Chapter Eight
Slow Burn
Taylor is leaning on the balustrade again as Jim mounts the steps to the Command Centre. Something he seems to be doing a lot lately. Since Guzman returned with his team, the concept of 'no news is good news' seems to be altogether more inviting than it did when they were still OTG, and in some ways, Jim almost wishes that they still didn't know anything. Even the knowledge that they'd be prepared to take on anyone who might try to snatch their world away from them again doesn't really help. The people out there are likely to be extremely desperate, as opposed to merely being extremely determined - and in some ways desperation is far more dangerous.
"I can't help thinking that we're going to have the Sixers on our doorsteps soon." Taylor murmurs as Jim joins him, "Mira's proud. She's only going to take being a servant so long before she decides to leave them to their own devices to find out that they need her more than she needs them."
"I guess the only real reason she's staying is that the alternative is coming back here and having to deal with you. That's going to eat into her pride just as much."
"True."
Jim looks out across the trees beyond the fence, "Would it be so bad for us if they did come back? We'd know where we stand with Mira. There's no supplies coming in any more, so no raids on convoys. We'd hold all the cards this time around. We could call the shots - maybe even negotiate…"
"Not a chance." Taylor interrupts.
"If those Phoenix soldiers come looking to take over again, the more hands we have, the better." Jim tries again, "And it's not like we couldn't use their survival skills."
"No way."
"Well, what have we got that they can take from us now?"
"Malcolm." Taylor counters, "What would stop them from snatching him and selling him off to the Phoenix group? They want to fix their terminus - he can do it. Mira gets some support from them against us - and, if they manage to get back in contact with 2149, we're screwed."
"He'd never help them this time. He only did it before because it was that or have his staff murdered in front of him one by one. If they take just him, there'd be no chance he'd do it."
"And they'd kill him. We'd lose him, as much as they would. We can't afford to lose his expertise any more than they can, and I'm not treating him as an object to be handed over, bartered, sold or stolen. He's part of the family."
"A very annoying part of the family." Jim smirks. Then looks more serious, "Do you want me to put a team on to it?"
"Not yet." Taylor shakes his head, "While we're a Sixer-free zone, there's no reason why they'd move against us. Besides: if you do, and he finds out, then I'll never hear the end of it. He hasn't grown up that much."
"Good point; but I'll bear it in mind."
"It's based on what's known as a 'Casamance' kiln, Zoe," Yseult explains as Pete and Graham stack wood in an upright position, slowly extending out into a circle over a bed of tree boughs laid flat on the ground, "What we'll do is build in that chimney there as we cover up the entire pile with grass, straw and sandy soil with just a hole at the top. We'll then drop in lighted wood and, once the pile is alight and ready to be sealed, we'll fit that long pipe to connect the chimney to the top so that it goes into the hole that we used to light it and seal it all up. Then we wait."
"How long for?" Zoe asks.
"About five days." She smiles, "I'm afraid it's not a quick process. The burn itself will take two or three days but then we've got to let the kiln cool down so that it doesn't go up in flames when we open it."
"Wow." She sounds suitably impressed. Even Josh, who has, as promised, returned to supervise her, seems intrigued.
"How old is this process?" he asks.
"No one has a definitive answer for that one," she admits, "I imagine it's been going on for as long as people have been smelting metals - if not longer. Thousands of years - or at least they would do, except for the fact that we're doing it tens of millions of years too early. It never ceases to amaze me how people figured things out all those years ago without understanding the processes involved."
"Is that why you do what you do?"
"Definitely. We're amazing creatures when we're not being irredeemably stupid." She smiles at Zoe, "You can quote me on that if you like."
The kiln is largely complete by the time people are drifting in. Being something of a specialised process, only Yseult, Pete and Graham, who doubles as a collier when he's not milling, are permitted to build it.
"D'you want me to do the honours, Max?" Pete calls across, indicating the lighting point at the top of the mound.
"Could you?" she answers. Zoe is clearly rather tired, and as it's getting dark, she needs to complete the first part of the interview before her interviewer falls asleep and must be carried a half hour walk back to her home. As it is, Josh has the look of someone who knows an unpalatable chore lies ahead. Zoe is not as light as she once was.
"Do you want to borrow my bike?" Yseult asks, as they finish up, "I've got a trailer I can put on the back - it's not ideal, but we can line it with blankets if you like. I won't need it for the next few days - I'll be here for the duration."
He thinks about it for a moment, then nods, "If I could, that'd be great. Zoe's getting heavy these days."
She smiles and takes him across to the shed. It helps to be busy - largely because there is only one person that she wants to see - who hasn't arrived. She could do with the distraction to keep herself from wondering if Malcolm's changed his mind about coming over.
"I like this." Zoe mumbles, a little drowsily, as she's settled into the trailer hitched to the back of the bike.
"Me too, Zo." Josh grins at her, "I don't have to carry you."
"Take it slowly at first, Josh. Even if you're a regular bike rider, pulling a trailer takes a bit of getting used to." Yseult advises.
"I'll be okay - it's lit the whole way back, so I won't hit anything I shouldn't." It's been a long time since he last rode a bike, and it shows somewhat as he pulls away in a rather wobbly fashion. He is, however, determined not to need to have to carry his sister, and focuses on getting the hang of it as quickly as possible. She smiles as he heads away, and then notices a lone figure making their way on foot towards the gathering. It's him.
She can't resist the question, "You didn't drive?"
Malcolm shakes his head, "Your lot think I'm an idiot as it is. I wasn't going to turn up in a rover and prove it." He looks back, "Was that Josh Shannon on your bike?"
"With Zoe in a trailer? Yes - part one of the interview ended when the interviewer dropped off. The walk out here was a bit more than she was expecting after a long day at school, I think." She heads through to the open space where the kiln is being watched, "Come on, we're going to try fitting the retort in a minute. It looks as though we're nearly ready."
By the time midnight hoves into view, the party is settled down alongside a cheerful bonfire that serves more for effect and light than heat, as the night is warm. With Pete concentrating on the kiln, someone has retrieved a guitar, and the promised singing has begun. As Yseult warned, the quality of the voices is variable at best, and the intonation is nothing to write home about. It is, however, of considerably better quality than the rough alcohol that is being passed about in an unmarked bottle. Everyone who has taken a pull at it so far has either spat it out, or choked slightly as they swallowed it. Not daring to make a fool of himself, Malcolm declines, only for Mike, Yseult's hugely muscled assistant blacksmith, to snatch the bottle away, "Lightweight."
"Behave, Mike." Graham calls across, "That stuff makes cat's piss taste like Chateauneuf du Pape."
Mike makes an indelicate noise, and takes a swig, only for it to catch him out as much as anyone else. Being loath to spit it out, he goes instead for the choke - but hasn't swallowed. Consequently, everyone cheers rather ironically as it emerges in a rather revolting spray from his nose, while the rest drops out of his suddenly open mouth.
"Think you made the right choice there, mate." Pete calls across to Malcolm from his vantage point near the kiln.
"Sing us a song, Max." Graham says, largely to cover Mike's embarrassing retchings.
"Do I have to?" she asks, suddenly shy, "My voice isn't that good."
"You sing in German. That's always fun to listen to - we can't understand a word."
"In that case, you can sing some godawful redneck song afterwards." She says, impudently, "Come on, give me the guitar. You can never keep up with me."
Once the instrument is in her hands, however, she feels slightly sick. The one thing she cannot face doing is making an idiot of herself in front of the man to her left. Had he not been there, she would have already launched herself into the song she is planning to sing, as it's the one she knows best - or, rather, has forgotten the least.
Pretend he's not there.
Fat lot of good that's going to do - but she keeps on pretending, and starts plucking out the accompaniment to a folk song about people from a suburb of Berlin on a day trip to a park. As her voice is, as she admits, not strong, she has always made up for it by pushing the absurdity of the lyrics. No one about her understands German, and certainly not the Berlin dialect of the song, so they always fall about laughing at her performance, mainly because they are, truth be told, cheerfully pissed by the time she normally sings it.
It takes a verse or so to get into it, but she is soon hamming it up, and everyone about her is giggling helplessly. Except one. Sitting slightly behind her, Malcolm watches her in fascination. He had entirely forgotten that she speaks - is - German, and he is enjoying the performance as much as anyone - albeit without the slightly woozy filter of alcohol. Sod it. Tomorrow, he is bloody well going to ask her out, and damn the consequences.
Four days into the burn, Yseult sits and watches over the kiln. As is usually the case, everyone has got fed up with partying, and has drifted away to their other projects. As long as someone comes by tonight to keep her awake, she quite enjoys the solitude during the early evening.
Despite Mike's rudeness to Malcolm on the first night, the rest of the evening went remarkably well; Graham had, as promised, hammed up a southern folk song as ridiculously as she had performed Bolle reiste jüngst zu Pfingsten, and people had had better manners than to try and press their increasingly nervous guest into contributing to the general noise. The only sore point, however, is that he has not come back since.
As she never leaves a burn, she has no idea why he hasn't returned after that supposedly successful evening, but she can't help but wonder if her silly behaviour put him off. He certainly has a reputation for being rather straight-laced, and to be surrounded by people being so foolish might well have been more than he was expecting. And she can't even talk to him about it. Not with the kiln to watch. God - what if she has put him off? The thought is horrible, and for a moment she feels as though she might even cry. Over what, though? It's not as though he's ever indicated that he reciprocates her feelings - and what if they're just some stupid crush anyway? Irked with herself, she walks around the kiln to check for hot spots that might become cracks, before sitting back down and resuming her brooding.
"I'm not interrupting, am I?"
She turns, startled, to see Malcolm standing a few feet away, a bottle of something in his hand.
"What, my intimate congress with a pile of burning wood? Interrupt away, by all means."
He sits beside her, "I'm sorry I've not been back. I spend one evening away from the labs and it all goes to hell. It's ridiculous - two of the botanists got into a stupid argument - over a flask, would you believe? I had two extremely angry complaints on my desk the next morning, and it's taken me the last two days to get the pair of them to grow up. I even had to confiscate the bloody flask. And that got me behind, so I've had to spend today up to my ears in paperwork." He offers her the bottle, the label of which professes it to contain home-brewed elderflower wine, "One of Julia's less hideous concoctions. Not exactly Chateauneuf du Pape, but it's better than the paint stripper they were passing about."
"And you don't mind chugging it out of the bottle?"
"I knew I'd forgotten something." He mutters, not entirely seriously.
"Where did you learn that song?" he asks, after they've sat in companionable silence for a while, and shared a few gulps from the bottle.
"From my Opa. Sorry, Granddad." She explains, "He was from Berlin, hence the Berlin dialect."
"I could tell." Malcolm lies.
"Naturally."
"How did you get into archaeology?" he resumes.
"From Opa again - he had a huge collection of artefacts, and I was always fascinated by them. By the time I was old enough to study it properly, there were hardly any courses being offered in Germany any more - everything was being pushed towards trying to reverse the damage we'd done to the climate. Only Cologne had courses by that time, so I went there. I was born in Frankfurt." She smiles, "I think most of the significant things that happened in my life happened in Germany - I was born there, I found my passion there, and I met my husband there."
She doesn't notice Malcolm tense slightly beside her at the mention of the dread word husband, "He was German, too?"
She shakes her head, "No, he was English, despite the Irish spelling of his name - I met him at a symposium in Berlin. I was fluent in standard English by that point, but he was the one who taught me to speak colloquial English. He had some civil engineering skills, but we came here because of my skills rather than his. Commander Taylor found him to be a great help, though. He did everything he could to get him back to the compound after the Nykoraptors attacked his work party. That's why I gave him the sword. I made them to keep myself from going to pieces in the first year or so after he died."
"I'm sorry." Malcolm mumbles, rather embarrassed.
"Don't be. We were happy, and we spent a year here in a clean world with hope and wonder at seeing a starry sky. I'll always treasure that. I have good friends, a fascinating job that encompasses everything I ever wanted to do, and people are starting to appreciate what I do."
"Apart from snooty biochemists?"
"With shoes that are coming apart." She agrees, then turns to him, "So, what about you? What brought you here?"
"I'm not that exciting - I'd bore you."
"Come on - I've had a little too much elderflower wine and I've spilled. Your turn."
He thinks for a moment, "Fair enough. I'll tell you something no one else here knows. Just between you and me."
"What's that?" She asks, startled out of her tipsiness by the implication of exclusivity.
"I'm actually Scottish."
Yseult stares at him, "You're having me on, aren't you?"
He shakes his head, "I promise you I'm not. I was born in Kilmarnock."
"But you sound so English." She pauses, "Sorry - that came out a bit drunk, didn't it?"
"On paper, I am English. I have English citizenship and I sound entirely Home Counties - but I was born in Scotland and spoke with a Scots accent until I was about twelve."
"How did you get English citizenship if you were a Scot? They restricted it to blood relatives only after 2112, didn't they? I only managed to get a Spouse residency card."
"My mother had English relatives."
"Would it be too intrusive to ask why you left?"
He shakes his head, "My father was Duncan Wallace."
She stares at him, "The Duncan Wallace?"
He nods, "Most people say that. When he was indicted by the Internal Security Committee in 2119, my mother lost her job, we lost our house and we had no choice but to get out. It was either that or live in poverty for the rest of our lives, and she wasn't willing to do that to me. She even had to sell her wedding ring to pay for the exit passes. The last time I saw him was when he was escorted away to attend the hearings at Holyrood. I was ten."
"God, I'm so sorry - I didn't mean to pry." There isn't anyone in Europe that doesn't remember the awful episode when Scotland's Internal Security Ministry had moved against democracy campaigners in 2119. The situation in Scotland was hardly unique - most Governments had abandoned elections once it became clear that the planet wasn't going to make it. The difference was that there were more Scots who were brave enough to demand that they weren't going to put up with it. Things had gone wrong only when a group of young people had radicalised to the point of instigating riots, and then there was the car bombing in Dunfermline that killed twenty children aboard a school bus…
Malcolm stares at the smoking kiln, "It didn't last that long - the committee went too far in the end, and the First Minister had to step in, or the entire country would've exploded. Mind you, it only really hit the fan when it came out that one of the Committee's backers had paid some mercenaries to come in and stage the car bombing as a pretext to stamp out the protests, and that stuck about six MSPs behind bars. It was too late for my father, though. He died of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Barlinnie Prison before they quashed his conviction."
Without thinking, she takes hold of his hand, but he doesn't pull away. Instead, he continues, "We were lucky - my mother's relatives were good people, and they took us in without even thinking about it. We got English citizenship so I could go to school - most of the schools were appalling by that point, but we had no money, so I tried out for a scholarship to Harrow, and got it. That's where I dropped the accent - partly to avoid being singled out, but mostly because I hated Scotland for what it did to my father, and to me, I suppose. I was too young to really understand what had actually happened - it took me a long time to reconcile with it and stop blaming an entire country for the actions of one politician."
"And everyone thinks you're so posh."
"In some ways, they'd be right. Everything I did after I left school was thanks to the network of old Harrovians - I was pretty much bankrolled through my higher education by a Bradby's Old Boy who saw my potential."
"Bradbys?"
"My House at Harrow."
"I'm still trying to get over the thought of you in a boater."
"It's a 'Harrow hat', thank you very much." He corrects her, with entirely false pompousness, "He paid for my place at Oxford. I met Elisabeth there, believe it or not."
"Elisabeth Shannon?"
He nods, "She was studying Clinical Pharmacology at the time - but she was thinking of switching to medicine. She ended up going to St Thomas's in London before transferring to Chicago to complete her studies there, and we lost touch. I stayed at Oxford, got a double first in Chemistry and Biochemistry, then I went to Trinity at Cambridge to do a Masters in Earth Sciences and Zoology - which I managed to get onto because I had the Biochemistry degree. I revisited Chemistry for my doctorate, and then went off to Imperial to study electronics and electrical engineering because I got interested in how all the analytical equipment worked. If I wrote out all the letters that I'm entitled to put after my name, it'd be longer than my name, particularly if you add the Oxon and Cantab."
"How did you get here?"
"I applied for a research fellowship and faculty post at Northeastern in Boston. By that point, I'd heard about this place - and the only thing I wanted to do was get here - and I knew my best chance was to get myself some experience in the US. It just went from there, really."
"And you've never looked back?" she finishes.
"I try not to. My mother died of COPD when I was at Imperial, so I had nothing to keep me in the future." He looks up at the sky, where the stars are now out, the sweep of the milky way bright and vivid, "I know people think that I was born with a silver spoon up my arse, but I had to work damned hard to get what I have." For a moment, he looks sad, "The only real memory I have left of my father is seeing him get in that car. If I'd known I wasn't ever going to see him again, I would've tried harder to hold onto it."
He still has hold of her hand; but then he turns to her - and promptly loses his nerve, "Maybe we should check the kiln again."
The moment is past, "Good point." She says, scrambling to her feet.
The gathering to watch the grand digging out is surprisingly large given that it usually consists of two people with shovels. Pete and Yseult are tasked with the grand unveiling, but Maddy has escorted Zoe to watch, while Malcolm has turned up with a pile of equipment to test whatever lies within the kiln. Given the weight of the apparatus, he has driven over, which has - perhaps inevitably - led to acerbic comments from Mike about his rover.
"Okay - here we go, Zoe. No promises, I'm afraid. We don't know what's in here yet - it's still very experimental." Between them, Yseult and Pete get to work with their shovels.
Within about ten minutes, however, the pile proves to have been remarkably productive. While the shrinkage has been significant, the overall yield is looking close to 50%: a spectacular result for a process that usually would produce half that at best.
"I think the retort's been a real success," Pete advises Zoe as she hovers close, but not that close, to the dusty environment where they are retrieving the charcoal, "And this wood has done very well. The wood tar that came out while we were burning looks very good as well. We'll be talking to Doctor Shannon about that - wood tar is very good for treating wounds."
"It is?" Zoe asks, excited that her mother is to be involved.
"Don't get too close, Zoe," Maddy warns, "Mom won't be pleased if you come home covered in soot."
"I'll leave you and the good Doctor to sort the analysis out. Let me know when you need me back to shovel out." Pete says to Yseult, "I've got to check some of the coppices."
"Will do." She turns to Malcolm, "I hope you don't mind ruining what you've got on. This stuff is hideously difficult to get out of fabrics."
"I'll survive." Stepping carefully, he joins her beside the blackened pile, "Where do you want to start?"
"Looking at it, I don't think we've managed to get full on white charcoal, but it still looks good." Crouching, Yseult reaches for a carbonised log with a gloved hand, and carefully crumbles some of it away, "Do you need chunks or crumbs?"
"I'll probably manage better with crumbs," he says, smiling at her mild humour, "I'm going to need to pulverise it anyway." He looks back across at Zoe, "Sorry - this is going to be boring for a bit. Do you want us to let you know how good this stuff is later?"
She thinks about it, then nods, "I have to go back to class. Can I have a picture?"
"Go on then." Maddy sighs, equally keen to get back to work.
"Hang on a minute." Yseult removes her gloves, dibbles her fingers in the soot and smears two thick black lines on each cheek, "How about the 'Teutonic Warrior' look?"
Zoe laughs, but then everyone turns to look at Malcolm.
"What?" he asks, nervously.
"Aren't you prepared to go tribal for the camera? I'm not sure that 'British Middle Class' is exactly a tribe but…" she knows he wouldn't want her to let on about his true ethnicity. That's for him to do.
He sighs, knowing that it's a humiliation that he cannot escape, and leans forward slightly, "Just get it over with."
Yseult dibbles again, and smudges a thick line across his face, from one cheekbone to the other, passing over the bridge of his nose, "There. Now you look suitably savage."
"This wasn't on the job description." He complains, though mostly because they expect him to.
"Come on. It's only one shot. Say cheese?" Yseult grins, then strikes a suitably ridiculous 'growling' expression and pose.
"Oh God…" he mutters, but consents to do likewise, which causes much laughter from his intern.
"Just think - this'll be going to everyone in the colony." Maddy calls across.
"I thought it was just the school."
"Not this edition. Bye!" Maddy hustles Zoe away before Malcolm can protest.
"She wouldn't, would she?" Yseult asks.
"Yes." Malcolm sighs, "She would." For a moment, they are face to face, and the sight of him looking so disgruntled while wearing a thick stripe of charcoal dust across his nose is so ridiculous that Yseult bursts out laughing.
"Oh, sod it." He says, finally abandoning the stupid inhibitions that have kept him from reaching out to her, and silences her with a kiss.
A Quick Author's Note: And there we have it. Controversial? I hope not. As I said at the outset - assuming that I haven't lobbed a massive feline into a large gathering of columbidae - there is method in my madness with the backstory I've given Malcolm.
In a nutshell:
Why Scottish? Partly because of his name ('Malcolm' derives from the Scots Máel Coluim, while Wallace - despite its Anglo-Norman roots - is now very closely associated with Scotland - and yes, there's a Clan), and partly because of the infamous, and never elaborated upon, Edinburgh Hearings. Having worked for many years with a Scot who had a resolutely Scots name, but not an accent, I felt it was plausible to do the same with Malcolm - for the reasons he outlines to Yseult.
I'm basing the Hearings/exile theory on the assumption that the UK has broken up into its constituent nations, though I've retained Scottish Parliamentary terms (MSP/First Minister etc.) from the Devolved Government. As the Parliament building is in the Holyrood area of the City, and is referred to in general UK parlance by the metonym 'Holyrood', I've also kept that. Therefore, the Hearings would be an internal Scottish incident that grew to infamous proportions rather than something international that took place there.
Regarding my view of his relationship with Elisabeth, it's possible to study Medicine at Oxford, but I wanted to create a physical separation alongside their breakup, so I changed her initial field of study, then switched it back and sent her to London - St Thomas's being one of the most highly regarded Teaching Hospitals in the UK, if not the world. The Colleges of Oxbridge don't specialise in particular subjects, so it's quite normal for undergraduates studying entirely different fields to be at the same one.
Lastly, Oxon is a short form of Oxoniensis - which refers to Oxford, and Cantab is short for Cantabrigiensis, which refers to Cambridge.
I'll shut up now, and get back to the story...
