Futuretrack 5 (18 page)

“We should’ve passed Cumbernauld,” said Keri. “We’re on the wrong road.”

I glanced at the glowing map on Mitzi’s windscreen. Checked it with a glimpse of the Plough and Pole Star. “No, we’re going east by north. Mitzi’s computer must be on the blink. …”

Keri grunted, went faster. The minutes ticked away. We passed road junctions, trees, huge agri-robot sheds. But not a single signpost, let alone Cumbernauld. I kept staring from Mitzi’s windscreen to the countryside in disbelief.

After forty minutes, Keri braked abruptly, and switched on the headlights. A hundred yards on, a big sign shone:

WELCOME TO HISTORIC STIRLING CASTLE.

“What happened to Cumbernauld?” Her voice had a tremor.

“The road must have by-passed it.”

“The road goes right through the middle of it, according to your precious bike.”

“You can miss things in the dark.”

“Like a town of a hundred thousand people? We’ve seen
nobody.”

“If you’re that lonely, I’ll whistle up a psychopter.”

Silence. I said more gently, “For goodness sake, we can ask in Stirling. What’s so marvellous about Cumbernauld? It was only built in the 1950s. Nothing worth seeing.”

“A hundred thousand people are worth seeing.”

“You’re tired,” I said. “It’s all that racing.”

With a sniff, and a slam of her visor, we rode on. The way to historic Stirling Castle, on its cliff, was
amazingly
well signposted. We pulled up at the gatehouse in five minutes. There was still a light on. Comforting.

“There you are!” I said. “Stirling Castle, safe and sound!”

“Stirling’s not just a castle. It’s another town of a hundred thousand people. Where is it? Where are they?” From the castle’s commanding height, under the now-clear moon, I could see nothing but huge green fields.

Behind us, a small door in the castle gate creaked open; light streamed out. Outlined against it was a woman, holding back a dog with one hand, and holding what looked like a shotgun in the other. “What do you want?” She sounded about fifty, and bossy.

“Is this Stirling?” I blurted out stupidly, for once quite lost for words.

“Finish up this coffee,” said Mrs. Nairn. “I get so few visitors.”

“Must be lonely. …”

“The dog’s company.”

“Must’ve been different thirty years ago,” I said cautiously.

“Aye.” She sighed. “Though they do say there’ll be new people next year… English. When they’ve finished doing up those old houses down by the bridge. I think it’s a sin, all those good, new houses smashed flat by the bulldozers, and only these dreary old ruins left and done up at God knows what cost. I sometimes think they want the place to look like it did before the Battle of Bannockburn… such nonsense. You won’t tell them I said that?” she added, anxiously.

“It’s between friends, Mrs. Nairn. When did they move all the people out?”

“Ten years since. Sent a lot of removal vans and buses, and took them to Glasgow. Rationalisation, they called it; better housing, they said. I’m sure I wouldn’t know. I was only in Glasgow the once and didn’t like it.”

“Were there many people?”

“Not so many at the end. The young ones were gone already—to Glasgow for the racing and the pop groups. After that, there was scarcely a bairn born. And such a lot of deaths… when there’s no grandchildren, the old yins have nothing to live for. And the young ones never wrote, once they got to Glasgow. I often wonder where it’ll all end. When I lie awake at night, listening to those machines ticking, all across the valley. You’re in the government service… where d’you think it’ll all end?
You
must know.”

“Only about my machines, Mrs. Nairn… I’ve got to
keep
them ticking.” I got up. “Thanks for the lovely dinner. We’d better be getting back to Glasgow. …”

“You’ll keep well south now, won’t ye? You know the forbidden zone starts just ten miles north of here? I wouldn’t like to see you getting into trouble. …”

My heart leaped, though I kept my face straight. Blocky hadn’t mentioned any forbidden zone; but then he wouldn’t. And one reason for a forbidden zone might be Scott-Astbury’s big mistake…

Nothing marked the boundary of the forbidden zone, not even a strand of barbed wire. The country was too big and rugged. It would have taken ten thousand Paramils to police it. Instead, they would stay in the air. With psycho-radar, infrared image intensifiers, heat cameras, metal detectors, and sound amplification, what could get through?

Answer—a running dog. We slid through so easily it made us giggle. Or were they playing with us, letting us get well in before they pounced? Time would tell.

Meanwhile, the forbidden zone closed round us. The night had clouded over, but we could still sense the huge darkness of the mountains, smell the heather, hear the silence behind the soughing of the wind. Our only comfort was the dim glow of the dashboard and a faint touch of radio we allowed ourselves—music and chatter from ten thousand miles away, where the sun was coming up. It made us feel that Mitzi was a person, too; that there were three of us, not two, moving into the cold, empty dark.

Keri grumbled about keeping the speed down. “I could
walk
faster.” But it was just as well we did; because as we reached the main Fort William road junction, the steering went berserk, we slewed all over the road, and ended up in a ditch.

“Jap crap.” Keri kicked the recumbent Mitzi.

“Jap crap nothing.” I pulled the bike upright and gave a twitch of headlights.

The whole road junction was breaking up. Mud-filled ruts, with huge islands of loosened chippings in between. A stream was actually flowing across, where a culvert had been blocked, making as many gurgling tributaries as the delta of the Nile. And it hadn’t happened yesterday: on the islands of chippings grass grew, even small silver birches.

“Nothing’s been through here for years. Except …” There were were deep patrol car treads in the mud.

“I’d better use dipped headlights,” said Keri, “or there won’t be any bike left.”

We made fair time. Some stretches of road were as good as ever, but other bits were swamp or thickets we had to push the bike through. We tried a few side roads, till we came to collapsed bridges. From what I could see by dipped headlights, the bridges had been blown up. Quite a while ago. Bindweed and ivy hid the old explosion scars.

“It’ll change in a few miles,” I said. “We’ll find the roads as good as ever. It’s just Paramil bluff.”

Instead, we got a last-minute warning, on the edge of our dipped headlights, of big things moving, crossing the road. We braked just in time.

“What the? …” said Keri.

I reached over her shoulder, and flipped on full beam.

A herd of red deer were crossing, cool as cool. Not taking a blind bit of notice of us. Except the great, antlered male standing guard on the flanks, whose eyes reflected our headlights so he looked like the devil in a horror video.

The last of them crossed and were gone into the dark.

“I feel kind of… irrelevant,” said Keri.

“That’s a big word for an Unnem.” But she didn’t rise to the bait.

Five miles on, we were stopped by a herd of black highland cattle, a sea of humped, woolly backs lying all over the road. Their leader moved up on us; we had to back off and take a side road. It was only Mitzi’s glowing road map that stopped us getting lost altogether. But even that was going haywire.

“That’s the tenth village she’s shown that’s just not
there.”

“It’s a Japanese map. How would the Japs know what’s been going on here?”

Ten miles south of where Fort William ought to be,

our lights picked out the green, glowing eyes of a group of smaller animals. Big, pointed ears, waving tails. Tearing at a hump that lay in the road.

“Alsatians—they’re running wild, Kit. They’ve
killed
something.” But these creatures were too pale for Alsatians; too big in ear, head, and jaw, too long in the leg.

“They look like wolves,” whispered Keri. “They can’t be, can they? How would wolves get here?”

“Perhaps they escaped from Edinburgh Zoo,” I said, as flippantly as I could. “The last wild wolf in Scotland was killed in a cave on Ben Mhor in the eighteenth century. Drive straight at them—they’re nervous.”

“They’re
nervous? …”

“We can’t stay here all night. And you know what wolves do to anything that tries to run away. …”

She gritted her teeth, put down her head, and
went.
I prayed the road surface would hold. I didn’t fancy being thrown off injured and bleeding in the middle
of that
lot.

The road surface held; the wolves scattered. The hump lying in the middle of the road stayed where it was. A big red deer, its spilled entrails glistening.

I was glad of the dawn. The first paling of the sky showed, from the top of a hill, an ugly scatter of prefab huts, petrol tanks, barbed wire, and parked helicopters, where Fort William should’ve been.

“Paramils?”

“I don’t think so.” I peered through Blocky’s binoculars. “Too untidy. These helicopters are painted yellow, all muddy. There are robo-dozers and robo-shovels. I think it’s some kind of construction camp.”

“What’re they making?”

“Nothing. Maybe it’s a depot. Maybe they fly out from here all over the Highlands and come back here for safety at night.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“I want to watch this lot, but we’d better get off the road. They probably fly off to work half-asleep, but even a hungover navvy would spot us standing here.”

We went back a bit and found a crag with a deep overhang. It was damp with moss and trickling water, but it hid Mitzi.

“Here you are,” I said. “Your highland cave as promised, with running water and all mod cons.”

“This isn’t the cave on Ben Mhor, is it?”

“Have a bite to eat. That’ll keep the wolf from the door.”

She straddled a rock and lit a fag. “I can see why Unnems leave holiday making to the bloody Ests.”

Four days later, I sat on the banks of a burn, waiting for sunrise. Sunrise spread remarkably quickly; upward through the little pink, torpedo-shaped clouds; downward, stroking the rounded dark of the hills with pale, tufted gold. But even if it had been slower, I wouldn’t have been bored. There was the burn to listen to, trickles inside trickles inside trickles. A darkling thrush, singing in the burn-side thickets. The huge, low sound of the morning wind, stroking the heather.

High up, a formation of geese flew west: getting to school on time. I didn’t have to go to school today. I didn’t have to go anywhere. There was a flicker of white tails across the burn. Brer Rabbit getting busy, getting used to me. The sun reached a long ray into the valley, warming my whiskers. It was rough, trying to shave in cold water.

I looked at my watch. Nearly six. Time for Brer Fox. I’d got into the habit of waiting up for Brer Fox. Every morning he turned up at three minutes past six, finishing his night’s work, as I was finishing mine. Zigzagging down the hillside to the burn, twenty yards below where I sat.

Scuttering panic among the rabbits. Suddenly, not a rabbit in sight. Then Brer Fox on the far bank, paw upraised. We regarded each other; I drank in his lovely, wild soul. He dismissed me as a creature of no importance, bent, and drank. Ran his long, pink tongue round his lips. Silver drops of water fell back into the ripples. Then he tensed, dropped his haunches, leaped the burn, and vanished.

Even then I was reluctant to go to bed. Behind me stretched a winding gulley, floored with springy turf between high bracken. Overhead, up the gulley, ran a huge pipe. Once it must have carried water to Glasgow or Edinburgh. Now, rich-red with rust, it clanged hollowly. But had its uses. If psychopters came looking for us with metal scanners, they’d get a screenful of water pipe. Same if they tried to use heat scanners—the pipe heated quickly in the sun. Mitzi was stored in a deep, dry cave. Our tent was camouflaged with bracken fronds, tied across. I’d taken care not to break any branches. Dead bracken is a dead giveaway to infrared cameras.

As Vic Huggett still said in my fading nightmares, we were snug as a bug in a rug.

I sensed the dawn psychopter before I heard it. Its psycho-radar was set on unfocused scan, sweeping as wide an area as possible. I slipped among the bracken, filled my mind with the sound of the burn, became the burn. In the tent, Keri would be asleep: she always dropped off the moment her head hit the groundsheet. She’d leave no more impression on their screen than a dozing sheep…

The psychopter passed and vanished, leaving a thin stitching of sound that got lost in the hugeness of the hills. I crawled into the tent. Watched Keri sleeping in the dim green light. A tiny white feather had escaped from her sleeping bag and got stuck to the groundsheet; it trembled at her every breath. Her hand clutched the edge of the sleeping bag, as a child might clutch a teddy bear. She’d never let me hold her hand. Couldn’t bear me touching her, awake or asleep. But she was happy, and that was something.

I’d been right about the Fort William depot. I’d watched the old yellow choppers fly out, muddy robo-dozers slung underneath. Noticed the direction they went. The following night, we found where they were working. It was deserted after dark.

“Looks like a castle in a fairy tale,” said Keri. A very small castle: more a fortified house, with steep roof and pointed turrets. The kind you get in Scotland.

“What’re they building it
for?”
she asked.

“They’re not building it, they’re restoring it. It’s been ruined hundreds of years. …”

“But what for?”

“For a fairy tale,” I said bitterly. “They’re potty—restoring ruins and letting the roads go to hell. Making Scotland like it was before the Battle of Bannock-burn. …”

“Except Scotland had
people,
then.”

I poked through the portable huts and scattered machinery. There was a petrol-driven generator that could recharge Mitzi. One hut held a shotgun and half a box of cartridges. A would-be big-game hunter? Or somebody with wolf-phobia, like Keri? She borrowed the gun permanently; it cheered her up no end, though I warned her it wouldn’t stop a charging highland bull.