The Sky Road

out my cigarette and strode over to the public telegraph. There I tapped out a message: GANTRY UNIV HIST INST REGRET DELAY IN FILE RETURN STOP WILL CALL FROM CARRON STOP RESPECTS CLOVIS.

I was on the point of hitting the transmit key when I smelled die scent and sweat of Menial behind me. Then she leaned past my cheek and said, in a warm, amused voice, “Very loyal of you, to him and to me.”

I turned and grabbed her in my arms. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Just fire off that message,” she said. “I’ll tell you on the train.” She was grinning at me, and I felt all worries fade as I hugged her properly, then stepped back to hold her shoulder at arm’s length as though to make doubly sure she was there. Her poke looked even larger and heavier than before.

“You’ve got the paper files?”

Yes,” she said, hefting the bag. “Come on.”

I transmitted the message, and we dashed hand in hand down the platform. The train wasn’t heavily used, and we found a compartment—half a carriage—to ourselves and swung down on to the seats and faced each other across the table, laughing.

“Well,” I said. “Tell me about it. You had me a wee bit worried, I have to admit.”

She curled her fingers across the back of my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I thought it seemed like a good idea to disappear. That way, if Gantry or anyone else leaned on you to give the files or the, you know, other files back, you could honesdy say you couldn’t, you really wouldn’t know where I was and would look genuinely flummoxed, say if they went so far as to come back to our room with you.”

“Oh, right. I was genuinely flummoxed, I’ll give you that. But if anyone was with me they could have made the same guess as I did, and come to the station.”

She shrugged. Td have kept out of sight.” She combed her fingers through a hanging fall of hair, smiling coyly. Tm no bad at that.”

“And caught the train at the last second?”

“Or something.” She didn’t seem interested in raking over speculative contingencies. “Anyway, we’re here, and we’ve got the goods. Nothing Gantry can do to get them off us now.”

“Aye. Still, I’ll have to wire him from Carron, reassure him they’re in safe keeping.”

“Like you said. So it’s all square.”

The train began to move. I looked out at the apparently shifting station and platform, gliding into the past in relative motion, then looked back at her.

“No,” I said. “It isn’t as straightforward as that.”

She listened to my account of what Gantry had said about the tinkers and the dark storage. When I’d finished she shook her head slowly.

“You should have just covered up about my being a tinker,” she said.

That was a shock. “How could I?” I protested. “He’d figured it already, and it would be easy enough to check. I didn’t want to lie to him. Especially not lie and get found out as soon as he picked up a phone.”

Her mouth thinned. “I suppose not. Fair enough. Your man’s trust matters in the long run. And maybe even being evasive would’ve confirmed his suspicion.” She looked as if a weight had settled on her shoulders at that moment.

“I would have been evasive—Truth help me, I would have lied if you’d asked me!”

“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “Ach, this is so complicated!”

“Hey, it’s all right,” I said. “We’ll think of something. I’ll string Gantry some kind of line, give us time to check out the files, and we’ll have them back in a, week. Take next Monday off too if I have to.”

Merrial’s eyes suddenly brimmed. She blinked hard.

“Dhia, I hope it’s that easy!” She sighed. “I wish I could tell you more right now.” She shook her head. “But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, mo chridhel I’m a tinker, and tinkers have to mind their tongues. Even if— especially if—their tongues are spending time in other mouths!”

“So you have secrets of your craft,” I said dryly, “which you have to keep. That’s all right with me.”

She looked as if she were about to say something urgent, and then all she said was, “I shouldn’t worry so much. It’ll probably all turn out all right.”

“Yes, sure,” I said, pretending to agree with her. “Oh, well. Shall we have a look at the files, then?”

“OK,” she said, pulling them out. “Tell you what. You can look through the early one, and I’ll look through the late. That’ll increase the chances that either of us will find something we can understand.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

I opened the folder from the 1990s and flipped impatiently through thoroughly dull and worthy stuff about medical charity, and some fascinatingly improbable economic statistics from Kazakhstan. Towards the end I found something more personal: pages ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, apparently a diary. I pored over the Deliverer’s scrawl:

Thurs Jul 16 98. Trawl of NYC’s remaining left bookshops—nostalgia, I guess. Picked up Against the Current in St. Mark’s—trendy place, left pubns marginalised, seems apt. The old Critique clique still banging on—Suzi W in AtC, etc. At least they’re loyal—unlike moi, huh. Then trekked over to Revo Bks—Avakian’s lot, madder than ever. They have a dummy electric chair in the shop for their Mumia campaign. Flipped through old debates on SU etc. Depressing thought “Marxism is a load of crap” kept coming to mind. Then Unity Books on W 23d. Couldn’t bear going to Pathfinder. After my little adventure, not sure I want to face the Fourth International cdes either. Or they me. Agh.

Fri Jul 17 98. Hot humid afternoon, rainstorm later. Met M on Staten Isl ferry. Leaned on the rail and looked at old Liberty thro near fog. M seems to know I’m telling the old gang about his approaches. Thing is he doesn’t seem to mind. (Girl with pink hair on the ferry. Swear same girl was in Boston. Am I being followed or getting paranoid?)

I couldn’t make head nor tail of this, and turned over to the last of the entries.

Thurs Dec 17 98. Almaty again. Hotel lounge TV tuned permanently to CNN. Green light of city falling in the night. Hospital filling up. Fucking Yanks. Here I am trying to help development, there they are trying to roll it back.

After that, nothing but a stain and an angry scribble, where the pen had dug into and torn the page. Perhaps she’d reached the end of that notebook, or stopped keeping a diary. I leafed through the rest of the papers, with an oppressive feeling that seeing through their present opacity would take even longer than I’d thought. Then an idly turned page brought me to a stop.

It was a photocopy of an old article she’d written, but it was a small advertisement accidentally included at its margin that caught my eye. It was for a public meeting on “Fifty Years of the Fourth International” and it had in one corner a symbol which was identical to the monogram on Menial’s pendant. It was all I could do not to knock my forehead or cry out at my own stupidity. What I’d thought were the letters “G” and “T” were in fact the hammer and sickle of the communist symbol, and the meaning of the “4” was self-evident. I’d missed the connection just because the symbol faced in the opposite direction to the one on the Soviet flag.

The sinister significance of the hammer and sickle made me feel slightly nauseous; the implication of that same symbol appearing across such a gulf of time induced a certain giddiness.

I closed the file and looked up, and found myself meeting Menial’s equally baffled eyes.

“It’s all either not very interesting, or completely fucking incomprehensible,” she said.

“Same here,” I said. “Let’s leave it.”

All that long afternoon, we talked about other things.

Batdes, mostly, as I recall. The train pulled into the station at Carron Town on the dot of six. The sun was still high, the late afternoon still warm. Once again tired and jaded by our journey, Menial and I left the train with an access of energy and a surge of hunger. Menial led the way straight to The Carronade, and we settled into a dark corner of the strangely polished-smelling bar with plates of farmed trout and fresh-picked peas and new potatoes, accompanied with a shared jug of beer.

“I can’t wait to get back to your place,” I said, “get a bit of privacy, and get my face right down into… the files.”