Iain Banks - The Crow Road

'CR:!B killsH!!? (save)

(jlsy? stil drwnd)

B and H. I vaguely remembered these abbreviations from the notes I'd lost. I shook my head, cursing my own idiot negligence, and Uncle Rory's frustrating delight in abstract abbreviation.

… Jlsy. Well, that was a recurring theme in Rory's work.

… Stil drwnd. But Hell, I thought H got crshd btwen crge & tr!

"Fuck it," I'd said, and closed the file. I'd turned the bulky, heavy, sealed manila A4 envelope over in my hands for a while, then opened it. Computer disks. (That was a surprise. As far as I knew Uncle Rory had never possessed a computer.) Eight big floppy computer disks each in their own brown paper envelopes. Hewlett-Packard Double-sided Flexible Disks, Recorder # 92195 A (Package of 10 disks). Well, yes; of course there would have to be two missing. They were numbered 1 to 8 in black felt-tip, and that was the only indication they weren't brand new and unused. The write-protect holes were still taped over.

I'd looked over at the Compaq, sitting on dad's desk, but the big, somehow already old-fashioned looking disks wouldn't even have fitted into the Compaq's drive if you'd folded them in half.

Making a mental note to call Ashley in London about the disks some time, I put them back in their manila envelope and the envelope back in its faded folder, and spent a fair while after that just leafing through Uncle Rory's India journal, smiling sadly at it all and becoming almost as willingly lost in it as it seemed Rory had m the pungent, teeming wastes of India itself… until mum called me from the foot of the stairs, and it was time for tea.

A few days later, I'd travelled back up to Glasgow by train; we'd got all the immediate matters regarding my father's death sorted out. It had been a perfect day; summer-warm and spring-fresh, the air winter-clear, the colours more vivid than in autumn.

I'd felt a sort of shocked calm settle over me as I'd travelled, and been able to forget about death and its consequences for a while.

The familiar route had looked new and startling that day. The train had travelled from Lochgair north along the lower loch, crossed the narrows at Minard, and stopped at Garbhallt, Strachur, Lochgoilhead and Portincaple Junction, where it joined the West Highland line and took the north shore of the Clyde towards Glasgow. The waters and the skies blazed blue, the fields and forests waved luxuriously in a soft, flower-scented breeze and the high hill summits shimmered purple and brown in the distance.

My spirits had been raised just watching the summer countryside go past — even the sight of the burgeoning obscenity of the new Trident submarine base at Faslane hadn't depressed me — and when the train had approached Queen Street (and I'd been making very sure I had all my luggage with me) I'd seen something sublime, even magical.

It had been no more than that same scrubby, irregularly rectangular field of coarse grass I'd sat looking at so glumly from the delayed train in the rain that January. Then, the field's sodden, down-trodden paths had provided an image of desolation I had fastened onto, in my self-pity, like a blood-starved leech onto bruised flesh.

And now the field had burned. Recently, too, because there was no new growth on the brown-black earth. And yet the field was not fully dark. All the grass had been consumed save for a giant green X that lay printed, vivid and alive, on the black flag of the scorched ground. It was the two criss-crossing paths through the wedged-in scrap of field that still shone emerald in the sunlight. The flames had passed over those foot-flattened blades and consumed their healthier neighbours on either side while they themselves had remained, made proof against the blaze and guaranteed their stark survival just by their earlier oppression.

I'd stood there, in the act of taking my bags down from the luggage rack. And smiling to myself, I'd said, "See?"

Dad hadn't specified any memorial; all his will had said was that he wanted to be buried somewhere in the grounds of the house. There was some discussion, and eventually mum decided on a plain black granite obelisk with his name and the relevant dates on it.

I stood there, dressed in my slightly preposterous Highland finery, half-way through this wedding in the rain and remembering the funeral in the sunlight a season earlier, and I thought again how damn ugly that dark monument had turned out, then I shook my head and turned, and walked back to the lawn and the marquee. The ground was squelchy and I had to tread carefully to avoid getting mud on my thick white socks. The kilt swung against my knees.

I wondered if Ash was back yet.

"What what what? Come on, Prentice! My first chance to snog tongues with your brother as a married man and you're dragging me away waving… ha! ha! Where did you get these?

The hall of the Lochgair house was swarming with people, crowding in, laughing, brandishing presents, shaking hands, demanding drinks, slapping Lewis on the back, hugging Verity, talking quietly to my mother, wandering through the press of people greeting each other and bumping and smiling and talking away and generally making me feel I might have arranged the reception line a little better; it had been a relief to spot Ashley struggling through the crowd at the front door, remember the computer disks, dash upstairs to get them and then down to intercept her and haul her into the lounge.

"Found them in dad's study," I told Ashley, holding the disks out to her. She put a gaily wrapped package down on a chair, took one of the big disks from me and slid it out of its paper wrapper, grinning.

Then she looked up, frowned and stepped back, arms wide. "Prentice," she said, voice deep with censure. "You haven't said how stunning I look yet. I mean, come now."

Ash wore loose black pants and a shimmery silver top; hair back-swept and piled up. The glasses had been replaced by contacts. "You look great," I told her. I nodded at the disk in her hand. "Think you can do anything with that?"

Ash sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. Haven't you got the machine they ran on?"

I shook my head. "I asked my mum about it; she thinks they might have been Rory's."

"That long ago, eh?" Ash tapped the disk sleeve dubiously, as though expecting it to crumble to dust at any second.

"I didn't know until today he even had one; I mentioned to mum I'd ask you about these, and she said Rory did have a computer, or a word processor or whatever. Got it out in Hong Kong about a year before he disappeared."

"Hong Kong?" Ash looked even more dubious.

"Some sort of… copy; clone? Of an… well, mum said an Orange, but I guess she means Apple. She remembers him complaining that it — or the program or whatever — didn't come with proper instructions, but he got it to work eventually."

"… Uh-huh."

"Dad left it in the flat Rory shared in Glasgow when he took Rory's papers away. Wouldn't have a computer in the house, at the time'.

"Wise man."

"I'm going to try and track down the guy Rory shared the flat with but I reckon the machine's been chucked out or whatever long ago, and I just thought, could you… you know… you might know somebody who perhaps could be able to… to decode what's on there?" I shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. Ash was now looking at the disk as though fully anticipating that creepy crawlies were about to start emerging from it. "I mean," I said, clearing my throat, suddenly feeling hot and sweaty. "There might not be anything on them at all, but… I just thought…»

"So," Ash said slowly. "Let me get this straight: you don't know the machine, but it's probably some ancient nameless Apple clone from the dark grey end of the market, almost certainly using reject chips; it probably had a production run that lasted until the first month's rent fell due on the shed the child-labourers were assembling them in, it used an eight-inch drive and ran what sounds like dodgy proprietorial software with more bugs than the Natural History Museum?"