saying that he would APPL THIS OUTRGS DECN.
And it was outrageous—in effect I was being punished before trial, because my chances of sponsorship or patronage were now nonexistent. Even if I were cleared, I would lose at least part of the first year of my project, which as good as meant losing it all. I wired Gantry back, thanking him; but I held little hope that he could do much to help, or that I, with my stubborn closed mouth, deserved it.
Not to my surprise, Menial was not at work. I got through most of my dangerous day in the arc-lit dark of the platform leg without incident, and was just cleaning my tools (and everyone else’s) at a quarter past four when Angus Grizzlyback loomed out of the dim scaffolding and sat down at the crate.
“Clovis,” he said. I looked up. He scratched the back of his head with one hand, and looked away from me and at a piece of paper he held in the other.
“Something wrong?”
Even then, the thought that leapt on me was that he was the unwilling bearer of bad tidings about my parents, or some such family matter.
“Aye, I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’m going to have to let you go. Pay you off.”
“What for?” I asked, simultaneously relieved and shaken.
“Nothing you’ve done here,” he assured me. “It’s much against my own inclination, Clovis; for all I’ve slagged you off you’re no bad at what you do, and you’re a sound man, but—” He shrugged, and looked down at the paper again. “It’s the Society. They’ve withdrawn your clearance to work on the project.” He looked up at me sharply, a question in his eyes. “Some trouble you’ve got into at the University.”
I put the tools down on the rough table and clasped my oily hands to my head. “How can they do that?” I asked, but I knew the answer. The University had fingered me to the Society—of which it was, of course, a part—as a risk to the project’s security. It all made sense, unjust though it seemed.
You can appeal, you know,” Angus said. “I’ll back you up.”
I swallowed bile. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bear that in mind. Of course I’ll appeal it.”
The only reason I could think of to appeal it was that not doing so would seem like an admission of guilt— and, indeed, I was guilty of plenty, none of which I’d want brought out in a work tribunal. Confident though I was that nothing I’d done could endanger the project, others might not regard being madly in love with a stranger as a sound basis for this conviction.
“Ach, well, I’ll set the machinery in motion,” Angus said. “I’ll tell Jondo and he’ll take it up with the union.” He forced a grin. “Have you back in no time.”
“Thanks, Angus,” I said.
“But right now,” he went on, “I’ll have to ask you to leave straight away. It says here I should escort you off the premises, but I’ll not do that.”
I was very grateful indeed that he trusted me as far as the gate; but as I turned and looked back on my way out of the yard, I noticed his tiny figure on the outside of the platform, and realised that he’d discreetly watched my every step.
I took an early and almost empty bus back to Carron Town, and went to my room. The whisky bottle, at that moment, felt like my only friend. By morning, it would seem false; we’d have had a severe falling-out, but we’d both know it was only a matter of time before we’d make up. I knew all this perfectly well as I sat under the skylight and tipped myself a generous measure of the malt. Its fortifying fire rushed through my nerves, and I could contemplate my unravelling life with a degree of detachment.
I thought about what I’d lost, and what I hadn’t, and determined that what I had left was enough to win me back the rest, if only I could think of a way. So, instead of settling down to some sad solitary drinking, I cleaned up and shaved and changed and went over to The Carronade.
The doors of the pub, heavy with glass and brass, swung shut behind me. After the sunshine the light seemed low. As I walked to the bar my eyes adjusted. At that time, about half past five, it was almost empty. The barmaid was the same girl who’d served us on Monday evening. She was a local girl, tall and thin, with long fair hair bundled up, and strong arms from pulling the pumps. Her name, as I learned in a few minutes of chat as I leaned idly on the bar, sipping at a half-litre of pale ale, wasjeanna Benymead. She’d grown up on a farm up the glen a bit, at Achnashellach.
Carron Town, before the project had started, was a place where everybody knew everything about everybody else, or at least talked as though they did. Jeanna’s knowledge of my meeting with, and parting from, Menial was elaborate enough to suggest that local gossip was fast catching up with the influx.
“That tinker who was in here—” I said, trying to steer her away from her obvious probing of my side of the story.
“Oh, aye, Fergal.”
“You know him?”
She shrugged and made a mouth. “To see. He drops in now and again. Bit of an arrogant sod, but he stands his round.”
“Any idea where he works?”
“Aye, in the old power-station up at Lochluichart. It’s not a power-station any more, you understand. But folk still call it that.”
“So what is it now?”
She grimaced. “Not a place you’d like to go to. It’s said the tinkers make their seer-stones there. I’ve heard tell it feels… haunted. A creepy place. Mind you, I’ve never met anyone who’d been there. Or who’d want to,” she added pointedly.
“Anyone who wasn’t a tinker, you mean,” I said. “Presumably Fergal has mentioned he’s been there.”
She shook her head, frowning. “He’s never said a word about it, even when he’s drunk. Not that he’s drunk often! He can hold his drink, that one.”
“So how do you know that’s where he works?”
“Ah, I don’t know,” she said, as though impatient to be off the subject. “It’s just—you know—what people say.”
I was about to try to get more than that out of her when another voice joined our conversation.
“Is this you back on the pull, Clovis, so soon after the quarrel with your last lassie?” My workmate Druin sounded amused. I turned and grinned back at him as the barmaid poured him a half-litre. Druin was a local man, married and in his thirties, his wes-kit showing bare brown arms still oil-stained from his day’s work, and scarred from years of work before it too.
That’s not it at all,” I said. “I thought better of it, as who wouldn’t? But she’s not to be seen. So I’m trying to find out more about the tinkers.”
He laughed. “You’re a character. The reading makes you funny in the head.” He said this not as an insult but as a charitable explanation. “Mind you,” he added, “that’s a girl I wouldn’t walk out on myself.”
I asked Jeanna for another half-litre and, noticing a temptingly cheap bottle, said, “Oh, and a couple of shots of the Talisker, please.”
Druin raised his glass. “Thanks, mate.” He took a sip of the Talisker and asked, “What’s this about you getting the sack?”
“Some trouble with the University,” I said. “I borrowed some papers, and found I had little choice but to let Fergal take them. The ISS seems to have taken it as a sign I’m not to be trusted. I take that as an insult.”
“As well you might.” He looked at me curiously. “You don’t seem too bothered about it, though.”
I made a twist of my lips, turned my hand over. “Aye, I’m bothered, but there’s no sense letting something like that get to you. I’ll appeal it, Jondo’s going to take it up. It’ll get sorted out. I’m more worried about why Menial isn’t at work.”
“Ah,” he said. “She isna taking the day off, or suspended or anything like that. She’s finished her contract.”
“How d’you know that?”
He tapped the side of his nose. “Jondo told me, because naturally he asked Admin if she’d been chucked out as well.”
I sighed. “I suppose that’s a relief, in a way. But she said nothing about it to me, even before.”
Druin nodded. “Aye, they’re a close-mouthed lot, the tinkers. So, what is it you wanted to know about them?”
