The Half-Made World (20 page)

THE PASSAGE

The trek from the mountains through Burren Hill and west to Conant and Gloriana had taken weeks, and it had taken its toll on Liv’s body. She was sunburned, her hair was stiff and pale, and entirely unfamiliar muscles ached. Her standards of hygiene had been somewhat relaxed. She had developed new nightmares. She had seen violence. She had learned to ride and shout and haggle.

And all that journey was only the tiniest fraction of the distance from Gloriana to the House Dolorous—a distance that the Engine crossed in days. The Line reduced the world to nothing.

The cabin was small and dark. Outside in the Station’s grand Concourse, the high steel arches threw angular shadows, and the sober men of the Line went back and forth in shadow, in smoke, hard at work, so tiny in their dark suits. There was so much empty inhuman space in the Line’s places; dark spaces filled only with the echoes of the machines.

Maggfrid heaved her bags into the luggage rack. He was clumsy. The Linesmen had beaten him badly, and besides, the Engine made him nervous. It made Liv nervous, too. They were inside the monster’s belly. An ugly fairy tale!

She patted Maggfrid on his broad back and told him it was all right. The big childlike man whined gratefully. She sat down and folded her skirts, and gestured for him to sit down opposite her. She pulled down the blinds and breathed a sigh of relief.

The cabin was cold as a big black icebox, and the leather of the seats creaked stiffly. The Engines of the Line were always cold, she’d heard. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and shivered. She tugged on a thin silver chain by the window, and the cabin filled with cold electric light. She took out her journal and began writing. “Don’t stare, Maggfrid. Why don’t you sleep now? We have a long journey.”

She was surprised, after the altercation at the hotel, that they had not been thrown in some cramped and stinking Line jail to rot. Maggfrid had broken one Linesman’s nose and hurled another bodily into a heap of rusting junk. It had taken seven men to bring him down. They’d held him and kicked him while she stood by, pleading. She’d tried to identify the officer in charge, but all Linesmen looked much the same to her. When they dragged Maggfrid away, handcuffed, she followed, and was not especially surprised when they decided to handcuff her, too, or when they sat her in a tiny claustrophobic concrete-walled cubicle and shone a light in her eyes and demanded that she explain—again!—who she was.

“My friend is sick,” she explained. “Defective, you might say. He didn’t understand your questions. He meant no harm. I can pay. . . .”

They confiscated her property, including the golden watch, and so she had no idea how long she sat in the cubicle.

They bustled in and made her sign more forms. Then they left her alone again.

She wondered if the Linesmen were discussing her case. Perhaps they were consulting the Engine itself about her. Perhaps they had simply filed away her papers and forgotten about her. She had no way of knowing.

She wondered if they were watching her.

She wondered if they would let her write a letter to the Academy. She doubted it. In any case, something in her rebelled against the notion of asking for aid; she had come here alone, and she would fight her own battles. Wasn’t that, in fact, precisely why she had come here?

The cubicle was windowless, and the Linesmen did not feed her. Minutes became hours. The Engine would leave without her—perhaps it already had. She became light-headed, and then became angry. How dare they—how
dare
they? The Linesmen were ugly, ill-mannered, and vile, and their tin gods absurd. She stood suddenly and tried the door. It was locked, of course. The entire Station was like a great locked gate of iron—an ogre’s castle standing across the road. How
dare
they bar her way into the West?

Her anger was both quite genuine and carefully calculated.
If I am to argue with these people, if I am to free Maggfrid and win my way past this place, I must be angry.
The proper manner when dealing with Linesmen, she surmised, was a haughty imperiousness. Linesmen were naturally servile and cringing. She was significantly taller than the average Linesman and markedly healthier. This was the first great challenge that had been set in her path, and she had no intention of failing it! She prepared herself, breathed deeply, and reached out to strike loudly upon the door.

She was quite astonished when the door clanged open and yet another Linesman, one of the pale stunted anonymous mass, reached in, tossed her watch back at her, and said, “Dr. Alverhuysen? Go on. No charges. On your way.”

“How
d
—I, ah, hah.” She collected herself. “I shall not leave without my friend.”

They let her go. She didn’t dare ask
why
. Perhaps something was watching over her! They gave Maggfrid back to her as if he were just another one of her possessions. She filled out forms for him. “Sign here, ma’am, and here. Thanks. On you go.” It was too easy; she was relieved and disappointed.
Not yet,
she thought.
The challenge will come, but not today.

Then she hurried through the corridors, because she saw by her watch that she had been nearly a day in the cubicle and it was evening, and the Engine had returned, and was due to leave again. She could feel it in the walls of the Station: a sense of weight and expectancy. She ran across the Concourse and Maggfrid limped, laden with her bags, as whistles blew and gears ground and forces gathered, and so she caught only the briefest glimpse of the Engine before she boarded. And perhaps that was fortunate, too.

A note taped to the window of the cabin said
REMAIN SEATED WHILE THE ENGINE IS STILL
in an anxiety-inducing red typeface. It was, Liv assumed, a matter of respect for the occasion, like removing one’s hat in church. She remained seated.

The seats were made of some deep black substance that resembled leather, and had, under the electric lights, an unpleasant oil-slick shine. They were made for persons shorter than her. Maggfrid had to squeeze sideways, with his legs under his chin, and looked the picture of misery.

The Engine sat still on the Concourse for what felt like hours. Liv sat folding and unfolding her hands.

“Don’t worry, Maggfrid. It won’t be so bad. Thousands or tens of thousands of quite ordinary people do this quite regularly.”

He looked unconvinced.

The Engine wasn’t
idle,
Liv thought, but coiled and ready to spring, a huge and oppressive potentiality; she sat tensed and ready for a sudden shock that would throw her from her seat. Pressure built up below her feet. There was a distant rattle and hiss, a constant low hammer-chatter, as the thing gathered its strength.

“Wait there, Maggfrid. Everything will be all right.”

She nervously slid back the door; it resisted her. She stepped out into the narrow corridor that was the Engine’s central artery. The door snapped shut behind her and she heard Maggfrid moan, but before she could go back to him, she was knocked nearly off her feet by a passing Linesman, and then another passing urgently the other way knocked into her and spun her around. She heard muttered fragments of conversation that meant nothing to her—
Ravenbrook. Refueling. Lowry. Torque. Diligence.
For a moment she feared she might be trampled as two more men came jogging side by side toward her, but they parted around her at the last possible instant, snarling contemptuously under their breath.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me. Sir—excuse me. Please. When do we leave?”

The Linesman sidestepped left then right to avoid her, but she wouldn’t let him. He glanced up at her and sighed.

“Sir. When—?”

“Twenty-four minutes ago. Go back where you belong.”

His shoulder knocked her aside as he went past.

She stumbled back into her seat. Suddenly the floor beneath her seemed unsteady. She opened the blind a crack: the hills outside were a dizzying liquid blur of speed.

Oh—is that how they see us? Is that how they see our world?

Behind as the tracks arced inward and northwest, the Station obtruded onto the edge of her vision. It gathered distance like shadows but remained vast. Vast and hunched and complex and smoky, like a combustion engine or electric motor swollen to extraordinary size; as if the Station reflected its contents, and the world the Engines were making reflected their Stations; as if size and distance were nothing to the Engines.

The world was drowned by a wave of the gritty black smoke that poured from the mouth of the Engine carrying her.

Their boiling black blood, their breath!

Coal-dust fragments spun in the haze and reflected the electric light from her window. Liv let the blind fall, and she tried to busy herself in her puzzle again.

Maggfrid was now thoroughly panicked. The Engine plainly terrified him. He darted his eyes from side to side as if expecting attack. Liv cursed herself for leaving him—not to mention for bringing him in the first place.

“Maggfrid. Come on, Maggfrid. Shall we play a game?”

She no longer studied his condition—she had accepted long ago it was congenital, and incurable. But he still enjoyed the motions of her analysis—the cards, the questions. It calmed him. He answered her questions with great seriousness, as if he were engaged in a project of enormous importance.