, all proud members of the Glasgow branch of the Workers’ Power Party, an organisation much fallen-back from its high-water mark in the 2020s under the old Republic but still struggling along, still recruiting and still the British section of the Fourth International.
that
had been like old times. It had been like fucking
time travel
, and far more like homecoming than any encounter she’d had in New York. After she’d thanked the militia officers, flatly refused to press assault charges, and insisted on giving a huge tip to the driver, she’d retired to the hotel’s café for a coffee and a smoke with the five young people who’d escorted her in: Davy and Alison and Mike and Sandra and Rashid, all proud members of the Glasgow branch of the Workers’ Power Party, an organisation much fallen-back from its high-water mark in the 2020s under the old Republic but still struggling along, still recruiting and still the British section of the Fourth International.
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