Ares Express (13 page)

She heard an explosion behind her. She turned. Too soon, too close…Grandmother Taal fumbled in her infinity bag. Keys, sweets, small ladylike weapons, items of food, coins, charms, vials of scented waters, comfits, hair pins and old-fashioned jewellery, hard edges of very large machines. Where was it? Damn infundibular folding dimensions.

The second detonator went off. She saw its brief sharp flare close to the ground, eclipsed by wheels. She began to walk very quickly, counting
one
thousand
two
thousand
three
thousand
four
thousand…There. Her fingers curled around the shaft of the thermite flare.
Fifteen
thousand
sixteen
thousand…So dark, so damned dark, no light from all those stupid, wasted stars, and so cold; one frosty sleeper, one unseated trackbed, one loose tie, she could fall, and that would be…
Twenty-two
thousand
twenty-three
thousand
twenty-four
thousand…Boom.

The last detonator. He was coming fast, too fast. There must have been delays down the line in Margaret Land, he was making up time on the empty Oxus section.

She turned, held the flare at arm's length, pulled the ripcord. The metal cap flipped off. The thermite mixture coughed, spat sparks. A low flare guttered, teetered on the edge of extinction in the wind, then caught. A blade of searing white flame leaped from the casing. Grandmother Taal faced down the
night train to Grand Valley with a sword of light. She could see the headlamp, cutting a curve through the night. The wheels beat, the horns declared their impatience with all that might impede them. Grandmother Taal held her sword firm before her face. See it. They must see it. But she could not hear brakes. She could not hear the chunter of an Engineer throwing the drive into reverse, the shriek of the emergency steam release. She tried to remember how much fire there was in the standard Bethlehem Ares Railroads signal flare. The light expanded before, swallowing her like the hypnotising eyes of a speedsnake bewitching a Syrtis hare. The world around her was white, the horns bellowed, “
This is the Triskander-Grand Valley Limited, out of my way
.” He wasn't stopping. He wasn't stopping. Brakes. She heard brakes. Sparks cascaded from the agonised steel. Geysers of steam jetted from the piston valves. The horns yelled at her, then fell silent. The engine stood motionless before her. She could have reached out and touched the cow-catcher.

The flame guttered out in dismal sparks. Grandmother Taal flung the empty casing away from her. She looked defiantly up into the great white light.

“I am Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer 10th, of
Catherine of Tharsis
!” she declared. “In the name of all Engineers, I claim Uncle Billy!”

A distant voice shouted down.

“How about you, Cousin Taal Engineer! Welcome to
Five Great Stones
. Come aboard.”

Dark figures were already weaving through the seething white spotlight to her assistance.

a
colytes in plum opened the filigree gates of the hand-cranked elevator and demurely ushered Sweetness and Serpio into a short corridor. More acolytes waited by a tall pair of arched double doors worked with a pattern of twining tree branches and roots. The acolytes were young, pudding-bowl cropped, puppyish. Their plum pants were too short around the ankles and their plum tops too tall around the collar.

“Hiya,” Sweetness said as they swung open the double doors. They smiled.

The audience chamber of Devastation Harx occupied the uppermost chord of the flying cathedral. It was a glassine dome, transparent to heaven. Little webs of sand clung to the corners of the ribbing, souvenirs from when the machine—or was it a building, Sweetness wondered, accustomed to dual-purpose artifacts—had lain buried under the great sand. What was not transparent was wood. Wooden floor, clicky under Sweetness's desert boots. Wooden furniture—a horseshoe-shaped table and thirteen chairs, all alike and elegantly unostentatious. Wooden cressets, bearing double-handfuls of bioluminescence. Wooden buttresses arching overhead, spreading finger-twigs in a complex interwoven vaulting. Sweetness imagined herself standing in a forest under a winter sky. The audience chamber smelled of wax polish.

If you wandered close to the wooden perimeter handrail you could see the flanks of the lift canopy spreading out around you like old women's skirts. You could also see that you were several hundred metres above the ground. To a railway girl who had only ever flown in her dreams, it was hypnotically disconcerting. The cathedral was moving over an expanse of old chaotic terrain that had escaped the manforming. The raw stuff of the earth lay heaped and unsorted like effects at a Deuteronomy funeral. Red rock clawed for
Sweetness; any and every part of this sharp-edged land could pierce and flay this flying circus like a carnival balloon on a barbed-wire fence. The play of sun and shadow over the long, knife-blade valleys striped the land like an Argyre hunting cat. The ground rippled like sand in a shallow river. Sweetness felt herself dragged to the rail, to contemplate the long slide down the side of the airship, the terminal plummet to end shredded by stone knives. It was a nastily delicious fantasy.

“You know, if men could fly like birds, I don't think we would really bother doing anything else.” The voice was low and soft and almost accentless. It used the words slowly, as if it weighing and parcelling each. “Everyone, at some time, wonders what it would be like to jump.” Devastation Harx was one of those people who are not what you expect but, when you see them, they so utterly refute your mental image that you can no longer recall what it was you had expected. The face perfectly fitted the voice: late twenties, grey-haired, refined, a hint of epicene to take the edge off crude handsome; lips a little full, as if this face had once belonged to a cruel teen-something who had latterly found a better way. Not over tall, nor over small. Medium framed, no obvious body fat but not gaunt. He had bearing. Poise. A trained stance. He carried his hands as if he knew what to do with them. His left held a black swagger-cane, capped each end with silver. It looked as if it might contain a sword. But best, Sweetness observed, he wore a very killer suit. Soft, light-swallowing black. The frock coat was frogged with silver. His white shirt was clasped with a silver collar brooch. Exactly the same amount of cuff peeped from the coat sleeves. It was not a thing Sweetness had consciously considered until then, but it was now obvious that people who call themselves names like Devastation Harx—he could be no other—need good tailors.

“I am Devastation Harx,” the elegant man said. He offered a hand. Sweetness looked around for Serpio. He was seated at the table. A moment of panic, then she took the hand and, because the suit was so good, she curtsied.

“Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th.”

“A fine name. Well, I am delighted to meet you, Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th. And you…”

He gave a short bow somewhere just off Sweetness's port flank. She
squirmed away, frowned. Devastation Harx seemed to be waiting for something from her.

“Oh. This is, well, I call her Little Pretty One.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Devastation Harx said.

All right, if that's how you want to play it
, Sweetness thought.
Nice guy/guy-with-weird-powers.

But he had nice manners. He pulled a chair out for Sweetness at the horseshoe-shaped table. Without any evident summons, more plum acolytes brought fruit and bread.

“I'm sure you're hungry. The desert's not exactly conducive to gastronomy.”

Sweetness fell on the fruit bowl. She noticed that Serpio wasn't eating but the gnaw in her belly said,
ask questions later
. She gorged. Devastation Harx smiled.

“This is some burg,” Sweetness said, mouth full of pears.

“The power of mail order,” Devastation Harx said.

“You built all this?”

“From remote religion. We've always had a strong distance-supply industry in our society; School of the Air, Flying Doctors, Travelling Inseminators, Wandering Miracle Shows, the Universal Pantechnicon Catalogue. We're a geographically dispersed people—as I'm sure you appreciate. It was the next logical step, mail-order religion. Why not a Church of the Air? Literally.”

Sweetness poured a glass of water, held it up to the light, frowned, demurely dropped in a sterilising tablet.

“It's always wise not to trust the water,” Devastation Harx said indulgently. He watched Sweetness cram down more fruit. “So, your, ah, attachment?”

Sweetness cleared her gob with chlorinated water.

“She's my sister.”

“She is?”

“We were joined.”

“You still are.”

“At birth.”

“I see. But now you're…”

“Separated.”

“But only physically. Not…psychically.”

“Well, I know she's always there, but I can't see her, not like you can. I can only see her in mirrors.”

“Yes, that's often the way of it. Mirrors reflect so much more than just crude physical likeness, don't you think? They reflect how we feel about what we are, they reflect truths, they can reflect illusions, they reflect our hopes and fears for the future, the marks of our histories, they show us our selves as we can never see them. A lot of magic for a mere half-silvered glass.”

“Is this part of your religion or something?”

“More ‘or something,'” Devastation Harx said. “So, have you had enough yet? Do you want any more?”

Sweetness looked round at the lifter of peels, skins and cores.

“No, I think that's me.”

“Good.” Devastation Harx stood up. “In that case, allow me to take you on the conducted tour. I don't get many visitors and I like to show the old place off. It's not everyone gets a flying cathedral.”

He was already halfway to the double doors. He extended a hand to Sweetness and Serpio. The doors were already swinging open. Sweetness caught a wisp of plum.

“So you get all this by mail order?” Sweetness whispered to Serpio as they fell in behind Devastation Harx.

“It's good value,” Serpio said.

“You can say that again.”

“Bottom up,” Devastation Harx, ushering his guests into the lift. “Level one, please.” A plum acolyte closed the gates, a second began to turn a crank.

“You've a lot of these people,” Sweetness commented as the cage swayed then began its descent.

“It's how things get done,” Devastation Harx. “I'm sure Novice Waymender has told you that we reject unthinking dependence on dumb machines. Here everything is done by human labour.”

“Everything?”

The filigree cage was descending through the main lift body; a cavernous chamber ribbed and strutted with lightweight construction beams. Overstuffed bladders of helium were wedged painfully between them like bloated hookers in too-tight suspenders.

“Stop here,” Devastation Harx commanded. The acolyte pulled on a brass brake and flung the door open on a railed catwalk between the pillowy lift bags. “Come and see.” In places Sweetness had to duck down between straining sacks pushed flatly against each other like inflated breasts.

“How much did they charge you for this?” she said to Serpio.

“Three hundred dollars over two years, monthly debit.”

“I'd ask for my money back.”

“The dignity of labour,” Devastation Harx announced as he opened a studded door into a teat of a cabin dangling from the rim of the canopy. Twenty acolytes on twenty bicycles pumped away at pedals. Gear trains and drive bands turned a big rotor shaft above Sweetness's head. Through the glass she saw propellers blur. The power units wore plum cycling shorts and sweat bands and the glum look of intense youth. They all looked up and smiled as one as Devastation Harx introduced them as Motility Unit 3. Sweetness shuddered. “Don't be so liberal,” Devastation Harx said. “Do you think any of them would be here if they didn't want to do it? I won't have pressed men around me. Idealism appeals to youth. They take turns. One week on, four weeks off. Democracy of employment. What do you think we are? We should get where we're going by our own efforts, shouldn't we?”

As the elevator resumed its descent, Devastation Harx said, casually, “So, how do you know it's your sister?”

“You know your own sister.”

“Yes. I'm sure you do, but forgive me, you were together for a very little time.”

Sweetness suddenly felt outnumbered in the small fragile elevator.

“Has he been telling you stuff about me?”

“We've been in contact,” Serpio said.

“You never told me.”

Serpio tapped his occluded eye.

“You see,” Devastation Harx continued, “you say she's the ghost of your sister, who tragically died on the operating table but, well, as a rule, religious people don't believe in ghosts.”

“Well then, what is she?”

“Remember when I asked you about vinculum theory and string processors?” Serpio said.

“You told her that?” Devastation Harx said.

“You should be proud of this one,” Sweetness said. “He's got all the stuff off perfect. So, go on.”

“In a minute,” Devastation Harx said. “Tour continues.”

The elevator touched bottom. Devastation Harx led his guests along a curving corridor.

“Post room,” he said, throwing open a door on to a room where people in purple milled around a long table piled with envelopes, labelling machines and plastic crates filled with brochures, tracts and three-fold flyers. All Swing Radio blared. “Heart of the Empire. As soon as we hit Molesworth we'll do a mail-drop.”

“So you're saying,” Sweetness went on as the door closed on King Jupe and his Mint Juleps, “That my sister isn't my sister at all. That she's some kind of angel that's got attached to me.”

“Not any sort of angel…” Serpio began and promptly tripped over.

“Careful,” Devastation Harx admonished. He helped the trackboy up but Sweetness could have sworn she saw the tip of his swagger-stick flick out and tangle itself between Serpio's ankles. “Must be turbulence. You get odd thermals coming up off the old terrain.” He flung open another door. “Central processing.”

A starkly rectangular room, sinisterly underlit by floor-lights, was filled rank upon rank with wooden
prie-dieus
. Each bore an acolyte devoutly bent over a wooden abacus. Fingers flicked, beads ricocheted. The air was filled with soft clicking, like a locust army mustering.

“Simple, efficient and good for eye-hand coordination.”

The bead-counters did not look up as their guru passed up an aisle. Some moved their lips silently, eyes reading the shifting digits.

“Data Storage is next door. You haven't signed on for my ‘Be a Master of Memory' course, have you?” That, to Serpio. To Sweetness: “People don't realise half their potential. Entire human faculties atrophy and rot because we hand them over to machines. That, pretty much in a nutshell, is my philosophy. A human world for a human species.”

Sweetness looked around at the human calculus.

“Who feeds everyone?” she asked. “And who makes all the purple gear? And what do you do with the night-soil?”

Devastation Harx clapped his hands softly in delight.

“I so enjoy trainpeople. They've such a stubbornly pragmatic bent.”

“You've got trainpeople?”

A door at the far end of Central Processing took them back into the
circulare
corridor. It seemed to Sweetness that it took them back to exactly the point they had left. They processed on.

“I've got every kind of people. Our motto.” It was inlaid in marquetry in the wooden wall panelling, bird's-eye maple and gnarled walnut on ash.

“‘We're no angels.' Hah.”

“Then again,” Devastation Harx said thoughtfully, “Trainpeople do live a little too close to their machines.”

“So, what is it with you and these angels, who you say aren't really angels at all, then?”