Politician (31 page)

The chief engineer was Casey, a grizzled veteran of the old days. Not merely of the period of the heyday of the Jupiter rails but of the spirit of the Earthly railroads, too. He chewed mock tobacco—the real stuff, once used primarily for sneezing and smoke inhalation had been outlawed for centuries because of the savage cost it extracted in human health—and periodically expectorated it into a genuine imitation brass spittoon. The first time she saw him do that, Hopie jumped, then laughed at herself. Casey was like a page from history. He had his song, too, “Casey Jones,” which he sang lustily in the manner of the migrant laborers with their own songs. I liked him immediately.

The Spirit of Empire was more than a name to Casey; as he watched the dials, he saw in his fancy the coal going into the firebox and the steam puffing from the wheel cylinders. The engine itself was impressive enough, with its puffs of gray “smoke” from the exhaust of the heat exchanger; it was mostly coloring matter, to provide a visual confirmation of the volume of hydrogen passing through. Any failure of the condensation chamber or the heat dissipation system would be a serious matter, but the smoke also replicated as closely as feasible the appearance of the ancestral terrestrial engines. There was an enormous amount of nostalgia in the railroad, and it showed in many ways.

The propellers themselves resembled wheels only when the engine was in the station; here in the atmosphere they were extended to the sides, bottom, and top, to form a hexagon, blasting six columns of gas at great velocity. Those propellers hurled the engine forward much as the turning wheels had once impelled the terrestrial locomotives. This mighty engine hauled the seven cars along behind. In the cars the vibration was damped, but here in the cab the brute force of it was manifest, shaking every part. Hopie clutched my arm with gleeful apprehension; certainly this was an impressive monster!

We admired the quivering dials that told a story only the engineer could understand, and we watched the smoke pluming from the tall stack. It came out in powerful puffs and billowed voluminously as it carried back, and eddy currents from the nearest propeller curved it into interesting configurations as it passed.

From here we could also see the railroad tracks ahead. These were actually two beams of light, used to guide the train on its course; as long as the engineer kept it between those tracks, all was well. The tracks glowed into the distance until they seemed to merge, seeming quite straight though they could be gradually curved by angling the generating units, causing the route to shift to avoid inclement turbulence.

We were hurtling along between them at a velocity that only became apparent as we watched the track markers click rapidly by.

Satisfied with our tour, we returned to the dining car, where the cook was serving lunch. For this first meal aboard the train, all eight of us gathered in the dome restaurant where we could further admire the distant smoke through the curving ceiling. Theoretically I was the leader and Megan was my consort, and Ebony, Shelia, Coral, and Mrs. Burton were mere employees, but we had long since abandoned pretense in private; we were more like a family. Hopie excitedly told the others about the wonders of the engine, and they listened with suitable expressions of interest. At first the cook and waitress (in other cars she became the maid) evinced muted disapproval of this un-hierarchical camaraderie, but slowly they relaxed, perceiving that it was genuine. A long train journey, like a space voyage, is a great leveler; social pretensions tend to fade, biding their time until the ride is over.

After the meal, the ladies took turns in the powder room (as a former military man I was tempted to call it an ammunition dump but managed to keep my humor to myself), and I looked for the male lavatory (the head, in civilian parlance), which, of course, I had all to myself; the cook did not use the passenger facilities. Unfortunately I wasn't sure where it was, and Hopie, who naturally knew everything about the layout of the train already, was with the ladies, so could not direct me. I was at a minor loss. I didn't want to blunder randomly about, though there was no one to perceive my awkwardness aside from myself.

We tend to be captive to our social foibles, however much our intellects deride this.

Fortunately Casey came along the passage, evidently having turned over the helm to his assistant engineer. “Glad to see you!” I said.

“Got to get to the caboose to take a leak,” he muttered apologetically.

This gave me pause. “You have to proceed the entire length of the train, from engine to caboose, bypassing all the facilities of the cars, just to—”

“Yeah, they should've put one in the cab,” he agreed. “Some engineers keep a li'l piss pot for emergencies, but that's a nuisance to clean.”

“Well, use the one in this car,” I suggested.

“Oh, no, sir, that wouldn't be right,” he protested. “The help don't use the—”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Casey, when the train's in the station, I'm the candidate and you're the engineer. But out here in transit there's no one to know. Use the damn facilities.”

He looked at me to make sure I meant it, then acquiesced. “Sure thank you, sir, if you're sure. It's over this way.” He led me to a door I should have spotted before; it was plainly marked with the silhouette of a gentleman in a top hat. We entered, and there was a spacious chamber with three sinks, two toilets, and a genuine archaic urinal. That was what we both needed at the moment.

Casey approached it first, as I was standing, looking about at the elegant fixtures: tiled floor, separate stalls around the toilets, mirrors by the sinks, and even small, paper-wrapped bars of old-fashioned soap waiting to be used. No sonic cleansers here! Such conspicuous waste was awesome—and intriguing. We really were living in a bypath of primitive luxury.

Casey hawked his mouthful of juice and spat. The globule sailed in a beautiful arc to score on the urinal.

Just before it struck, there was a zapping flash.

He stopped dead in his tracks. “What was that?”

“A spark,” I said. “Are these devices electrically cleaned?”

“Naw. They flush with water, recycled. No current in 'em.”

Strange. A little mental claxon sounded. “Let's hold off on this a moment, Casey. It's probably foolish, but I'd like my technical manager to look into this.”

“Sure, bring him in. You rented the train.”

“It's Mrs. Burton. She's my stage manager, but she's handy with everything.”

“Oh.” He seemed disgruntled.

I returned to the restaurant and found Ebony. “Send Mrs. Burton down to the men's room,” I told her.

She raised a dark eyebrow but went in search of Mrs. Burton. Soon the latter appeared, flanked by Coral. “Boss, I can help you with a lot, but some things you've just got to manage by yourself,” she said with a smile.

“There's a complication,” I said.

“Something broken in the John?”

“There was a spark in the urinal. Maybe just static charge, but—”

“Not here,” she assured me. “All these fixtures are decharged.” She forged ahead, pausing at the door.

“No one's on?”

“None we know of,” I said, and Casey grimaced, still not liking a woman poking about this room.

She went in and approached the urinal. She held an all-purpose detector in her hand. As she got close she whistled. “Look at that needle jump! That thing's wired!”

“Electrified?” I asked.

“Like an execution chair! And look at the floor—see those wire bands that hold the tiles? Perfect ground. Field so strong it flickers even when a nongrounded object approaches. You know what would have happened if you'd used that thing?”

I worked it out. “High voltage—traveling along the stream—grounding through my body.”

“You'd have been fried from the crotch down,” she said. “If you didn't die outright from shock, you'd have wished you had. What a booby trap!”

“I was about to use that thing!” Casey said, looking faint.

“You'd only have used it once, sonny,” she said. Casey was no youngster; he was in his fifties, but she still had twenty years on him and exploited it.

Coral touched my elbow. “Only a man would use a urinal, sir,” she said. “You're the only male passenger aboard. It was rigged for you.”

My knees felt weak. In the Navy I had been somewhat hardened to the prospect of sudden extinction, but that had been some time ago. “Casey, let's get down to your caboose,” I said. “Mrs. Burton will see to this.” Indeed she was already using her detector to trace the wiring, preparatory to nullifying and dismantling the system. I knew there would be no further danger, once she was done.

We traipsed to the caboose. “I don't know how it happened, gov'nor,” Casey said, still shaken. “We don't run that sort of train!”

“Of course, you don't,” I agreed. “But has this coach been in your train all along?”

“No, sir. The old one was in for refurbishing, so we picked this one up in Ybor. We sure thought it was okay.”

“And it was okay,” I agreed. “Until someone got in and booby-trapped it.”

“Looks like somebody's out to get you, sir,” he said.

“Looks as if somebody's out to get me,” I agreed grimly.

“Why is that, if you don't mind my asking?”

“I conjecture that there are parties who fear my campaign to be president will be successful, and they do not want me in that office.”

“So they try to kill you, just for that?” he asked incredulously.

“It is only a conjecture. I do have enemies from my past.”

“Say, yeah! You're the one who cleaned up the Belt. Those druggies sure must be mad at you!”

So he was aware of my Naval record but not of my gubernatorial record. This was probably an insight into the way the average man outside the state of Sunshine perceived me. “It is true that I have always worked to eliminate crime, and the drug trade is perhaps the main source of criminal income.”

“Yeah, they're bad customers, all right,” he agreed. “I had a friend, got hooked on comet dust; they bled him dry, and when he couldn't pay anymore—” He grimaced. “I never saw a man so torn up. He looked like a damn zombie. He's dead now and better off for it. They say his suit popped a leak when he was working outside, but I know he holed it himself. He was a good engineer, too, before.” He shook his head. “Think there's any more traps aboard, sir?”

“It seems likely,” I said. “I regret this matter has put you at risk, too.”

“Hell, man, if you hadn't of been a decent chap, you'd be dead now, and I'd be out of a job. If I hadn't of spit in that—” He broke off, the closeness of his own brush with electrocution catching up with him again. Casey had not been in Navy combat, and so did not have the background experience of violent death that I did. He was severely shaken, and I knew it would take him some time to adjust.

“Now we are warned,” I said. “We'll rout out all the other traps.”

We got on it. Mrs. Burton dismantled the urinal trap and discussed its details with Coral, my bodyguard.

They agreed that this was a sophisticated device, requiring special expertise and no mean expense, and that it was surely only one of a number of traps. They would have to check the entire train before any of us could relax. “Meanwhile,” Coral told me firmly, “you stay with me, close, Governor. I will taste your food first; I will use your facilities.”

“But the sanitary—”

“You want privacy at risk of life?”

I looked helplessly at Megan, but she only nodded agreement. “Coral is only doing her job,” she said.

She was pale, not from the notion of another woman staying so close to me but because of the immediate threat of death. She had taken a tranquilizer but remained tense, and I could not honestly reassure her.

For her sake, as much as my own, I had to abate this menace swiftly.

“Good luck using the urinal,” I murmured to Coral.

Actually she didn't have to go that far, for Mrs. Burton was on that job. She checked them all out. No other urinals were pied, and no other electrical traps were found, but this did not alleviate our suspicion.

“It means the other traps are different,” Coral said tersely.

We elected to retire early. This first leg of the tour was a long one, by design; we had wanted to have several days to become acclimatized to the train, so my tour was starting in the state of Evergreen, with speeches scheduled in Attle and Kane. Thereafter we were scheduled for Ortland in Beaver, and on south to Langel and Cisco in Golden, where Megan's reputation guaranteed good reception. We were not speeding, so we had a good four days' travel. Thereafter we would have stops separated by no more than hours.

We were traveling above the residential zone of Jupiter, so were not intersecting any bubbles on the way out, but our route was taking us past the states of Dixie, Magnolia, Opportunity, Show Me, Sunflower, Cornhusk, Equality, Treasure, Gem, and perhaps others, their very names evoking marvelous images.

Physically, the atmosphere of Jupiter in this band was fairly dull, for we were clear of the great turbulences of the south, but evocatively this was very special. I think every human being, in his deep psyche, really longs for the old planet and finds comfort in its figurative recreation. Our dreams survive our changing reality, and that is no bad thing.

Coral took the whole bed apart, remade it, then stripped and climbed in herself. “Now, wait...” I began, for I was standing beside it with Megan the whole time.

Coral smiled. “No seduction, sir,” she reassured me. “Maybe chemical on sheets, or radiation; I know if I feel.”

She was right, of course; some powder in the sheets could be toxic, and if I innocently lay in it—

“But that wouldn't be selective,” I pointed out. “Obviously the traps are for me alone, if only because if any woman is taken out, I will be warned. They had no way of anticipating which bed I might be using.”

She climbed out and stood for a moment, nude, considering. I had not before appreciated how well formed she was; her Saturnine skin was silken, her torso slender and extremely well toned, her breasts not large but perfectly shaped, her waist so small that her hips and posterior became pronounced. Coral was every bit as pretty in her fashion as her reptilian namesake, and as lithe, and her face was of matching quality. She certainly had not had to go into this sort of work; any man of any planet would have been glad to marry and support her. But she was her own woman, and I certainly respected that in her.