‘Well, everything seems to be all right.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s get back to the train.’
Yalson told Wubslin and the drone; Balveda slipped off the big seat, and with her in the lead, they walked out of the control room.
Behind them, a power-monitoring screen – one of the first Horza had switched on – was registering a massive energy drain in the locomotive supply circuits, indicating that somewhere, in the tunnels of the Command System, a train was moving.
13.
The Command System: Terminus
‘One can read too much into one’s own circumstances. I am reminded of one race who set themselves against us – oh, long ago now, before I was even thought of. Their conceit was that the galaxy belonged to them, and they justified this heresy by a blasphemous belief concerning design. They were aquatic, their brain and major organs housed in a large central pod from which several large arms or tentacles protruded. These tentacles were thick at the body, thin at the tips and lined with suckers. Their water god was supposed to have made the galaxy in their image.
‘You see? They thought that because they bore a rough physical resemblance to the great lens that is the home of all of us – even taking the analogy as far as comparing their tentacle suckers to globular clusters – it therefore belonged to them. For all the idiocy of this heathen belief, they had prospered and were powerful: quite respectable adversaries, in fact.’
‘Hmm,’ Aviger said. Without looking up, he asked, ‘What were they called?’
‘Hmm,’ Xoxarle rumbled. ‘Their name . . .’ The Idiran pondered. ‘. . . I believe they were called the . . . the Fanch.’
‘Never heard of them,’ Aviger said.
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Xoxarle purred. ‘We annihilated them.’
Yalson saw Horza staring at something on the floor near the doors leading back to the station. She kept watching Balveda, but said, ‘What have you found?’
Horza shook his head, reached to pick something from the floor, then stopped. ‘I think it’s an insect,’ he said incredulously.
‘Wow,’ Yalson said, unimpressed. Balveda moved over to have a look, Yalson’s gun still trained on her. Horza shook his head, watching the insect crawl over the tunnel floor.
‘What the hell’s that doing down here?’ he said. Yalson frowned when he said that, worried at a note of near panic in the man’s voice.
‘Probably brought it down ourselves,’ Balveda said, rising. ‘Hitched a ride on the pallet, or somebody’s suit, I’ll bet.’
Horza brought his fist down on the tiny creature, squashing it, grinding it into the dark rock. Balveda looked surprised. Yalson’s frown deepened. Horza stared at the mark left on the tunnel floor, wiped his glove, then looked up, apologetic.
‘Sorry,’ he told Balveda, as though embarrassed. ‘. . . Couldn’t help thinking about that fly in The Ends of Invention . . . Turned out to be one of your pets, remember?’ He got up and walked quickly into the station. Balveda nodded, looking down at the small stain on the floor.
‘Well,’ she said, arching one eyebrow, ‘that was one way of proving its innocence.’
Xoxarle watched the male and the two females come back into the station. ‘Nothing, little one?’ he asked.
‘Lots of things, Section Leader,’ Horza replied, going up to Xoxarle and checking the wires holding him.
Xoxarle grunted. ‘They’re still somewhat tight, ally.’
‘What a shame,’ Horza said. ‘Try breathing out.’
‘Ha!’ Xoxarle laughed and thought the man might have guessed. But the human turned away and said to the old man who had been guarding him:
‘Aviger, we’re going onto the train. Keep our friend company; try not to fall asleep.’
‘Fat chance, with him gibbering all the time,’ the old man grumbled.
The other three humans entered the train. Xoxarle went on talking.
In one section of the train there were lit map screens which showed how Schar’s World had looked at the time the Command System had been built, the cities and the states shown on the continents, the targets on one state on one continent, the missile grounds, air bases and naval ports belonging to the System’s designers shown on another state, on another continent.
Two small icecaps were shown, but the rest of the planet was steppe, savannah, desert, forest and jungle. Balveda wanted to stay and look at the maps, but Horza pulled her away and through another door, going forward to the nose of the train. He switched off the lights behind the map screens as he went, and the bright surface of blue oceans, green, yellow, brown and orange land, blue rivers and red cities and communication lines faded slowly into grey darkness.
Oh-oh.
There are more on the train. Three, I think. Walking from the rear. Now what?
Xoxarle breathed in, breathed out. He flexed his muscles, and the wires slipped over his keratin plates. He stopped, when the old man wandered over to look at him.
‘You are Aviger, aren’t you?’
‘That’s what they call me,’ the old man said. He stood looking at the Idiran, gazing from Xoxarle’s three feet with their three slab toes and round ankle collars, over his padded-looking knees, the massive girdle of pelvic plates and the flat chest, up to the section leader’s great saddle-head, the broad face tipped and looking down at the human beneath.
‘Frightened I’ll escape?’ Xoxarle rumbled.
Aviger shrugged and gripped his gun a little tighter. ‘What do I care?’ he said. ‘I’m a prisoner, too. That madman’s got us all trapped down here. I just want to go back. This isn’t my war.’
‘A very sensible attitude,’ Xoxarle said. ‘I wish more humans would realise what is and what is not theirs. Especially regarding wars.’
‘Huh, I don’t suppose your lot are any better.’
‘Let us say different, then.’
‘Say what you like.’ Aviger looked over the Idiran’s body again, addressing Xoxarle’s chest. ‘I just wish everybody would mind their own business. I see no change, though; it’ll all end in tears.’
‘I don’t think you really belong here, Aviger.’ Xoxarle nodded wisely, slowly.
Aviger shrugged, and did not raise his eyes. ‘I don’t think any of us do.’
‘The brave belong where they decide.’ Some harshness entered the Idiran’s voice.
Aviger looked at the broad, dark face above him. ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ He turned away and walked back towards the pallet. Xoxarle watched, and vibrated his chest quickly, tensing his muscles, then releasing. The wires on him slipped a little further. Behind his back, he felt the bonds around one wrist slacken fractionally.
The train gathered speed. The controls and screens looked dim to him, so he watched the lights on the tunnel walls outside. They had slid by gently at first, passing the side windows of the broad control deck more slowly than the quiet tide of his breathing.
Now there were two or three lights running by for each time he breathed. The train was pushing him gently in the back, drawing him towards the rear of the seat and anchoring him there. Blood – a little of it, not much – had dried under him, sticking him there. His course, he felt, was set. There was only one thing left to do. He searched the console, cursing the darkness gathering behind his eye.
Before he found the circuit breaker on the collision brake, he found the lights. It was like a little present from God; the tunnel ahead flashed with bright reflections as the train’s nose headlights clicked on. The double set of rails glinted, and in the distance he could see more shadows and reflections in the tunnel walls, where access tubes slanted in from the foot tunnels, and blast doors ribbed the black rock walls.
His sight was still going, but he felt a little better for being able to see outside. At first he worried, in a distant, theoretical way, that the lights might give too much warning, should he be lucky enough to catch the humans still in the station. But it made little difference. The air pushed in front of the train would warn the
m soon enough. He raised a panel near the power-control lever and peered at it.
His head was light; he felt very cold. He looked at the circuit breaker and then bent down, jamming himself between the rear of the seat – cracking the blood seal beneath him and starting to bleed again – and the edge of the console. He shoved his face against the edge of the power-control lever, then took his hand away and gripped the collision brake fail-safe. He moved his hand so that it would not slip out, then just lay there.
His one eye was high enough off the console to see the tunnel ahead. The lights were coming faster now. The train rocked gently, lulling him. The roaring was fading from his ears, like the sight dimming, like the station behind slipping away and vanishing, like the seemingly steady, slow-quickening stream of lights flowing by on either side.
He could not estimate how far he had to go. He had started it off; he had done his best. No more – finally – could be asked of him.
He closed his eye, just to rest.
The train rocked him.
‘It’s great,’ Wubslin grinned when Horza, Yalson and Balveda walked onto the control deck. ‘It’s all ready to roll. All systems go!’
‘Well, don’t wet your pants,’ Yalson told him, watching Balveda sit down in a seat, then sitting in another herself. ‘We might have to use the transit tubes to get around.’
Horza pressed a few buttons, watching the readouts on the train’s systems. It all looked as Wubslin had said: ready to go.
‘Where’s that damn drone?’ Horza said to Yalson.
‘Drone? Unaha-Closp?’ Yalson said into her helmet mike.
‘What is it now?’ Unaha-Closp said.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m taking a good look through this antiquated collection of rolling stock. I do believe these trains may actually be older than your ship.’
‘Tell it to get back here,’ Horza said. He looked at Wubslin. ‘Did you check this whole train?’
Yalson ordered the drone back as Wubslin nodded and said, ‘All of it except the reactor car; couldn’t get into bits of it. Which are the door controls?’
Horza looked around for a moment, recalling the layout of the train controls. ‘That lot.’ He pointed at one of the banks of buttons and light panels to one side of Wubslin. The engineer studied them.
Ordered back. Told to return. Like it was a slave, one of the Idirans’ medjel; as though it was a machine. Let them wait a little.
Unaha-Closp had also found the map screens, in the train just down the tunnel. It floated in the air in front of the coloured expanses of back-lit plastic. It used its manipulating fields to work the controls, turning on small sets of lights which indicated the targets on both sides, the major cities and military installations.
All of it dust now, all of their precious humanoid civilisation ground to junk under glaciers or weathered away by wind and spray and rain and frozen in ice – all of it. Only this pathetic maze-tomb left.
So much for their humanity, or whatever they chose to call it, thought Unaha-Closp. Only their machines remained. But would any of the others learn? Would they see this for what it was, this frozen rock-ball? Would they, indeed!
Unaha-Closp left the screens glowing, and floated out of the train, back through the tunnel towards the station itself. The tunnels were bright now, but no warmer, and to Unaha-Closp it seemed as though there was a sort of revealed heartlessness about the harsh yellow-white light which streamed from ceilings and walls; it was operating-theatre light, dissection-table light.
The machine floated through the tunnels, thinking that the cathedral of darkness had become a glazed arena, a crucible.
Xoxarle was on the platform, still trussed against the access ramp girders. Unaha-Closp didn’t like the way the Idiran looked at it when it appeared from the tunnels; it was almost impossible to read the creature’s expression, if he could be said to have one, but there was something about Xoxarle that Unaha-Closp didn’t like. It got the impression the Idiran had just stopped moving, or doing something he didn’t want to be seen doing.
From the tunnel mouth, the drone saw Aviger look up from the pallet where he was sitting, then look away again, without even bothering to wave.
The Changer and the two females were in the train control area with the engineer Wubslin. Unaha-Closp saw them, and went forward to the access ramps and the nearest door. As it got there it paused. Air moved gently; hardly anything, but it was there; it could feel it.
Obviously with the power on, some automatic systems were circulating more fresh air from the surface or through atmospheric scrubbing units.
Unaha-Closp went into the train.
‘Unpleasant little machine, that,’ Xoxarle said to Aviger. The old man nodded vaguely. Xoxarle had noticed that the man looked at him less when he was speaking to him. It was as though the sound of his voice reassured the human that he was still tied there, safe and sound, not moving. On the other hand, talking – moving his head to look at the human, making the occasional shrugging motion, laughing a little – gave him excuses to move and so to slip the wires a little further. So he talked; with luck the others would be on the train for a while now, and he might have a chance to escape.
He would lead them a merry dance if he got away into the tunnels, with a gun!
‘Well, they should be open,’ Horza was saying. According to the console in front of him and Wubslin, the doors in the reactor car had never been locked in the first place. ‘Are you sure you were trying to open them properly?’ He was looking at the engineer.
‘Of course,’ Wubslin said, sounding hurt. ‘I know how different types of locks work. I tried to turn the recessed wheel; catches off . . . OK, this arm of mine isn’t perfect, but, well . . . it should have opened.’
‘Probably a malfunction,’ Horza said. He straightened, looking back down the train, as though trying to see through the hundred metres of metal and plastic between him and the reactor car. ‘Hmm. There’s not enough room there for the Mind to hide, is there?’
Wubslin looked up from the panel. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Well, here I am,’ Unaha-Closp said testily, floating through the door to the control deck. ‘What do you want me to do now?’
‘You took your time searching that other train,’ Horza said, looking at the machine.
‘I was being thorough. More thorough than you, unless I misheard what you were saying before I came in. Where might there be enough room for the Mind to hide?’
‘The reactor car,’ Wubslin said. ‘I couldn’t get through some of the doors. Horza says according to the controls they ought to be open.’
‘Shall I go back and have a look, then?’ Unaha-Closp turned to face Horza.
The Changer nodded. ‘If it isn’t asking too much,’ he said levelly.
‘No, no,’ Unaha-Closp said airily, backing off through the door it had entered by, ‘I’m starting to enjoy being ordered about. Leave it to me.’ It floated away, back through the front carriage, towards the reactor car.
Balveda looked through the armoured glass, at the rear of the train in front, the one the drone had been looking through.
‘If the Mind was hiding in the reactor car, wouldn’t it show up on your mass sensor, or would it be confused with the trace from the pile?’ She turned her head slowly to look at the Changer.
‘Who knows?’ Horza said. ‘I’m not an expert on the workings of the suit, especially now it’s damaged.’
‘You’re getting very trusting, Horza,’ the Culture agent said, smiling faintly, ‘letting the drone do your hunting for you.’
‘Just letting it do some scouting, Balveda,’ Horza said, turning away and working at some more of the controls. He watched screens and dials and meters, changing displays and readout functions, trying to tell what was going on, if anything, in the reactor car. It all looked normal, as far as he could tell, though he knew less about the reactor systems than about most of the train’s other components from his time as a
sentinel.
‘OK,’ Yalson said, turning her chair to one side, putting her feet upon the edge of one console and taking her helmet off. ‘So what do we do if there’s no Mind there, in the reactor car? Do we all start touring round in this thing, take the transit tube, or what?’
‘I don’t know that taking a mainline train is a good idea,’ Horza said, glancing at Wubslin. ‘I considered leaving everybody else here and taking a transit tube by myself on a circular journey right round the System, trying to spot the Mind on the suit mass sensor. It wouldn’t take too long, even doing it twice to cover both sets of tracks between stations. The transit tubes have no reactors, so it wouldn’t get any false echoes to interfere with the sensor’s readings.’
Wubslin, sitting in the seat which faced the train’s main controls, looked downcast.
‘Why not send the rest of us back to the ship, then?’ Balveda said.
Horza looked at her. ‘Balveda, you are not here to make suggestions.’
‘Just trying to be helpful.’ The Culture agent shrugged.
‘What if you still can’t find anything?’ Yalson asked.
‘We go back to the ship,’ Horza said, shaking his head. ‘That’s about all we can do. Wubslin can check the suit mass sensor on board and, depending on what we find is wrong with it, we might come back down or we might not. Now the power’s on none of that should take very long or involve any hard slog.’
‘Pity,’ Wubslin said, fingering the controls. ‘We can’t even use this train to get back to station four, because of that train in station six blocking the way.’
‘It probably would still move,’ Horza told the engineer. ‘We’ll have to do some shunting whichever way we go, if we use the mainline trains.’
‘Oh, well, then,’ Wubslin said, a little dreamily, and looked over the controls again. He pointed at one of them. ‘Is that the speed control?’
Horza laughed, crossing his arms and grinning at the man, ‘Yes. We’ll see if we can arrange a little journey.’ He leaned over and pointed out a couple of other controls, showing Wubslin how the train was readied for running. They pointed and nodded and talked.
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