The Restoration Game (38 page)

“Not even the shares in a copper mine could pay for that.”

“I'm not talking about getting rich that way,” you say.

You give her some hot tips for sound investments.

“But they'll only pay off in the long run,” you caution her. “Meanwhile, work hard and stay well.”

You know her lover is almost in sight. You rise to leave. Lucy stands too, looking you straight in the eye.

“I understand,” she says, “I think, how knowing about the Stone Text affected the Vrai, and how the Vrai and people they affected brought down communism. But what about the West? Doesn't capitalism have its destructive consequences too? What are you going to do about that?”

You wish you could tell her about how the fall of communism led to an overweening overconfidence which is about to lead to another fall, from which something quite different from either of the old rival systems will arise.

But you don't have time. You don't have a minute.

“It's in hand,” you tell her, and walk away without saying goodbye. You feel a pang. You liked her. You hope she succeeds in the task you've set her. If she does…

You'll see her again, in a better world, in another life.

KEN M
AC
LEOD
was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, on August 2, 1954. He is married with two grown-up children and lives in West Lothian. He has an honors and a master's degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer, and in 2009 was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. He is the author of twelve novels, from
The Star Fraction
(1995) to
The Restoration Game
(2010), and many articles and short stories. His novels have received two BSFA Awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. Ken MacLeod's weblog is The Early Days of a Better Nation:
http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com
.