He sat at the big oak refectory table in the center of the kitchen, watching Jackie make the tea. She used a china pot, spooning in dark flakes before pouring the water in. He'd never seen tea textured that way before.
"It takes longer, but it tastes better than your microwaved cubes," she said when she caught him staring. "Life's not so fast up here, we've time to let tea brew as it should."
"Fine by me, I could do with some slow living." Jackie sat in a chair in front of a new-model desktop pearl. Its pane was showing a sweater with an elaborate pattern of bright colors. She told it to switch off, and the pane folded itself back into the casing. "I expect our Joona has been filling your head with stories of glorious revolution."
"Not really. She just has a real bug about the companies."
"Aye, well, she blames the companies for splitting up her parents. Her mother used to work for Govett; they handle a lot of the transport for the reclamation plants in town. Trouble was, Govett has an enlightened social policy; they move their personnel around every five years so they don't get stale or deadended. Her father, my Ken, there was no way he was going to leave the Highlands. How that woman didn't realize his commitment to the area I'll never understand." She sighed. "Then he went and got himself killed over in Glen Coe, a skiing accident. Joona was twelve at the time."
"And after that you brought her up here by yourself?"
"Aye. She refused to have anything to do with her mother. Stubborn, she is. Her mother helped us out with money and got her into the Prodi, but that's the only contact they've ever really had."
"I can see why she's so attached to this place."
Jackie poured some milk into a big mug, then used a strainer to add the tea. "Not just to Fort William, it's our whole way of life she's devoted to."
He waved a hand round the kitchen with its age-darkened wooden furniture and scrubbed flagstone floor. Plates, cups and glasses stood along the shelves of a big Welsh dresser, probably all antiques. Copper pots and pans hung above the Aga, along with bundles of dried rosemary that gave off a mild scent. Despite the room's old-fashioned appearance, he could see a modern dishwasher and fridge built into the fitted cupboards. There had been a small cleaning robot in the lean-to outside. The only thing the kitchen really lacked was a texturalizer unit to make up basic food from raw protein cells. He suspected Jackie simply bought precomposed packets from town. A lot of people couldn't be bothered with home preparation these days. "You seem to be doing all right I was worried I was going to be spending my holiday in a mud hut."
"I've a few interests, but the flock brings in enough to get by."
"How does that work?"
"There's a lot of land up here that they can't plant their damn forests on, you know. So we still have mountain sheep, and shepherds, and even sheep dogs. That part of our lives is the same as it has been for centuries."
He frowned. "You don't like the forests?"
"Oh, I don't mind them. But there's a difference between restoration and uberretrogression. These days if the ecological agency finds a clear piece of land bigger than a patio they want to plant a tree on it. It's a direct continuation of the Greenwave policy that came in after protein cells were developed. The old radical Greens saw that as their chance to finally repair the damage that farming had done. It's all a load of bull. Farmers were good for the countryside; they took care of their land. They had to, they depended on it. And I swear there was never so much woodland in Europe before, no matter how far back you go into prehistory to try to justify today's acreage. What we've got now is no more natural than the intensive arable farming that went on in the second half of the twentieth century and first half of the twenty-first."
"What I've seen of it looks magnificent."
"It certainly does, aye. Though you've no idea how many walkers get lost around here every year. And that includes the ones that have full navigation and communications functions in their bracelet pearls. Idiots, every last one of them. Our rescue teams are busy practically the whole year round. And we reckon to lose at least fifty sheep in the trees each season. There's supposed to be fencing, but even the robots can't keep it all maintained."
"Don't forget the wolves," Joona said. She came into the kitchen wearing a baggy blue robe, a big green towel wrapped around her hair. She sat next to Lawrence and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "They take dozens of sheep each year."
"Aye," Jackie said ruefully as she poured tea for her granddaughter. "Another species reintroduced courtesy of the environmental agency. As if we didn't have enough to contend with up here. But we get by. There's a fair weight of fleeces collected each year, and they keep the likes of me busy."
"You turn the fleeces into wool here?"
"Not directly. There's a couple of small local mills, cooperatives that we keep going; they wash the wool and weave it into yarn. Then it gets sent out to me and all the other crofters that are left up here. I knit it into sweaters like that one you're wearing. There's some that do blankets, and ponchos, and hats, and gloves. All sorts, really."
Lawrence looked down at his sweater, feeling it. "You knit these?"
Jackie laughed. "We're not Luddites, you know. I design the patterns. I've an old barn down at the end of the garden where I've got three cybernetic knitting machines. They do the hard work. I know how to maintain them, mind. I'm quite handy with an Allen key and diagnostic program, I'll have you know."
"All the tourists buy them," Joona said. "Natural wool sweaters sell for a premium. Those damn factory texturalizers can't get the artificial fibers quite right, they just feel wrong. And Gran's designs are best of all."
"So where's the problem?" Lawrence asked. "You're doing what you want, and the rest of society appreciates that."
"The corporations and district parliament tolerate us because there are so few crofters," Joona said. Her earlier good humor had faded. "They wouldn't welcome too many of their kind taking up our lifestyle."
"Now don't go getting her started, young Lawrence," Jackie said. "And you, my lady, can forget about politics for an evening. I get quite enough of that at the association meetings. Boring old farts, they are. So, Lawrence, were you really born on another planet?"
The evening that followed was one of the most pleasant he'd had for a long time. There was no pressure on him at all, no worry. He didn't have to go out hunting girls or drink. It was, he thought, what a real family evening should be like. Nothing like the ones he'd endured in his own home back on Amethi, not forced and littered with expectation. More like the ones he would have wanted his own family to enjoy, the ones they would have enjoyed if things had worked out between himself and Roselyn.
He gave Joona a quick, guilty look. But she just smiled at him. She was helping Jackie make the pasta for supper.
"Traditional Scottish spaghetti," Jackie had announced. They both laughed when he nodded eagerly and said: "Great."
They turned down his offer of help, for which he was quietly thankful. He was left to stroke a huge black cat called Samson, while they busied themselves up at the long counter. A bewildering variety of ingredients were produced from big earthenware pots that were fitted with wide cork lids. The bolognese was mixed, cooked, tasted, remixed.
He did make himself useful lighting the log-burning stove in the parlor. It was soon roaring away, throwing out such a heat he had to take his borrowed sweater off. Jackie produced a malt for supper, which he had to water down to drink.
The spare bedroom—with the double bed—had an uneven floor. When he walked across it cautiously he realized the oak boards were so old they'd hardened into something approaching steel. They creaked occasionally, but they were totally solid. There was no quilt on the bed, only sheets and blankets, which he was dubious about. But the blankets were obviously produced by Jackie and her fellow crofters, brightly colored with a thick weave, so he expected they'd be warm enough. A single light fitting hung from the low ceiling, its cone a lambent yellow, casting mellow shadows. Wind soughed stealthily round the cottage's gable end; he could hear the trees rustling around the garden.
He grinned expectantly at Joona after she shut the door, and hurriedly started pulling his clothes off. Her own movements as she undid the buttons of her blouse were hesitant, which he took as modesty. Which was arousing. By the time she'd finished undressing he was already waiting for her on the bed, determined that, finally, tonight should be good fun.
"Are we having the lights on or off?" he asked.
A troubled expression fluttered briefly over her face. "Off." There was an unspoken of course. She flicked the switch by the door. The faintest moonlight seeping through the curtains allowed him to see her as a dark, flowing shape as she moved toward him. The bedsprings bent and shifted as she climbed on.
Lawrence reached for her immediately, sliding his hands over her body. He cupped her small breasts and began teasing the nipples with his fingers. He licked at her neck, her shoulders, her face. Her breathing quickened and they kissed, his mouth smothering hers.
It wasn't that she didn't respond, exactly. She just wasn't as active as the girls he was used to romping with. He took that as his cue to start whispering suggestions and compliments, telling her of the acts and positions he wanted from her, promising how marvelous she would be performing them. Silently, Joona followed his directions.
Lawrence woke to the sound of some deranged bird being throttled very noisily just outside the bedroom window. Even the old peacocks back home never made so much racket.
At least the night's wind and rain had stopped. Daylight fluoresced the curtains a radiant jade.
Joona was sitting up with her back resting on a mound of pillows. A microsol tube was dangling loosely from her fingers, just like a reefer. She wasn't looking at anything within the room.
He wondered if he should say something about it. Sure, he liked a drink himself. But only when he was out for a good time. Her habit seemed to be on the wrong side of casual.
He settled for stretching elaborately and giving her a broad smile. Truly, there was nothing better than waking up in bed with a naked girl after a night of hot sex. He could feel his erection stirring already at the sight of her little breasts. "Morning," he said, and there was a lot of happy lechery in his voice.
Her focus came back inside the bedroom walls. "Now do that to yourself." Her voice was as calm and dense as the loch outside. "That's what you said."
"I, er..."
"The only time I've ever heard someone say that before was in a porno."
"Ah. Well, it just seemed right. Then." His face was hot as he tried to remember exactly what he had asked her.
"Some of those things you had me do; I don't even know the names for them."
Lawrence wanted to wake up. Now, please. This was not the way it was supposed to be the morning after. A few bashful grins exchanged when you're off-guard and reminiscing, silent acknowledgment how you both got carried away in the heat of it all, but as we're civilized folk we won't actually mention it. Certainly we don't talk details out loud.