The Builders (7 page)

The conductor was the sort of shrew who took his job very seriously. He had joined the company as a pup, just after the last track was laid. He been first in line at the office in fact, hat in hand, hopeful, desperate even, for employment. Not as an engineer, of course, nor as one of the brutes shoveling coal. It was not the trains that interested him really; their whistles were too noisy and their smokestacks too dirty. Rather, it was something about the idea of the railroad itself—a steel web crisscrossing the territories, strangling the land, operating according to principles of mathematical purity unseen in any organic creature—that fired his imagination, that gave him a secret and delicious thrill. The conductor was the sort of creature whose wildest fantasies were filled with ledgers that balanced perfectly, and rows of clocks chiming in eternal unison.

He had signed on as a ticket-taker, a private soldier in that small army of creatures whose function was to mark paper and look at the marks on paper and mark the paper again, and sometimes, if the marks were not right, to look up from the paper and squint their bespectacled eyes (spectacles were virtually a professional requirement) and say, “Sorry, sir, but it seems your luggage was sent to Poughkeepsie and not Kalamazoo. You will receive it within eight to seventy-five business days, a business day being defined as Tuesdays and alternate Thursdays.” This last was the part the shrew liked the most.

He had fulfilled his duties faithfully, moving up the ranks from junior assistant ticket-taker to assistant ticket-taker to ticket-taker to conductor. He was never sick and never late for work. He never took time off for personal reasons, never visited an ill relative or attended a friend’s nuptials. Two years earlier, in reward for this diligent service, he had been assigned to the Antelope Limited. “A critical posting,” his supervisor had informed him, “a sign of our trust in your sagacity, your prudence, and, most importantly,” he had said, raising his eyes archly, “your discretion.”

In the years since the conductor had wondered, occasionally, why there was a massive metal door dividing the front carriage from the rest of the train, and also who lived inside said carriage, and why their presence necessitated armed guards, and finally, whether those guards were meant to ensure the safety of this precious cargo or make sure that it never left. But the conductor didn’t wonder much. Wondering wasn’t his job, after all. Whatever was going on in the front carriage, it gave him the right, in his own mind at least, to be twice as carping and cantankerous as he might otherwise have been, to scan every rider with thorough, even exaggerated, scrutiny.

Though even under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have allowed them on the train. Maybe the badger. Despite his size he seemed good-humored, with an open face and a generous smile. And the opossum, she looked harmless enough, lazy and slow as sweet molasses.

But not the salamander. The conductor didn’t like cold-bloods as a rule, and there was something about this burnt-red specimen that was particularly off-putting. No, not the salamander, and certainly not the mouse, with his nasty scar and his eye that stared at the conductor as if waiting to repay an injury.

The conductor was making his rounds before the train left the station, checking on the functionaries beneath him, ensuring that they were just the right amount of peevish, unhelpful without being aggressive. When he entered the car and saw those two sitting together, the salamander and the mouse, he made a mental note to find something wrong with their papers, or their luggage—to detect or invent a reason why it was that they needed to miss this particular train. He would be very apologetic about it, of course; he would blame it on regulations and his own superiors, sympathize with them in their misfortune, but march them back onto the platform all the same.

With this serious but secretly enjoyable task ahead of him, the conductor was waylaid by the sudden chirrup of a nearby mole. “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me!” The second time she yelled loudly, though the conductor had already been stopping. “Sir, I require your assistance, please!”

The conductor bristled. The conductor did not like being interrupted in the course of his duties, and he did not like being yelled at. He didn’t like a lot of things, truth be told. Still, a customer was a customer, and the conductor was nothing if not professional. “Of course, ma’am,” he began, his voice exactly how you would expect. “How can I help you?”

“Finally.” Behind her bifocals the mole’s eyes were huge and blind and stupid. “I asked the muskrat who was selling the tickets, and he said that he didn’t know but that you might know, and so that’s why I’m asking you. Do you know?”

“Know what?”

“Where my bags are, obviously.”

“I’m afraid, ma’am, that I don’t have any—”

“Of course you haven’t, I wouldn’t expect you have, but surely you must know someone who
has,
mustn’t you? When one gets on a train in the Capital one expects to find one’s bags when one gets to Last Gulch, doesn’t one? Assuming one is getting off in Last Gulch, which was where I changed trains.”

“Of course, but—”

“You certainly can’t expect me to survive forever with just the dress I’m wearing, can you? What do you take me for? A church mouse?”

“No, obviously not—”

“Good. I’m glad to see we can agree to that much. So what exactly do you plan to do about it?”

“About what?”

“My bags not being on this train,” said the mole, as if one of them were an idiot.

“If you would just excuse me for a moment, I promise to come help you just as soon as—”

But then the whistle blew, and the great iron steed bucked forward, and the conductor knew he had lost. For all that he might have wished otherwise, he could not very well throw a passenger off a moving train just because he didn’t like the look of him. He turned his attention back to the shrill mole, and her problem about which he could do nothing.

The badger got up from where he was sitting and ambled forward, squeezing his bulk through the narrow rows of seats. The conductor saw him from a carriage away, and his stomach dropped out from under him, because there was absolutely no way a creature of such size could fit in the bathroom. He excused himself from explaining to another passenger—an elderly turtle, he thought she was elderly at least, it was hard to tell with turtles—why it wasn’t possible for her to use her unassigned ticket anytime today, or anytime tomorrow, or really, just any time at all, and he approached the badger, trying to come up with a polite way of informing him that he was going to have to hold his bladder for the better part of three hours.

It was only then that he noticed the mouse, the one he hadn’t liked, walking in the long shadow cast by the badger, and behind him the salamander whom he had liked even less. The conductor—who was not a particularly clever sort of creature, but who wasn’t quite dumb as a carpenter’s nail—began to think that today might turn out to be one of those days where things failed to abide by their proper routine. The conductor hated those sorts of days.

The conductor turned around and headed forward until he came to the first-class compartments. A chubby vole sat as guardian between the two sections, making sure the hoi polloi didn’t get any ideas above their station. His name was Harold, and the most important thing he had learned in his life, as far as he was concerned, was that it was entirely possible to sleep with one’s eyes open, or at least open enough to deceive passersby, if one was willing to put in a bit of practice. True, it wasn’t as good as a full-on nap, but any degree of slumber was better than waking. As far as Harold was concerned, the better part of existence lay in those little moments of oblivion that preceded the last.

The conductor hustled past without realizing his protector was dim to the world; he even took some degree of comfort in the barrier he imagined he was putting between himself and the badger. Indeed, as soon as he reached the first-class compartment, with its slightly more comfortable seats and vaguely polished décor, he felt a concrete sense of relief. Nothing bad, after all, ever happened to the rich.

Sad to say, his optimism was short-lived. Through the glass door separating the two carriages the conductor saw the badger continue forward, Harold forced awake by his heavy footfalls, coming up from his seat to say something. And then Harold was back in his seat and in a deeper slumber than he had theretofore been enjoying, courtesy of the badger’s backhand.

At that moment the conductor did the bravest thing he had ever done in his life, which was to run screaming toward the front of the train. When he reached the guarded carriage he banged on the door until the peephole slid open. The conductor did not know the rat inside—the conductor had never before tried to enter the front carriage, had never even acknowledged its existence. That was against the rules, and the conductor, in case you had somehow missed the point by now, was the sort of creature who liked following them.

“They’re coming!” he yelled.

“Who?”

The conductor moved aside swiftly, allowing the rat to get a view of the troupe of creatures following in his wake. The conductor himself did not bother to turn around, and to judge by the sudden doubling of the circumference of the rat’s eyes, it was just as well that he did not.

The door flew open. The conductor bolted through. The door slammed shut.

The conductor had hoped that inside would be a dozen soldiers in full battle gear, or maybe a couple of hedgehogs with heavy artillery. So fear followed closely upon the heels of disappointment when he discovered that the impregnable fortress attached to the front of his train was crewed by two rats who looked barely out of their litter, holding their rifles gingerly and giving off a very distinct smell of terror.

“What do we do now?” one of them asked. The other rat, the rat who had been looking through the peephole and had seen the badger, didn’t say anything.

Needless to say, this was not the reaction that the shrew had anticipated. But he surprised himself, as he had several times so far that day, with his sangfroid, with his mental fortitude, with his keen sense of battlefield tactics. “We keep the door shut,” he answered.

The rats nodded in unison. The conductor could hear the rumbling of the badger and his companions from the other carriage and tensed himself for the inevitable blows—blows that did not come.

Gathering up his nerve, the conductor opened the peephole and looked out. Behind the door he could see the opossum and the badger standing around, neither looking particularly agitated. “This is double-reinforced steel!” yelled the conductor, trying to cover his fear. “You’ll never break it down!”

The Badger scratched at the thick fur of his head awhile before answering. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“I am?”

It was then that the conductor felt air blowing in through an open window, which gave him a brief moment of happiness, because it was a hot day after all, and the wind cool, but this was followed quickly by a much more potent sense of despair.

“Keep the door shut,” said a thickly accented voice from behind him. “That is a fine plan. That is the sort of plan a fellow ought to be proud to have come up with.”

Bonsoir opened the reinforced-steel door and the Captain came through an instant later, stepping over the corpses with unstudied disinterest. A partition had been erected two-thirds of the way down the compartment, and the mouse stopped at the entrance to it, nodding at Cinnabar behind him. The Dragon slid the gate sideways with his usual extraordinary celerity, and before it banged against the frame he had both revolvers out, ready for whatever was waiting for them.

A moment passed. Cinnabar holstered his guns.

Bonsoir came in behind him, rolling a cigarette. “This is an unfortunate surprise,” he said, slipping his tobacco pouch underneath his beret before lighting his smoke with a match struck off his boot.

“I guess this changes things,” Cinnabar said.

The Captain reached over and plucked the cigarette from Bonsoir’s mouth. He took a long, slow drag before responding. “No, it doesn’t,” he said. Then he handed the smoke to Cinnabar and nodded at Bonsoir. “Tell Barley to grab him. We’ve got a long hike back to town.” He turned and walked back down the carriageway.

Cinnabar and Bonsoir exchanged a look. The stoat shrugged and went off to find Barley. The Captain had spoken, and the Captain’s was the final word.

Mephetic had spent a long time considering the number of rats he should bring. Too many and the Captain might sniff them out and bolt—the Captain was the cagiest creature Mephetic had ever dealt with, cagier than any weasel, polecat, or fox. Too few, of course, and the Captain’s crew would gun their way out, because as cagey as the Captain was, he was every bit as tough, and the animals he’d assembled were even tougher. Mephetic had decided to err on too many—at least that way he didn’t run the risk of ending up a corpse. The Captain wasn’t the only cagey thing living in the Gardens.

So it was Mephetic and Puss and Brontë and two full companies of the rat guard, a hundred grim-faced rodents carrying heavy iron, hiding low in the hills around the bar. The Quaker was slithering about, where exactly Mephetic wasn’t sure. You didn’t really order the Quaker to do anything, you just pointed him in a direction and held your breath.

Mephetic was down on his stomach, scanning the front road with his spyglass. Puss and Brontë were beside him, for once equally silent. In the final few moments before evening fell completely, Mephetic caught the first glimpse of the companions coming up over the hill. He held his breath in anticipation, hoping he hadn’t overplayed his hand.

And indeed, there was a moment when he thought for sure he had mucked it. The six of them were tramping toward the bar when the Captain, standing in the middle of the pack, perked his nose up suddenly, sniffing at the air. Mephetic cursed beneath his breath and readied the order to rush them
en masse, knowing it wouldn’t work, knowing he’d lose half his rats trying. Still, there were always more rats—fecundity was one of the few virtues of the species.

But then the Captain swung his head back down, tipped his hat over it, and kept on moving. A few minutes afterward, all six of the companions were comfortably ensconced inside. They’d come straight back after hitting the train, and they looked dusty and tired. They’d lay their burdens on the ground and start hitting the liquor, and after they’d done that awhile, Mephetic would hit them back.

“What are we waiting for?” Puss asked. Puss wore a satin vest and matching pants. They had begun the day white, though having spent the better part of an hour pressed against the sand they could no longer claim that distinction. He had a pair of pearl-handled pistols hanging at his waist. He looked like a rodeo clown, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.

“You’re waiting for me to give the signal,” Mephetic snapped. “Because I’m the boss, and no one does anything without me telling them to do it.”

Puss looked at Mephetic awhile, and then he looked at the ground. Mephetic decided at that moment that if Puss survived this go-round with the Captain he would make sure the cat didn’t survive much longer. Puss was getting to be more trouble than he was worth. Probably that would also necessitate doing away with Brontë, who had some vague notion that she and the cat were friends—insofar as two violent, amoral sociopaths were capable of that sort of connection—but that was fine. The Gardens would hardly be a worse place with them propping up tulips.

But first thing was first, and first was the Captain. Some twenty minutes after the companions had headed through the front door the traitor came hobbling out back, lit a cigarette, gave a little wave, and walked back inside.

“Send the rats in first,” Mephetic said. “Unless you feel like martyring yourself in service of the Toad.”

To judge by the space Brontë and Puss put between themselves and the company of soldiers, this honor held little interest. They moved carefully, slowly, a mass of crawling creatures working their way through the underbrush, a tightening noose of grim-faced rodents. When they reached the tavern a dozen of them clambered stealthily up to the roof, while their comrades fanned out around the building. Revolvers were cocked. Rifles were aimed. Death hung thick.

The first rat kicked down the door and went barreling inside, came out again almost as quick, stumbling off the porch and into the dust. The rest proved slower to make their ingress, though with a few shouted words from Brontë they managed it, firing blindly inside, as if the companions were fool enough to sprint into the face of their guns.

Mephetic knew otherwise, of course, and he shifted his glasses to the front, waiting for their inevitable attempt at a breakout. It wasn’t long coming. The Dragon went first, pistols firing; rats falling like flies, dropping from the rooftop, dying gut-shot in the dust. Mephetic realized his entire body was tense with excitement; he was almost ready to vomit from the sheer adrenaline coursing through his veins. And moreover, he realized he wasn’t sure which side he was rooting for, or at least his heart thrilled at each sudden new bit of brilliance on the part of the companions. When the badger (what was his name again? Oat? Millet? It didn’t matter, particularly; he wouldn’t be around much longer) took a rifle bullet in the shoulder and kept coming, grabbing the rat who had hit him by one hand and swinging him like a lash into another, the
crack
of bone audible even from his distant perch, Mephetic let out a cheer loud enough to draw the attention of his bodyguard, though of course they were wise enough to pretend they hadn’t noticed.

Cinnabar and the opossum were in front, and though the latter generally did her business with a long rifle, she had no problem putting down rats up close, her revolver doing sedate but mortal work. Of course it was nothing like the Dragon, who seemed like his namesake to all but breathe death, the only check on his violence the need to reload. So constant was this torrent of lead that the pack of rats, the army of rats, the endless wave of rats, scurried backward for the safety of the bar, for any plank of wood or bit of stone or shallow indentation in the sand that might give them cover from the killing metal.

It occurred to Mephetic belatedly that he had underestimated the Captain; he had forgotten in the long years since they’d last seen each other just how dangerous the mouse was. He should have brought another company of soldiers; he ought to have drained the Kingdom of killers; he ought to have hired mercenaries and impressed citizens, if he’d wanted to make certain the Captain and his companions wouldn’t walk away.

Or he could have just done what he did, which was turn one of the Captain’s creatures against him. The Captain might have figured on Reconquista; it was his second turn at betrayal, after all. But there was no way the Captain could have known Gertrude was—well, a mole. They were taking up the rear, the Captain’s scattergun roaring back into the bar, the Captain roaring just as loud, his one eye as dead as the other, when Gertrude reached up behind him and did something—Mephetic couldn’t make it out distinctly, but whatever it was, it dropped the Captain to the ground.

The rats swarmed then, so fast and so many that they seemed almost like a single creature, or some impersonal force, a rain cloud or a wave beating against the shore. There was a moment when it seemed as if the companions might try to save him, but it didn’t last long. There was nothing to do but beat an escape—at least that was what they ended up doing, laying down covering fire and disappearing down the road. The surviving rats made an attempt to continue after them, but really it wasn’t altogether serious, and with half their number lying dead on the ground, you couldn’t very well blame them.

But that was fine—the companions were dangerous like a loaded gun: harmless without someone to pull the trigger. They’d go back to whatever they had been doing before the mouse forced them out of retirement, and they’d leave Mephetic free to continue running the Gardens as he had before. This thought gave Mephetic a quick splash of sadness—back to the endless bureaucratic drudgery, the routine the Captain’s return had broken him out of—but of course there was nothing to be done about it.

Puss carried the Captain, still unconscious from whatever the mole had done to him, back up the hill and left him lying in the dust. The rats had stripped him of his weapons, and they hadn’t been kind in doing so. Mephetic waited patiently until the Captain awoke, and his good eye struggled its way open. Mephetic wanted to make sure he was the first thing the Captain saw, as indeed he was.

“Hello again, Captain,” Mephetic said, smiling. “It’s been a long time.”