FALLEN DRAGON (60 page)

At the start of his second week, they climbed the Ben as Joona had promised. It was a short bike ride from the cottage to the visitor center perched on the banks of the River Nevis, which meant they were among the first to arrive that morning. They locked the bikes into the rack, then pulled on their walking boots.

The trek was a lot easier than he was expecting, just as she said it would be. Once they crossed the small bridge by the visitor's center, they picked up a simple track running along the side of the hill, heading steadily upward. It was paved with rough stone, with neat steps cut in on the steepest parts, which seemed slightly incongruous for a supposed wilderness walk. Joona told him that the Scottish Environment Agency had to maintain it at this standard to prevent erosion. It had to cope with thousands of walkers during the course of the year.

As they climbed he could see more and more of the glen with its astonishingly green vegetation stretching away below him. The path had already started to lead through the huge swath of bright, fresh bracken that had sprung up along this section of the hill. Small wooden bridges took them over narrow fissures.

It wasn't long before the path curved around into a deep, grassy cleft with a stream at its head, white water coursing noisily through the rocky gully it'd cut into the slope. They walked toward the water, then suddenly switched back to climb the steepening slope at a reasonable angle. Another turn brought them out to a marshy saddle with its own lochan of dead, peaty water. Lawrence took a look at the vast scree-smothered slopes looming above them and sighed in mild dismay. He still couldn't see the actual top of the mountain yet. They stopped for a while above the lochan to drink some tea from their flasks and put on another layer of clothing. It was getting colder with every meter they ascended. The air below the cleft had been perfectly clear, giving them grand views across the beautiful Highland peaks. Here the mountain was accosted by thin strands of mist pushed along by the constant wind, reducing visibility.

For the next stage the path zigzagged up a steepening scree-covered slope. The tufts of grass and heather became less and less frequent until it was just stone and raw soil under their feet. Each sharp turn in the path was marked out by a cairn. Slush began to build up on Lawrence's boots as he trudged onward. Patches of snow appeared more fre
q
uently on either side of the path. The mist was thickening. He couldn't see the bottom of the glen anymore.

"It's so clean up here," he said as they stopped for another rest. "I love it."

Joona eased herself onto a boulder and pulled the flask out of her backpack. "I thought your whole planet was clean."

"It is. But that's a different sort of clean. I was expecting Scotland to be different. You had so much heavy industry around here, I thought there'd be more... I don't know, remnants. Streams that are half rust from all the old machines dumped in the lochs, mounds of slurry out of abandoned coal mines, that sort of thing."

"Scotland's heavy industry was mostly down south. Besides, you saw the reclamation plants outside town; they're busy little bees."

"Yeah." He'd noticed them on the first morning when they cycled into town, gently disturbing the landscape on the other side of the River Lochy from Benavie: underground factories strangely reminiscent of the chemical plant on Floyd, long flat-topped mounds covered in lush grass. This time there were no heat exchange pillars on top, only rows of black vents that could have easily been overlooked. The real giveaway to how much industry was hidden below the earth were the pipes running down the rugged side of Creag Chail above them: twenty wide concrete tubes that emerged from the mountainside a couple of hundred meters up only to vanish into the ground behind the mounds. They carried enough water down from the Highlands to power the whole reclamation site.

Joona told him the site had grown up from a single aluminum plant that had been built there in the twentieth century to take advantage of the hydro power. As the Brussels parliament of that time slowly started to introduce stricter legislation governing recycling, the plant had expanded, with subsidiaries springing up to reclaim other types of materials.

Now almost all of Earth's consumer products were designed so that at the end of their lives they could be broken down into their constituent elements, which were then fed back into the start of the manufacturing cycle.

Fort William handled just about every breakdown procedure, from the original aluminum cans to electronic components, glass to concrete, and the whole spectrum of polymers. One of the most modern facilities of its kind in the world, it employed everything from smelters, catalytic crackers and v-written enzyme digestion right up to ionic fission for toxics. Junk from all over Europe arrived by train, ship and canal barge to be sorted and extracted.

"I guess there's not much pollution these days," he said.

"Not in the industrialized nations, no, not after the Green-wave. Even the nonindustrial regions like Africa and Southern Eurasia are relatively clean as well. It's not in the corporate interest to foul up their future territory."

"Joona, you've got to stop looking at everything so cynically. Just because people have different goals from yours doesn't automatically make them evil."

"Really?' She gestured down the glen. "One day if they have their way the whole world will be just like this. Everyone living in their big cozy house in their tidy suburban estate."

"Yeah, terrible. Imagine that, everybody having to put up with low crime and good medical benefits."

"But no freedom. No difference. Just the corporations and their uniculture."

"That's bull," he said. "People have been complaining about multinational companies and creeping globalism since the middle of the twentieth century. The world still looks pretty varied to me."

"Superficially it is. But the underlying trend is unification. National economies are becoming identical, and it's all due to the corporations."

"Fine by me. I have no objection to them investing money in poor countries and spreading their manufacturing base. It gives everyone a chance to buy a stake."

"There is no chance. If you want to get any kind of decent job, then you have to join up. And once you're in, so's your family."

"Your family benefits from the stake, yes. You get a say in what school your kids go to, everybody receives medical benefits, there's a good pension at the end. Stakeholding is a great social development. It involves, motivates and rewards."

"It destroys individuality."

"Taking a stake is the choice of the individual."

"A forced choice."

"Life choices usually are. Look at me, I took my stake in Z-B because it's the only one with a decent policy on interstellar flight. Other companies have different priorities, the choice is endless."

Joona shook her head wearily. "I will never sell myself out for a fancy house and full medical coverage."

She was rejecting everything her mother was a part of, he realized. "Then I'm happy for you. Your principles make you what you are. And that I like."

She gave him a brief grin, and sat up. "Come on, not much farther now."

After the last zigzag in the path, they were walking over a vast field of loose stone. The route ahead was easy enough to see through the thickening mist; a thousand footsteps had worn the thick covering of snow down to a compacted slushy brown trail. As they moved forward, the mist became patchy, with the wind propelling it along. Nothing else seemed to change. The path was the same ahead as it was behind. Occasionally, large boulders poked up through the snow. Other people on the path would appear as dark shadows in the brightly lit vapor before resolving into focus.

Abruptly, the ground fell away. They were standing at the top of a cliff. The base was invisible in the mist below.

"Almost there," Joona said cheerfully.

A few hundred meters brought them to the top of the Ben. Lawrence held back on his disappointment It was just a flat uninspiring patch of snow-covered ground close to another section of the cliff. The mist meant they couldn't see more than fifty meters. Over the centuries there had been several structures built around the concrete survey marker that was the absolute pinnacle. Broken walls of stone protruded from the snow, outlining these ambitions of the past Not one of them had a roof. The only intact building was a rescue center, a modern composite igloo that had a red cross on the side, and a small aerial protruding from the top. It was almost buried by snow. Lawrence spotted several small flat stones that had been laid carefully against it. When he bent to examine one he saw an inscription had been scratched on the surface. A couple of lines of poetry that he didn't recognize, then a name, and two dates, ninety-seven years apart.

"Not a bad place to be remembered in," he muttered.

They made their way over to the survey marker and climbed up it, just so they could say they had actually reached the top. The mist was starting to thin out when they made their way over to one of the collapsed walls where other walkers were huddled. Once they hunched down out of the wind they opened their lunchboxes. Jackie had packed them some thick beef sandwiches. Lawrence wasn't particularly hungry, the cold had taken his appetite away, but he munched away at one of them anyway.

Then the mist cleared completely and he stood up to look at the view. "Oh wow." You really could see half of Scotland. Mountains and glens and forests stretched away into a hazy horizon. Long tracts of water sparkled dazzlingly in the brilliant sunshine. He stared at it in a mixture of wonder and hopelessness. How could Amethi ever hope to achieve vistas such as this? All that effort...

Joona cozied up beside him. "When it's really clear you can see Ireland."

"Yeah? Have you? Or is that just a local myth for gullible tourists?"

She slapped at him playfully. "I have seen it. Once. A few years back. I don't come up every day, you know."

The sun was bright enough to make him squint. And the wind was bringing tears to his eyes.

"Stay here."

She said it so quietly he thought he was mistaken at first. Then he saw her expression. "Joona... you know I can't."

"Yes, you can. We're that new society you're looking for, Lawrence. This is where you can have your fresh start. Down there in the glens are free people building their own lives and doing what they want with them."

"No." He said it as gently as he could. "This is not for me. I've loved being here, especially with you, but I have to go back eventually. I'm too different."

"You're not," she insisted. "Your precious officer college rejected you, and you found us, me. It's inevitable. You must see that."

It was that earnestness of hers again. Sometimes it made her the strongest character he'd ever known. But there were occasions when it betrayed a worrying degree of vulnerability. She really didn't understand what went on around her, insisting on her own interpretations of events.

"Don't do this," he said. "We've had a great time together, and there's still another week to go."

"You have to stay, Lawrence. I love you."

"Stop it. We've only been together a few days."

"But don't you see how well you've fitted in here?"

"I'm a guest," he said in exasperation. "What the hell could I do here? Carve statues of Nessie for tourists?"

"You're a part of our lives. You lived with us. You made love to me. You even ate real food. All of this you welcomed."

"Joona, I stayed a few days. We're having a holiday romance, that's—" His subconscious sent out a disconcerted warning, almost like a physical jolt. "What do you mean I ate real food?"

"Real food." Her entreating smile never wavered. "Vegetables grown from the soil."

"Oh shit!" His hand came up to cup his mouth, and he stared aghast at the half-eaten sandwich. "Is this—is this?" He couldn't even bring himself to ask it. Not
that.
In his schooldays he'd always been revolted by the notion his ancestors had been forced to farm so they could eat—all the history class had.

"Aberdeen Angus beef," she said. "The best there is."

"Is it real?" he yelled.

"Well, yes," she said, oblivious to his horror. "Old Billy Stirling keeps a herd of them down past Onich. He slaughters a couple every month. There's quite a demand for it from the crofters. Gran always gets her meat from him."

Lawrence's legs gave way, pitching him forward. He vomited onto the snow, his whole stomach heaving violently. The spasms lasted for ages. Even when there was nothing left to bring up, his muscles were trying to squeeze out the last drops of acidic juices.

Finally, when he was through, he was on all fours with his limbs shaking unsteadily. He scooped up some snow and wiped it across his forehead, then tried to chew it to take the taste from his mouth.

"What's the matter?" Joona asked.

"What?" He looked up to see her frowning in concern. Several other walkers had come over to see if they needed help. "Did you say what's the matter?"

"Yes." She looked confused.

"You gave me a piece of a fucking animal to eat,
and
you ask me what the fucking matter is. An animal! A living creature. You're fucking crazy, that's my problem. You fucking... oh hell. How long have I been eating this shit?'