The Sky Road

She laughed. “Aye, it’ll be great to get a good look at them at last, without having to look over our shoulders.”

But as she said it she was looking over my shoulder, as she had done every minute or so all through the meal. She had her back to the wall, I had my back to the bar. The pub was beginning to fill up with people from the project, in for a quick drink on their way home or to their lodgings. As yet I’d heard no voices I recognised.

“You seem a wee bit on edge,” I said.

“Aye, well, like I said on the train…”

Tergal?”

Tes.”

“You’re expecting to meet him here?” I asked, remembering that we were in this bar on her—albeit welcome—suggestion.

She opened her hands. “Maybe. Depends.”

“On what?” I piled up our empty plates and lit a cigarette.

“Och, on how they want to play it,” she said, sounding unaccustomedly bitter.

“Secrets or no secrets,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, “you’re going to have to let me in on this, sooner or later. I’m getting thoroughly tired of seeing you looking worried.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” she flared. “And you don’t have to see me looking like anything!”

I said nothing, staring at her, shocked and annoyed but already forgiving her; she’d been under a lot of tension, for reasons I knew about and reasons I knew I didn’t.

“Ach,” she said, gentle again, “I didn’t mean that, colha Gree. You’ve not been taught as I have, to be hard.”

At that I had to smile; she seemed more vulnerable than hard, at that moment. Her eyes widened. I heard a footstep behind us, and then Fergal swung uninvited on to the bench beside me.

“Hello,” Menial said, not warmly. Her glance returned to me.

“Oh, hi,” I said. He looked at our drinks. “My round, I think.” He reached back over his shoulder and snapped his fingers; most people wouldn’t have gotten away with that, but he did. In half a minute the barmaid was laying another full jug on the table.

“So, Menial,” he said quietly, “you got it?”

“We did,” said Menial. “As far as I can tell. I checked through it all this morning, and it’s the whole archive.”

“And where did you do that?” I butted in, a little indignantly.

“Kelvin Wood,” Menial said, giving me a disarmingly unabashed grin. “In the bushes.”

“So that’s what you were up to.”

Menial nodded, with a flash of her eyebrows. Fergal looked at her, then at me, as though to remind us that he had more important things on his mind.

Tine,” I said.

“That’s good news,” Fergal said, to Menial. He laughed briefly. “To put it mildly, eh?”

“Aye,” she said. “It is that.”

“Anyway, Clovis,” Fergal said, “you’ll appreciate that the information you’ve helped to retrieve needs to be looked at with an expert eye. Rather urgently, in fact, considering how long it may take.”

“Of course,” I said. “Any chance that I could take a look at it first, just glance through it?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Clovis. You have no idea—no offence—of how much is there. It’s an incredible quantity of not very well organised information. In the time it would take for you to make sense of any of it, we could be searching for information we know how to interpret. Every hour might count.”

“Just a minute!” I said, dismayed and indignant. “Nobody mentioned anything about this. I want to get a look at them too, and not have them disappear into—”

“Some tinker hideaway?” Fergal raised his eyebrows. “It won’t be like that, I assure you. You have my word that we won’t keep them long—weeks at the most—and that you’ll get to see them and search them at your leisure as soon as we’ve finished.”

“But,” I said, “how will I know they haven’t been changed—even accidentally? Because I have to be able to rely on it.”

Merrial was looking desperately uncomfortable. She gave Fergal a quick, hot glare and leaned closer to me across the table.

“Think about it, man,” she said quietly. “This stuff is all illicit anyway—you could not exactly cite it in footnotes, could you? You can only use it to find leads to material you can refer to. So you’ll just have to trust us—trust me—that the information won’t be tampered with.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly.

“Good man!” He drained his glass and stood up. “Thanks for your help.” Fergal reached out a hand across the table. Merrial was already emptying her personal clutter out of the leather bag. She tightened its thong and passed it over; Fergal had caught it while I was still gazing, puzzled, at Merrial’s actions.

“Wait!” I said. “The paper files are still in there. You can’t take them!”

Fergal raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“These papers belong to the University.”

I’m afraid they don’t,” said Fergal, sounding regretful. “They belong to us.”

I looked frantically at Menial, who only gave a small, sad nod.

“Who the fuck is this ‘us’?” I demanded, though I already suspected the answer. “Come on, I can give you photocopies if you must.”

“Not good enough, old chap.”

“Then give me them back.”

“Sorry,” said Fergal. “I can’t.”

I shifted on my feet, moved my elbow; all by reflex. Fergal’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t,” he said very quietly, “even think of messing with me.”

I was actually thinking of yelling out and calling on the others in the bar, some of whom had their eye on this confrontation. But something in Fergal’s stance and glance suggested that the only outcome of such a brawl would be his escape after inflicting some severe damage on our side, starting with me. And whichever side Merrial came in on, or even if she tried to stay out of it, she was likely to get hurt.

My honour wasn’t at stake in preventing Fergal’s departure with the papers—it would be at stake in getting them back—and for now I had no right to risk life and limb of myself or others over it.

“Take it, tinker,” I said. “I can bide.”

He smiled, without condescension.

“I hope I see you again,” he said, and was out the door.

I looked over at a few curious, tense faces at the bar, shrugged and returned to the table, where Merrial was shakily lighting one of my cigarettes.

“Some explanation might be in order,” I said, as casually as I could manage. One of my knees was vibrating.

Menial took a long breath and a long draw with it “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t, really.”

“But look,” I said. “Why didn’t you just tell me to hide the files, or say we’d put them back—”

I was getting exasperated and confused, and then the penny, finally, dropped.

“You agree with him!” I said. “You actually agree that he has some kind of a right to those papers, and to see the files first, and that nobody else can so much as look at them without his sufferance. Including me.”

She looked levelly back at me.

“And you’re not going to tell me why.”

A small shake of her head.

“And you knew all along this could happen.”

A smaller nod.

“All right,” I said. There were still two half-litres in the jug; I poured for both of us, and lit a cigarette myself,