"Good to be home," she said, and beckoned him urgently.

He stood in front of the ancient iron monstrosity, not quite sure what it was. Jackie took his hands and pulled him closer to it. Heat crept back into his dripping fingers.

"That's better," he said. "That wind chill was killing me."

"I spent many an hour drying out in front of the Aga. We've even used it to save some lambs."

"Huh?"

"If their mother dies, the plate-warming oven is just right for keeping them warm. Poor wee things need all the help they can get for the first few days."

"This is a stove?"

"It is that," Jackie said. She stood in the doorway, taking her boots off. "Installed over three centuries ago, I'll have you know, and still going strong. The burner ring was modified to use methane, but other man that, as sound as the day it left the factory."

Lawrence gave the stolid behemoth a suspicious look. If she was telling the truth, it predated the human settlement of Amethi. Amazing.

"You two had better have a hot shower and change your clothes," Jackie said. "You've turned blue. There's plenty of hot water. I'll have some tea for you when you come down."

Joona nodded. "This way." She took Lawrence's hand again and started to lead him playfully out of the kitchen.

"He's a big healthy lad you've got yourself, there," Jackie called after them. "You'll be needing the double bed tonight."

"Gran!" Joona yelled back. But she was smiling up at Lawrence, hunting his approval. He managed to smile back.

A kettle was whistling away on top of the Aga when he came back downstairs. He'd managed to find a clean T-shirt in his bag, and Joona had given him a thick apricot-colored sweater to wear on top. The arms were only a few centimeters too short.

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?"