The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ for pursuit. Here, the sheer scale of the place surprised him: this was an island, and Tobermory was almost a toy town, but out here was a breadth of horizon that reminded him of Africa. Even with the mountains. The glen was miles wide, he thought, the mountains starting as rolling slopes that careened abruptly upward and became almost vertical climbs to their summits. Strong climber could shake anybody up there. The landscape was brown and green and gray; grass, not heather; bare rock and bracken. You could walk and walk. Or run and run. If the footing is okay.

      He found the road to the right and drove it more slowly; it was ancient tarmac, crumbling along the edges, potholed, hardly wider than the car. He came over a rise and almost ran into a goofy-looking runner, some old guy wearing what looked like a giant’s T-shirt that flapped around him in the crisp wind. Hardly noticing him, the runner plodded on. Piat thought, I could give you half a mile and still get there first. After another mile, the road forked and he went right. Almost there. When he had gone half a mile farther, he pulled up just short of a crest and got the car into a lay-by and stopped. “Please do not park in the lay-bys,” the tourist brochure had said. You bet.

      Piat got out and spread an Ordnance Survey map on the hood, traced his route from Tobermory, found the fork, followed with his finger, and judged from the contour lines that if he walked over the crest, he’d be looking down on Hackbutt’s house. Or farm, or whatever the hell it was. His aviary, how would that be?

      He had borrowed a pair of binoculars from good old Dave—Swarovskis, 10x50, nice if you didn’t have to carry them very far—and walked the hundred feet to the top of the hill. He made his way into the bracken and moved toward a rock outcrop, keeping himself out of sight of the house he’d glimpsed below, until he reached the outcrop and put his back against it and turned the binoculars on the house.

      It could have been any house on the island—central doorway, two windows on each side, a chimney at one end, second storey with two dormers. The color of rich cream but probably stone under a coat of paint, possibly an old croft fixed up but more likely built in the last hundred years. At the far side of the house, clothes blew in the wind on a circular contraption with a central metal pole. Behind it, as if to tell him it was the right house, were pens and little shacks like doghouses that he took to be sheds for the birds; beside a half-collapsed metal gate, a dejected-looking black and white dog lay with its head on outstretched paws, beside it what was apparently supposed to be a doghouse made out of boxes and a tarp. The bird pens seemed to have been set out at random, the hutches put together by somebody who didn’t know which end of a hammer to hit his thumb with. That’d be Hackbutt, for sure.

      Piat studied the place. He hoped to actually see Hackbutt so he’d go in with that advantage. They hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years; let the other guy feel the shock of change. Hackbutt would have an idea he was coming but wouldn’t know when: Piat had sent him a postcard with a picture of a bear on the front, a nonsense message on the back signed “Freddy.” From “ready for Freddy.” It meant “get ready;” the bear was the identifier, an old code between them. Would Hackbutt remember? Of course he would. In fact, Piat thought, he’d piss his pants.

      After fifteen minutes, nobody had appeared near the house. Piat eased himself around the outcrop and walked back through the bracken to the car. He leaned on the roof and trained the binoculars around him, idling, not wanting to go down to the house yet. Apprehensive? Cold feet? He looked down the road. The goofy runner was coming back. He was making heavy going of it now, his feet coming down as if he were wearing boots, his hands too high on his chest. The too-big T-shirt blew around him. He had a beard and long, gray hair, also blowing, the effect that of some small-time wizard in a ragged white robe. Smiling, Piat put the binoculars to his eyes to enjoy this sorry sight, and when the focus snapped in, he realized with a shock that the runner was Hackbutt.

      The last time he had seen Hackbutt, he’d weighed about two-thirty and had had a sidewall haircut, smooth cheeks, and eyes like two raisins in a slice of very white bread. Now, there was the beard and the long hair, and the face had been carved down to planes that made his eyes look huge; his skin was almost brown, and he had lost a lot of weight—so much that his legs looked fragile. The T-shirt, Piat realized, must be one of his own from the old days.

      He still can’t run for shit, at least.

      Hackbutt toiled up toward him. Piat moved around to the rear of the car and leaned back against the trunk. The runner came on, his breathing hoarse and hard, his eyes on the crest. He was going to pass Piat without looking at him, Piat knew—eye contact had always been hard for the man, confronting new people a torment. Now, as he came almost even, Piat said, “Hey, Digger.”

      Hackbutt was the kind of nerd who actually did double takes. He might look like a wizard now, but inside was the same insecure fumbler. Still running, he looked aside toward Piat, looked away, then really looked back and, finally believing the evidence of his eyes, came to a stop with his mouth open and his T-shirt flapping. “Jack?” he said, breathing hard. He’d always known Piat as Jack Michaels.

      “Hey, man, you look good. Putting in the miles, that’s great.” Piat was still leaning on the car. He held out his hand. “Sight for sore eyes, Digger.”

      “Jeez, Jack, this is—” Hackbutt took a death grip on Piat’s hand. The guy was really strong. “I got your card, but I didn’t know when you were coming!” He grinned. “Wow, this is unbelievable!” Then they both said it was great, and unbelievable, and a long time.

      “You look good, Dig. Lost some weight, haven’t you?”

      “Some weight! Sixty pounds, Jack.” His breathing was getting better and he was able to stick his chest out. “Surprised?”

      “Amazing.”

      “Jeez, Jack, you haven’t changed. You look just the same. You look great.”

      “Little older, little grayer.” He grinned at Hackbutt. Piat was surprised to find he was pleased to see him. Good old, easy old Eddie Hackbutt. “Let me run you down to the house.” That was a slip; he shouldn’t have admitted he’d already seen the house. Hackbutt, however, didn’t notice; he was too busy shaking his head and frowning.

      “No, no, Irene wouldn’t like it. I can’t give in like that. Anyway, I’m just coming up on the big finish—over the hill and then I sprint to the front door.”

      Piat thought that would be worth seeing. Most of his concentration, however, was on Hackbutt’s “Irene.” Partlow’s file had said nothing about a wife, had mentioned only a “companion,” name unspecified. “Keeps your nose to the grindstone, does she?”

      Hackbutt’s face darkened. “No, it isn’t like that!” This was new—he’d grown a spine in fifteen years. “You’ll have to meet her.” And Hackbutt turned about and started his painful plod up the last hundred feet of the hill before his final sprint.

      Piat sat behind the wheel without starting the car; he wanted to let Hackbutt get home and tell “Irene” about meeting good old Jack. The house was no more than a third of a mile away—give the man four minutes. Five, so he could get out of that T-shirt. And Piat wanted to think: he’d made a mistake. He’d thought he’d told himself that Hackbutt would be changed, but he’d thought only that he’d be more like Hackbutt—fatter, nerdier—and not that he’d have reinvented himself as a skinny, bearded exercise freak. Or been reinvented by a woman named Irene, who now took on an importance that Piat hadn’t even guessed at.

      Losing my touch. Or getting rusty.

      He started the engine.

      Irene СКАЧАТЬ