Lambing Season

As it turns out, I don't understand tea. Not what it apparently means here, anyway.

When I walk in, Uncle is facing away from me, bent over the tea-tray on his desk, compounding a gigantic pot of tea using spoons and tins and strainers and boiling water and a cozy, and several heaping spoonfuls of actual loose leaf tea.

I didn't know anyone did that anymore. . .

His mind is so absorbed in this task that he doesn't greet me, or look up, or acknowledge my presence at all.

His mind.

Uncle Lamb is not crazy. I tell myself this a few more times, until I can unclench my fists, and walk deeper into the room.

While I'm not afraid of him any longer, I know even less what to expect now than I did this morning. I feel like some wary hesitation is more than a little justified.

But, it's just tea. Surely I can get through a simple meal without. . .

A long, low table that was invisible from the door comes into view, and all my other thoughts stutter to a halt.

From Mrs. Graham's excited chatter about "special treats", I had expected this to consist of, perhaps, sweet corncakes with whipped cream and fortified fruit paste for starters, baked potatoes and gravy to follow, and maybe bone broth consommé or chicken pâté to end on - things like what my mother used to serve for tea when we had company, but on a smaller scale, of course.

And here I find myself looking down at a more than two-meter long table positively stuffed with food. There are four whole cakes - one walnut, one battenburg, one Victoria sandwich, and one tall, pink-and-white frosted thing, with what looks like an entire tin of preserved whole cherries heaped on top. There are piles of tiny scones next to them, flecked with reddish-pink and brown and smelling of fruit and roasted nuts. After that there are five. . . no, six, pots of differently coloured spreads. I sniff delicately, and they smell chiefly of fruit, and range in colour from dark purple-black, to bright amber and ruby, to light golden brown. There is a bowl of white stuff that looks too thick to be whipped cream. Briefly, I wonder what it is. Next to it is a yellow mound of something that looks like a particularly good quality margarine, and a huge ceramic jug of chilled milk. Then there is a large tart filled with what looks like scrambled eggs. . . reaching far, far back in my memory I can just recall that my parents would sometimes have slices of a similar thing. . . called. . . I think. . . quiche? I cannot be sure. Then there are three different thick, squidgy, whitish disks cut into thin wedges, next to a tray of fancy wheat-flour crackers sprinkled with seeds, and two bowls filled with fruit - one with dark, dusky-purple grapes, and one with tiny jewel-like things I think might be red currants.

And then there are the sandwiches. All open-faced, on the most expensive looking wheat-flour bread I've ever seen, and all of them utterly mysterious. I don't even know what to call them. . .

There is one platter of very savoury-smelling green and red circles, one of a thick brown paste that smells strongly of the ocean, one of a thinly sliced translucent pink thing sprinkled with green sprigs of chives and nameless small dark green spheres, one of thinly sliced white squares and dark green circles, and one of a thick yellow paste with generous amounts of tiny white cubes mixed through it.

Not even the most lavish of my parents' tea parties ever came close to this.

Slowly, I sit on the nearby sofa, open-mouthed, not even knowing where to begin.

I'm not shocked they have such varied abundance here, not exactly. . . I'm just stunned they did all this. . . for me.

A teacup and saucer are pushed into my hand, and a smiling Uncle Lamb sits down next to me.

"Cold Island food takes some getting used to, doesn't it?" he says, a twinkle in his eye.

I pull myself together, "You. . . you mean it's like this every day?"

"Well. . . not quite," his lips twist wryly, "We usually only have one kind of cake, Mrs. Graham almost never makes five kinds of sandwiches, and she certainly doesn't bring out her famous rowanberry jam for just anybody."

"Oh," I say faintly, taking a sip of tea to fortify myself. It's delicious, and makes me realize exactly how hungry I am. "Which. . . one is that?"

With an knowing grin, he takes me through everything on the table I don't know. The cherry cake, the raspberry and almond scones, the butter, the clotted cream, the sloeberry, rowanberry, and blackberry jams, the spiced apple butter, and pear preserves, and honey.

"Honey?" I turn to him, very surprised, "I thought bees were extinct!"

He chuckles slightly, "Oh, they very nearly are. We're one of only two Cold Islands that have any bees to speak of. There's a hearty strain of them here though." Then he turns back to the table.

Next, he explains the three kinds of soft cheese sitting next to the crackers, the mushroom and rocket quiche, and the ruby currants, and then he pours me a glass of the goat's milk, insisting I taste it.

I do. I hardly know what to think. I'm used to peanut milk. This is wildly different.

"What is a goat?" I ask, blushing with my ignorance, "Is it anything like a cow? I had forgotten about cows. . . I had forgotten about cheese! And butter. . . and real cream! They taught us about them in school, but I. . ."

Uncle smiles indulgently, "Yes, Skycity life does make you forget many things, doesn't it? A goat is nothing like a cow, but we raise both here - you'll soon learn the difference."

"I hope so."

I sigh a little, wishing I could know everything at once.

"Anything else you want to know what it is?"

"Those sandwiches are baffling me, Uncle Lamb."

"Well, we can't have that, can we?" He smiles, and takes an empty plate, then recites what each sandwich is while serving me one of each. "Let's see. . . today it looks like we have. . . cucumber and tomato, salmon and anchovy paste, smoked salmon with chives and capers, cheese and pickle, and deviled quail's egg." He hands me the plate so insistently I have to put my teacup down in order to take it. "And now, you mustn't stand on ceremony. Have just exactly what you like, my dear."

I oblige, recklessly heaping my plate with a bit of everything until it is so full I have to stop. Uncle doesn't chide me for greediness, though. In fact, he looks immensely pleased.

He fills his own plate, then settles himself in a tall, very comfortable-looking armchair.

"Now," he says, cheerful but somehow also very serious, "I expect you have a whole army of questions, hm?"

I nod, not trusting myself to speak, since my mouth is currently full. With currants, as it happens.

"Good," he says, taking a large bite of buttered scone, "Fire when ready."

I blink a little. I wasn't expecting such blunt honesty.

I chew contemplatively. There are any number of places I could begin. . .

"Any there. . . any hospitals around here?" I ask, finally.

Uncle blinks and sits forward like he wasn't expecting me to ask that first thing. "Well, yes. In fact, there are three. Two in Inverness itself, and one just down the road here." He nods towards the road at the front of the house. "Why? Was there someone you wanted to visit?"

"No. . . I . . . I thought. . ." I chase a grape around my plate for a few seconds, "I thought that's where I'd be visiting you."

His brows knit in confusion for a long few seconds before his face clears, and his head goes back in a long, delighted peal of laughter.

"Ha! You remember that do you? Ha-Ha!" A moment later I assume he remembers his dignity, and he settles down to an occasional chuckle for the next several minutes.

"I was only eleven," I say, suddenly feeling a need to defend my childhood misconceptions, "And it was my first visit to Skycity 39. I only caught one glimpse you - wild eyes, wild hair - but I saw what you did to your rooms. . . and. . ." I look him straight in the eyes, begging him to understand. "It frightened me."

"Well, you always were a noticer." He lightly pounds a fist on the near corner of the table. "Marvelous. Simply marvelous. No, Claire dear, I'm not mad. Never have been. A touch eccentric, of course, but then any descendant of your Great-grandfather Beauchamp could hardly help being that."

"But. . . then. . ."

"Why?"

"Yes!" I almost yell, "Why?"

He helps himself to a slice of walnut cake, "Tell me dear, how many people, do you think, would like to live here on this island?"

I pause in the middle of one of the smoked-salmon sandwiches. I've never had fish before, and I'm quite enjoying it. "Well. . . everybody, I imagine. . ."

"Precisely. Now imagine everyone who wanted to live here, trying to live here. If all of them flooding in didn't cause chaos on its own, we'd very quickly run out of space, and things for them to do, and places for them to live, and even if we put them all to work farming and building houses, how long do you think our endemic animals and plants would survive?"

I put down my half-eaten slice of quiche, "Oh. . . I see."

"I'm sure you do," he says, kindly but firmly, "I know it all seems abundantly prosperous here - and it is - but it is also true that we are, in fact, a very tenuous outpost. An island indeed. And a beleaguered one. We have to be intensely careful. And so, no outsiders are allowed past the Port except for medical reasons, and all the food we export is exactly the same as the kind grown on the Skycities - the same hybrid fruits and grains, the same genetically altered chickens, the same line-bred potatoes and sugar beets. Even though we grow it all using soil and not hydroponics. We must maintain the illusion that we are merely radiation-free, and that living here is almost exactly the same as living on a Skycity. A nice place to visit if you need to, yes. But not Utopian or Edenic. Not an infinitely superior place to live."

I sigh, "So the only visitors you allow are the old, or sick, or mentally ill."

"Nearly all, yes," he nods.

"Which means you can control what they see. And eat."

"Yes."

"And so. . . all those years ago. . . you pretended. . ."

"Pretended to be mad, yes. So I could have an ongoing illness and an excuse to give to the world as to why I stayed here."

I drizzle some honey on a scone, "But. . . that doesn't explain why I'm here. . ."

He sighs sharply, "Claire, dear, I wanted to see you," his face sobers heavily, "After all, I never got to see Henry again, and. . ." He blinks rapidly, and takes an unreasonably large gulp of his tea. "Old Woolsey had to contact the Council here to approve your visit, of course, and since I'm friends with the lot of them, and Beauchamp being such an uncommon name. . ."

I give him a wry half-smile, "And what were you planning on doing about my finding out just how extraordinary it is here?" I pop the last of a bit of goat cheese and cracker into my mouth, to illustrate my point.

"Oh, there was some trifling arrangement about the Council making you sign some sort of Non-Disclosure agreement before you leave, but that's a small enough price to pay, isn't it?"

"I suppose. . ." I trail off, as another question occurs to me.

"Uncle-"

"Call me Lamb, dear," he interrupts, "Everyone does."

I nod, and continue, "Lamb. . . why. . . why did you. . . I mean. . . pretending to be mad is one thing. Needing to do it is quite another. What. . . what could possibly. . ." I growl, exasperated with both him and myself, "Besides, if you aren't mad then why. . . why did they let you. . ." I shrug, feeling quite incoherent, "Just. . . why?"

He doesn't say anything for a long time.

I'm scraping up the last crumbs of my slice of cherry cake, and washing it down with the very last of the pot of tea when he finally murmurs quietly, "Are you done eating, dear?"

I nod, and get up to put my cup and saucer neatly back on the tea-tray.

Lamb also gets up, and takes a walking stick from a stand in the corner.

"Then follow me."

The late afternoon sun slants the shadows dramatically across the library furniture as Lamb opens both sides of a big double-leaved door, and gestures imperiously for me to follow him. The breeze nips cold on my nose and ears, and I take a moment to grab the long mackintosh coat Lamb left laying on his desk. I throw it around me before I join him.

He is making a brisk pace across the stony, grassy fields, and it is quite an effort for me to keep up with him.

It isn't until we reach a largish stand of trees that he slows down at all. In fact, he stops, and stands still to watch a display of something I've never seen, and don't at all understand.

It is worth watching, though, I cannot deny that.

Fluttering clouds of small, winged, golden creatures are flying in all their glory across the field. They swoop and dive and soar all around, a silent, swirling, bright-yellow hurricane, speckling the grass and sky and trees around us with bits of colour stolen from the dying light.

Insects. Clearly. But I'm still confused, and look a sharp question over at Lamb.

He interprets my look, and laughs a little, his eyes still following the fluttering yellow wings, "Brimstone moths, my dear," he says softly, "Now's their hour. They swarm nearly every twilight this time of year."

"Brimstone? Swarm? You make then sound so dangerous!" For the first time in what feels like decades, I smile without effort.

"Not at all. It's like calling a big man "wee". The name is appropriate because it's precisely the opposite of true."

"Oh, Lamb, that doesn't make any sense." I reach out a hand, hoping one of the lovely creatures will land on it. None do.

He sighs a little, and watches one moth as it descends to a blade of grass, and sits there, slowly flapping its wings. "I had forgotten just how literal you are in the Skycities." He barks a joyless laugh, "Who would have thought that when the Human race finally reached heaven, they would lose all their sense of humour?"

I link my arm through his, "The Skycities are hardly heaven, Uncle Lamb - though I appreciate the imagery - and eight years of war is enough to make just about anyone a bit grumpy, you know. . ."

"You are right dear," he says somewhat abstractedly, "You must forgive the foibles of an eccentric old man, I'm afraid. . ."

Then, with deep sigh, he turns away from the moths, only to gesture grandly at a hill some hundred meters away from us.

"There it is, my dear. Why I am here."

It is a small hill, but crowned with trees and a collection of large, slender grey stones standing upright. The last rays of the sunset are just glinting from the edges of them, setting them as though with jewels of fire.

A pang of perfect beauty strikes me. I am incapable of speaking in anything but a reverent tone.

"What. . . is it?" I ask.

"A power generator." Lamb's tone is as solemn as my own.

"It looks like. . . well, to me it looks like a bunch of upright stones, but. . ."

"And so it is." Lamb nods, "Just standing stones. Nothing more."

"So. . . what power does it generate?"

"The power of infinite potential."

For the briefest of moments, I wonder if he really is mad after all. . .

Then, the golden light leaves the structure entirely, and somehow the spell is broken. Lamb's next words are spoken quietly, but with his usual cheerful confidence.

"It is remarkable what Humanity lost when we decided the Earth could be conquered, my dear."

"I'm. . . sure you're right," I say, uncertain how to respond to the non sequitur.

"And the only way to regain our heritage, is to be subject to the Earth again."

"That. . . may be."

"Certainly. It may." He turns us around and we start back to his house, this time at a much slower pace. "I'm sorry I cannot explain more, Claire, dear, not tonight. And anyway, we must get back home, Mrs. Graham will have our supper waiting."

I let the conversation drop. There's no telling what Mrs. Graham has made for our supper, but I can hardly wait.