Leopard Dreaming (12 page)

The major grinned and clipped the junior tech by the ear. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of nine-one-one, triple-zero and so on?’

‘You’re talking about emergency numbers in each country for police, fire, ambulance?’

He nodded. ‘There’s another for your domestic list. It’s the emergency number for the deaf-blind community.’

An invisible passenger train screeched to a halt at the station a full minute ahead of its silent yester-ghost.

Mira remembered to limp as Lockman ushered her towards the lead carriage, but with every step grew the stronger urge to make a break from him and run. As if she could ever outdistance or outsmart him.

‘I’ve got the horrible feeling we’re being watched already,’ she whispered.

‘I should certainly hope so or I’ll want all my tax dollars back. Keep your head down and pray the
vandals here aren’t as hot with their slingshots as the gang at the marina.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then we go to ground until a few minutes before twenty-one hundred … Hey, guard,’ he called. ‘Can I get a hand here, mate? She’s twisted her ankle.’

Mira smelled a sweaty man approach too close on her left, opposite to Lockman. His hip rattled with keys that poked her as he tucked in against her and wrapped her arm over his shoulders.

‘Excuse hands, Miss,’ he said, and with Lockman’s help he lifted her aboard and around a ghostly corner into a narrow corridor.

Mira felt Lockman’s hand slide down her back to the man’s hip, briefly, and felt a tug at the same instant that he shoved her, knocking them all off balance.

‘Hey!’ she complained. ‘I’m unsteady enough, thanks.’

‘Sorry, I tripped.’

Yeah, right,
she thought. Him, trip.

A ghostly cluster of schoolgirls poured through her, bickering over a mobile phone with a picture of two grinning youths on the screen, while behind them a boisterous crowd of invisible students trampled aboard, giggling and teasing each other.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Lockman said. ‘I can take her from here.’

Mira felt the joey wriggle and patted the pouch to help settle her.

‘What moved in the bag?’ asked the guard. ‘No pets allowed.’

‘Pet?’ Lockman chuckled. ‘No, that’s only one of them robotic toys for kids. We’re trying it out for my niece’s birthday. Want to check, or do you need to see our tickets first?’ Lockman shifted his hand up to the strap on her shoulder as if to open it for the guard, just as a second group of rowdy students brought a heated
argument aboard about who’d stolen whose lip gloss last week.

‘Tickets will do,’ said the guard. ‘I’ve got that lot to keep me busy.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Lockman let her go momentarily, but the floor rocked like a boat and she grabbed for his arm to catch her balance.

‘First time on a train?’ asked the guard.

‘She’s blind,’ Lockman replied. ‘Looking forward to a rare trip into the city. Aren’t you, sis’?’

Mira shrugged, wishing she could lie half as well as him.

‘Here,’ Lockman said. ‘Two adults.’

‘Pity she’s hurt herself.’ The guard bumped Mira’s elbow as he leaned across to Lockman. ‘Next carriage down will put you level with the escalators when you get out, and fifty bucks at the chemist on street level rents a granny-walker for a day.’

‘Cheers, mate,’ Lockman said. ‘Have a safe one.’

‘What’s a granny-walker?’ she whispered as Lockman ushered her away a few steps.

‘Doesn’t matter. We’re not going that far. Just laying that false trail.’

Two more steps and he snagged in a way that snagged her to a halt too.

‘Oiii,’ said the guard, unexpectedly close to Mira again. His keys didn’t rattle when he walked any more. ‘Next time, remind your brother to buy concession tickets. Disabled passengers travel cheaper, so you can afford to get out twice as much, okay?’

She nodded timidly and offered him a small smile, embarrassed. If she had been blind in the conventional way, she would have been genuinely grateful for his kindness above and beyond his job requirements.

‘Pardon me,’ he added. ‘This time of day, my spot checks need to be more like a hose down.’ The guard lumbered away and quizzed the students for their tickets
and travel passes, leaving Lockman to waste no time in leading Mira through one carriage and into the next.

‘You took his keys,’ she complained as soon as she felt sure she’d left the guard well behind them. ‘I hope he won’t get in trouble for losing them.’

‘He won’t lose them. He’s only misplaced them temporarily.’

Brakes disengaged with a squeal and grunt, and Mira felt a jolt as the invisible train began to roll north, while its yester-ghost remained stationary. The illusion made her lose balance, but with Lockman’s hand on her waist, she barely stumbled.

‘Every door has a hidden camera,’ he said, keeping her moving. ‘Or more like almost hidden, so vandals know they’re being watched. That’s six per carriage, and we’re headed down to the last, so keep your head down all the way.’

‘Easier to say than do.’ As the train began to roll, she felt ill and needed one hand to steady her stomach. ‘This is worse than a boat.’

‘I won’t let you fall.’

‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’

The ghostly yester-train moved to catch up, while she walked toward it, midair — but the speed she could see contradicted the speed she could feel, keeping her off balance and stumbling. She grabbed for a seat to steady herself, just as the invisible carriage jolted and swayed in the opposite direction, throwing her against him.

‘Sorry.’ She blushed and tried again, determined to make it on her own. ‘It’s my first time.’

‘Really?’ He raised her hand up to his shoulder, inviting her to hang on. ‘I’m an idiot, sorry, I didn’t realise.’

‘I’d rather not, thanks …’

‘I thought a regular schedule would make it easier?’

‘It would, if they ran on time every day.’ She also wished the designers had been more considerate with
a better pattern or greater consistency of distances between seats. Or maybe tried out their prototype blindfolded first. ‘There’ll come a day soon when I’m on my own, and I need to be ready.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. Plenty of people can’t handle train travel, especially backwards or walking.’

‘Oh, but you can do it.’

‘Not at first. I spent most of junior high getting to school with my face in a bag.’

Mira grinned, enjoying that picture.

‘Use me,’ he said in a molten voice that dissolved her defences. ‘We’re nearly there anyway.’ He helped her through the last set of invisible doors, just as the brakes squealed, metal against metal, and the ghostly train caught up, realigning the two a lot closer on their daily schedules.

Mira felt the rumble up through her open-toed sandals. A loudspeaker announced their arrival at the next station, while feedback made the voice difficult to understand.

The ghostly driver passed through her, promptly followed by a trainload of passengers, crammed and standing in the aisles. Fuller yesterday than today, apparently. Mira bumped past less than a dozen invisible commuters, each distinct to her by the softness or harshness of their clothes, noise level from their earphones or smell of their perfumes and deodorants. It surprised her how many apologised as she passed, even though she and Lockman were the two moving and bumping into them. After the third, who sounded old and smelled of baby powder, she began beating them to the apology, mimicking Lockman.

Both trains came to a halt, overlaying the two almost perfectly in time and space.

Doors chimed open, and the carriage bustled to life; ghosts and invisibles all flooding to the exits at once. Approaching the rear exit herself, a wedge of
invisible and ghostly bodies shoved Mira sideways, towards the platform. Her hand slipped from Lockman’s shoulder as they swept her to the cusp of the door without him — until he grabbed her by the hand over the threshold, and helped her wade upstream, inside again.

He led her as far as the guard’s door at the very back of the train. She heard keys jangle and the metallic creak of a hinge, while the ghostly door appeared to remain sealed.

Staff Only

‘Through here.’ Lockman ushered her inside the narrow compartment anyway; barely wider or longer than a closet, but cluttered with two stools, a pegboard and a long skinny control panel that made it obvious the train could be driven from both ends. Side exits in here too, which surprised her. Narrow, though, like normal hinged doors.

A breeze burst in as Lockman opened one, trackside. He let go of her momentarily, and she heard his boots hit the gravel heavily. Not a difficult jump for her either, so she didn’t hesitate — startling in midair as he caught her and set her down gently.

‘I could have made that.’

‘No doubt, but if you’d jumped too far or stumbled, you would have put yourself in view of a platform camera.’ He jangled keys and clanked the door closed.

‘You said there were cameras on all the doors inside the train anyway.’

‘Not the staff-only doors. They’re locked, so no need. As far as surveillance techs will know, I pulled you into a seat in one of their black spots.’ He ushered her along the side of the train towards the front, keeping her head down and her feet away from the neighbouring rails.

‘Wait! The keys? I don’t want that nice guard getting in trouble because of me.’

‘I tossed them up onto his pegboard. Worst case: he’s locked out until he can find a spare to let him in. The driver should have one, and he’ll be switching ends at the terminus anyway, soon after Central Station. Cross now,’ he added, and helped her over a second set of rails and up onto the opposite platform.

It sounded empty of passengers. She could hear the second set of metal tracks whining as the last batch of commuters sped away to their next station.

‘I wish I’d learned that ten years ago,’ Mira whispered. ‘That’s one train ride further than I got from my first orphanage.’

‘Must have been hard before you learned how sunglasses could help. A century ago, most of these train lines were only scrublands or tram tracks for sugar cane.’

‘Security wasn’t so primitive, either.’

‘Don’t you mean more primitive back then?’

‘Only if you’re comparing then to now, but I was comparing a century ago to my first train ride since that’s all I could see. No sign of a conductor that day, let alone the dozen who cornered me with police.’

‘Sorry. I still have to remind myself that for you there are ghosts and invisibles.’

He led her out to the street, avoiding the set of lights at a major intersection with shops and businesses in every direction.

The chime of a pedestrian warning instructed her to wait until safe to cross, but Lockman kept her moving along the footpath until they reached halfway down the street.

‘Keep your face down,’ he suggested. ‘The cameras around here are mounted to watch for motorists who speed or run red lights, but with our luck they can be commandeered for national security.’

‘How does that work?’

‘Number plate recognition software works much the same as facial recognition, but when authorities are in pursuit of a criminal or missing child, they can also trigger Red Flag protocols that enable constant streaming of all security cameras within a five-block radius to a central processing hub, and from there, other software also kicks in to watch and analyse for body shape, style of movement, restricted weapons and a few other things.

‘Which either fails on a regular basis, or serves to prove how useless General Garland has been so far in bagging one little rogue colonel.’

‘Not just any colonel. Kitching commanded the research and development branch that came up with the system in the first place. He knows all the tricks and back doors, Mira. Far better than me. He’s had daily access to all reports for over a decade, while I’ve only overheard a few things during my last two years assigned to the labs for escort duty and security rounds.’

‘Am I cleared to know where you’re taking me yet?’

‘Sure,’ he chuckled. ‘When I know myself, I’ll send you the memo. In the meantime, we have plans A to F, so far, depending on hurdles. And the first is right up ahead.’

‘Give me Plan A, then.’

‘You’re looking at it. See that bike shop?’

Mira saw a motorbike display stand across the street with rows of new and used scooters, and behind them a showroom of bigger bikes and quads to suit both on-road and off.

‘Oh, no.’ She glanced around in search of alternative escape routes, and found plenty. ‘What about the taxi rank, bus terminal or Citycat pier? This whole block is like one big transit station. We could even take another train in another direction.’

‘All of which form a web of options for surveillance techs to monitor. But we’re taking a leap off the grid.
So even after the brightest spark figures out which stop we actually took, they’ll need an extra night’s overtime to figure out that we left on foot — and in the meantime we fly off casually into the sunset.’

‘Don’t you mean
ride
?’ Mira frowned, unimpressed.

‘First time on a bike too, huh?’ He led her across the busy road and straight into the showroom, where he haggled briefly with a salesman called Roger until they finally settled on a ‘plastic’ payment for a Honda Blackbird 1100XX with a pillion seat, luggage rack and grab bars … whatever the heck they were.

‘And all the riding gear,’ Lockman said. ‘Better start charging it up before my wife figures out I’m kicking her out of the nest.’ He hugged an arm around Mira’s shoulders as if she might be his new hen. ‘Then we’ll handle the paperwork.’

‘This credit card is for Freeman Farms?’

‘Family business. If one of us is going to drain it dry, it ought to be me. Right?’

‘To your wife and girlfriend,’ hailed the salesman. ‘May they never meet.’ Roger waddled off, shouting for an apprentice to drop everything and do the pre-sale checks, ‘… including juice and accessories’.

‘Freeman Farms?’ Mira whispered, hardly caring about the other lingo. ‘He said that like it’s a famous brand name.’

‘It’s no big deal. You know I used to breed stock horses as a kid. My stallion sired a few offspring that still compete successfully internationally. When I’m done out here in the world, I may go back to it. Until then, I’ve got an old friend of the family managing it with my sisters.’