Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [230]
‘The rainforests belong to their inhabitants,’ I said. ‘Scrap environmental legislation, yes, but only if polluters have to pay for the damage, strict liability. That’s my agenda. Think they’d buy that?’
Reid shrugged. ‘You could try.’
‘OK,’ I said, my mind suddenly made up. ‘Show me the details, and if it’s all as straight as you say, I’ll go for it.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, thank fuck for that. I thought it’d take all night to batter some sense into you.’
At the station we had a few minutes to spare, even with a gulp of whisky in the Wayfarer’s Bar, so I phoned home.
‘Hi darlin’.’
‘Hello, love. Where are you?’
‘Waverley Station. Reid’s got me on a pub-crawl by train.’
‘Well, you take care. Looking forward to tomorrow night.’
‘Me too!’ Electric smooch. Some chit-chat about the Worldcon, and Eleanor’s school exams, then she asked:
‘Did you sell much?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve sold a lot.’
I picked up my bag from the left luggage (the remaining stock from my stall was at that moment heading down the motorway in a van belonging to a friendly SF bookshop in London). We got on the train for one stop, downed a couple of pints at the Caledonian Ale House in Haymarket and caught the next train onwards.
Dalmeny was a pair of deserted platforms with a startling end-on view of the Forth Bridge, its lights sending ghostly pillars into the darkening sky. The Road Bridge straddled the backlit cirrus of the sunset. Dave led me along a narrow, bramble-whipping path between fields and the railway embankment, over a rise and a wooden bridge and down a long flight of wooden steps to the shore of the Firth. A sharp left at the bottom took us to the Hawes Inn, a pub whose charms were only slightly diminished by several games machines and many inapt quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson on the walls.
We found a seat by a window, in a corner with the games machines. Space battles roared beside us.
‘This is where Rome stopped,’ Reid remarked in a tone of oddly personal satisfaction as he gazed out over the Firth.
‘Can’t be,’ I said. ‘Weren’t the Highlands Catholic –’
‘The Roman Empire,’ Reid explained. ‘This was the farthest north they got: the limes. Massacred the natives at Cramond, apparently. Beyond the Firth they did nothing but lose legions all over the map, that’s about it.’
‘Heh!’ I raised my pint of Arrol’s. ‘Here’s to the end of empires.’
‘Cheers,’ Reid nodded. ‘Still, it’s impressive in a way. All the land from here to the far side of the Med under one government.’
‘Hmm…somebody warn the Euro-sceptics: it’s been done and it lasted for a thousand years!’ – this in a comic-German screech that distracted one push-button space warrior enough to glance at me and lose a few ships to the invading evil empire on the screen. I think I was a little drunk by this point.
Our progress continued through The Two Bridges, The Anchor, and The Ferry Tap. Outside the Queensferry Arms Reid hesitated, then said, ‘Skip this one. Got a better idea.’ He led me a few steps along the narrow High Street to a Chinese take-away where he promised me the best delicacy on the menu.
‘Two portions of curried chips, please.’
‘Curried chips?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Just what you need after a few pints.’
The girl behind the counter served us these with what I dimly thought a patronising smile. Eating the steaming, sticky, greasy messes with little plastic forks, we made our way past a police-station and what Reid described as a Jacobite church, and on up to the last pub, pausing only to dispose of our litter thoughtfully behind a front gate.
We lurched in to The Moorings with breath like dragons’. The girl behind the bar actually averted her face as she pulled our pints. I followed Reid away from the bar into a rear area where wide windows presented a fine view of the Bridge.
The pub was new, fake-old; nautical gear and framed drawings of battleships on the walls. In the course of our travels Reid’s opening