Divisions by Ken MacLeod Page A

from it. He held it with one end at his mouth and the other at his ear, and was speaking rapidly into it.
    I had a nasty suspicion that this was a radio.
     
     
    ‘I told you I taught them electronics,’ Malley said a few minutes later, as we bounced along yet another forest track, heading in completely the wrong direction for any return to Alexandra Port.
    ‘How irresponsible can you get!’ I yelled. ‘Radios can pick up viruses, you know that.’
    ‘Yeah, and melt in your hand—so what!’
    ‘What about mind viruses? Have you thought about that?’
    ‘Of course I have,’ Malley said, struggling to get the seatbelt on. ‘They’re just a fancy term for ideas you don’t like.’
    ‘Ideas who don’t like?’
    ‘You lot,’ Malley said, waving his hand around his head. ‘The Union. The Division. It’s just censorship.’
    I laughed so hard that the buggy swung dangerously as I steered around a log. ‘Sure, like taking what you want is rationing!’
    ‘Exactly my point,’ Malley said, with unaccountable triumph.
    I sighed. ‘Dr Malley, I have great admiration for you and all you’ve accomplished, and I can even see you’ve been doing good to these people, but I respectfully suggest that you’re a bit out of touch, or maybe misinformed—’
    ‘Hah!’
    ‘—and you’ll see things differently once you get out to the Division.’

    ‘No doubt,’ Malley chuckled, wheezing. ‘No doubt I will.’
    The map—still patched to my eye—showed that we were nearing Gunnersmere, one of the first fens of the Thames Estuary. The village of Under Flyover was marked as a straggle of houses along the shore. Ahead, I could already see the trees thinning, oak and beech being replaced by alder and birch.
    ‘What do you think they were using the radio for?’ I asked.
    Malley gave me an evil grin. ‘Oh, warning ahead, probably.’
    ‘Skies above, man!’ I applied the brake gently and we slithered to a halt in a spray of leaf mould and beechnuts. Suddenly our surroundings seemed very quiet, apart from sinister cracklings under the trees, and deserted, apart from flitting shapes in the long shadows. ‘You mean we’re heading straight into an ambush ?’
    ‘ You are,’ Malley said calmly. ‘I would have stopped you any minute now, but I was waiting to see how long it’d take before you realized you needed my local knowledge to get you out of this.’
    I took a deep breath. ‘OK, Dr Malley. I need your local knowledge. That, or a rescue chopper.’
    ‘Maybe both. First things first. Let’s get this buggy off the road, preferably somewhere not too obvious. There’s a bit of exposed roadway a couple of hundred metres ahead, and some ruins alongside. Tracks shouldn’t be too conspicuous, especially in poor light.’
    I restarted the engine and let the vehicle roll forward quietly to the area Malley had indicated, where the chances of wind and weather had laid bare the cracked tarmac. I sought out a ruin whose approach wasn’t itself covered with plants or plant remains, and found one with a battered concrete ramp leading to the gap where its doors had been. Within a minute or two we had the buggy stashed inside a rectangle of crumbled wall, within which nettles, willow-herb and hemp grew to a height of over six feet. I looked down at the former contents of the rucksack, scattered forlornly in the rear well of the buggy. I changed the suit into a rucksack and a dappled black-and-green jumpsuit, then repacked, with the weighty addition of the deflated boat, its electric outboard engine and fuel cell, and the spare gas cylinder.
    ‘That’s one possible way out,’ Malley acknowledged.
    ‘Now what?’ I asked.
    ‘Do you have any way of contacting the nearest Union outpost?’
    Outpost, indeed. ‘Not directly,’ I said. ‘I could contact them via my ship. It’ll be above the horizon in about—’ I blinked up the watch floating in my left eye, and checked ‘—fifteen minutes. But I’d really rather not