by Wen Spencer
Trixie meant her male cousins. Apparently she’d tried sending them out to get apples and hit a brick wall of ignorance. Trixie handed the apple to one of the girls that had been unloading the apples into large plastic bins. “Wash them and put them on sticks.”
Said male cousins were nowhere to be seen. Whatever went wrong and made the Chang family pull out of the festival, Trixie had set herself up as the only target.
“Are you okay?” Law whispered.
“We’re fine.”
“Are you sure? I could help you, if you just tell me…”
“Oh, stop!” Trixie kissed Law to silence her. She tasted of cigarettes and beer. With one kiss, they were back to thirteen, when Trixie had been Law’s first everything. First crush. First kiss. First sexual fumbling on warm summer nights. First lost love. When Law wouldn’t stop asking questions, Trixie enacted a silent treatment that made rocks seem talkative. They didn’t break up so much as Law fled the silence.
If Law kept asking now, she risked the fragile friendship they’d built since then.
Law took a deep breath and plunged ahead. Silence was a small price if it kept Trixie from being killed. “Don’t brush me off; I’m not thirteen anymore. I understand the danger now. I’m not going to go blindly charging into trouble. I can’t help you, though, if you don’t tell me the truth.”
Trixie snorted in disbelief but didn’t push her away. “There’s nothing you can do. Tommy took Spot and went after Jewel Tear. He told the rest of us to lay low, but we’re out of money and food. This is our one chance to get money before everything blows up in our face.”
“Tommy knows where the oni took Jewel Tear?”
“No!” Trixie cried in frustration. She glanced at the girls washing the apples and whispered. “He’s shooting blind. The timing was really wonky, so he thinks that the oni still have moles working the railroad. The inbound trains are all loaded down with royal marines. The outbound, though, are empty except for the crews. It’s three hundred miles to the East Coast. The oni could stop the train anywhere between here and there and no one would know.”
Someone would know.
Tommy was right. The oni would need to have moles still in place to keep anyone from finding out.
* * *
At one time, Pittsburgh had been a mishmash of rail lines. There had been the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Wabash, the Pennsylvania, the Erie Lackawanna, and probably a half-dozen others that Law had forgotten. At the time of the first Startup, the city had been a maze of active and rusty, abandoned tracks. While the humans on Earth focused on creating a massive quarantine zone around the metropolitan area, the people of Pittsburgh worked at consolidating the tracks into one railroad system that stretched out to the East Coast.
The hardest part of building a railroad wasn’t laying track, it was creating a solid level track bed with a subgrade layer blanketed by ballast. Through the heart of seven mountains and across countless streams and rivers, the engineers were forced to lay only one track. Every place they could, however, they built sidings where a slower train could sit and allow a faster train traveling the opposite direction to pass.
Most people in Pittsburgh believed that there was only one train in motion at any given time: inbound or outbound. There were, however, always multiple trains incoming and outgoing. A fast-moving set of passenger cars might pass as many as five slower freight trains during its eight-hour trip. It was a little-known fact because the only humans ever to ride on the trains were the crews.
Communication was key when juggling freight trains carrying up to fifteen thousand tons of ore. The individual cars were carefully tracked from being loaded on the East Coast until they were handed off to Earth during Shutdown.
The tracking was done on the upper floors of the Union Station on Liberty Avenue. The building was a beautiful terra-cotta brick with turn-of-the-century charm. Downstairs was complete with a stunning rotunda built to allow horse carriages to unload out of the rain and snow. Ironically with Pittsburgh on Elfhome, the shelter had returned to its original purpose. Big cargo wagons pulled by large draft horses sat under the rotunda. Royal marines were loading tents and personal gear onto the wagons. The Fire Clan soldiers were fresh off the latest passenger train; they shouted in excitement when they spotted Law.
“It’s a human! Look! A human!”
The marines crowded around Law.
“Maybe she’s a human, maybe she’s not,” one tall male said. “Oni can disguise themselves so they look like humans. We should test her.”
None of the marines seemed to notice Bare Snow skirting the edge of the rotunda. Law tracked her by the flash of blue in amongst the sea of red.
“Okay. Test me.” Law put out her arm. She’d been tested earlier in the summer. The attack on the viceroy made the elves aware of the oni presence. As a food supplier to the enclaves, Law went to the top of the list of “humans we want to be sure are not oni.” The humans running the train and those employed by the EIA were close seconds. All the moles should have been ferreted out; unless the moles looked human.
Several of the marines pulled out a spell inked onto a paper. There was a brief argument as to which paper would be used. For a while, it seemed like all of the spells might be applied. It was finally settled by a furious game of rock-paper-scissors. (Although, judging by the shouts, in the elf game “scissors” had been replaced by “flame.”)
The activated spell caused a ripple that felt like static electricity to crawl over Law, spreading out from her forearm to shoulder to scalp and then down her back. Every hair on her body stood on end. Nothing else happened.
There was visible disappointment on the marines’ faces when Law’s appearance didn’t change.
“Maybe it didn’t work.” The marine that lost the rock-paper-flame game held out his unused spell. “Maybe we should try again.”
“No!” the rest cried out in a chorus.
An officer shouted from the front of the wagon. “Stop talking with the native and get that wagon loaded, you lazy slackers!”
Native? It was the first time Law had been called that. She had been born on Elfhome, although if asked she would have said she was born in Pittsburgh.
The marines loaded the last of the tents onto the wagon. The driver flicked the reins to start the big horses. They trotted out of the rotunda with the clatter of metal horseshoes on stone paving.
“Move out!” the officer shouted.
The marine still holding the unused spell paper tried to stuff it away. The paper refused to cooperate. He finally thrust it at Law. “Here! For being patient.”
Free is free. Law bowed. “Thank you.”
* * *
The control room was a large, mind-boggling place. The longest wall was covered entirely by giant monitors showing the crazy spiderweb of tracks in Pittsburgh. Much of the tangle was the large freight yard at the foot of West End Bridge. From there were the dozens of dispersal lines that only led to Earth during Shutdown. A single thread leapt out across the room to a small web on the East Coast. Gleaming LED lights indicated train locations. Flickering indicated trains in motion. A vast amount of the network was dark, dormant, waiting on a miracle that would reconnect Pittsburgh to Earth.
A dozen workstations were positioned so they could see the wall in a single glance. Each had yet more screens, more buttons than God, and several computer keyboards. Law had been told countless stories about the room and how the controls had been greatly simplified for the elves. Law had assumed that she would know how to find what she was looking for.
“Yeah, yeah, just go and find out where all the trains are and where they’ve been,” she whispered as she wandered through the room, eyeing the hundreds of buttons and switches. Where was everyone? According to her grandfather, it was vital that the tracks were continuously monitored to avoid any collisions.
The workstations were complete mysteries. She decided to ignore them and studied the wall instead. There were
four trains showing on the board. One was the passenger train that had delivered the royal marines. It should be on its way to the freight yard in order to have its toilets emptied and the diesel engine refueled. It was just sitting at Union Station, idling. Law had heard that the railroad had been virtually stripped of human employees. It had left the elves too shorthanded to keep the system running smoothly.
Another train sat in the first siding beyond the Rim. Law couldn’t see what it was waiting on. If the mystery train was outbound, then there was nothing in its way for a hundred miles. If it was inbound, it would take precedence over the empty passenger train.
It seemed unlikely that the oni used the mystery train to transport Jewel Tear; it was too close to Pittsburgh. The city roads ended at the edge of the siding. The oni could have driven to that point within an hour. A train sitting for days would have drawn more attention than one car, even out that far.
Law studied the other two trains on the board. One was on the East Coast, just pulling out of the distant station. The other was inbound but hours away. Judging by its speed, the incoming train was another passenger train loaded with marines. They had been arriving nonstop for most of the week, hundreds at a time. If either train had been used to transport Jewel Tear, the elf was no longer on it.
How was she going to find where the oni stopped the supposedly empty outbound train?
A slight noise made her turn. A male elf in Wind Clan blue walked into the room from a door she hadn’t noticed.
“Who are you?” He came steamrolling toward her. “What are you doing here? This is a restricted area.”
Law backpedaled to keep out of reach of him. “I’m Joe Casey’s granddaughter. He’s a safety inspector…”
“Casey is dead.” He tried to catch hold of her arm.
Law dodged around one of the workstations. She pointed at the lone gleaming light on the wall. “I just wanted to know: what’s that train there?”
He didn’t even glance at the wall. “That is none of your business. You are not allowed in here. You must leave immediately.”
Law decided to show some of her cards in a bid to get him on her side. “I think the oni have control of that train.”
That made him pause. “Who told you that?”
She didn’t want to name Trixie since the girl hadn’t been identified as a half-oni, nor Tommy Chang, since it might poison the elves against anything she said. “What is that train? Is it supposed to be there?”
His body language changed from “I want you to leave” to “I don’t want you to escape.” He stalked forward, eyes narrowing. “Who knows about…”
Law realized she’d made a mistake. She’d backed into a corner in her attempt to keep from being thrown out before she had her say. Okay, this is about to get ugly.
He jerked to a halt as a flash of blue in Law’s side vision announced Bare Snow’s presence. His eyes widened as he recognized Bare Snow’s blue-black hair and storm-gray eyes. He backed up, fear spreading across his face.
He knew that Bare Snow was an assassin when none of the elves at the enclaves did.
The only people that knew of Bare Snow’s training were the ones that had tricked her into coming to Pittsburgh and tried to frame her for the attack on Windwolf.
He was Skin Clan.
Law punched him as hard as she could in a full roundhouse.
He went down and came back up with knives.
“Whoa!” Law jumped back. She hit the wall and tried to keep backing up.
He knew which one of them was more dangerous. He backpedaled, slashing at Bare Snow. His knives were human-made with blades of plain steel. Bare Snow parried his attacks. Made of magically sharped ironwood, her knives sliced through his. The steel blades went flying to land with a faint metallic ring.
With a hard lunge, Bare Snow nailed him to the wall with a knife through his right collarbone. The male cried out in pain. He started to curl around the blade but froze as Bare Snow pressed the tip of her other knife to his throat.
“Don’t kill him!” Law shouted.
“Why? He’s one of the Skin Clan’s mindless drones.”
“We need to ask him questions.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Bare Snow growled. “He does their busy work without even knowing their true plans, happy with his ignorance. If he does know anything useful, he’ll die before he’ll tell us.”
“We could at least try asking him.” Law needed to explain “good cop/bad cop” to Bare Snow at some point.
Bare Snow snorted in contempt. “For thousands of years, they’ve believed the lies that their master told them. That they are superior to their fellow slaves. That their fellow slaves are nothing more than disobedient furniture. That our people have no more right than a chair to say what happens to their bodies.”
The male sneered at Bare Snow. “You worship at the altar of the gods and yet you refuse the same loyalty to your creator.”
“They’re thieves!” Bare Snow cried. “They steal everything! They stole everything that the gods gave to us. Like petty little children, they sifted through everything they’d stolen, tossed what they didn’t want into a dung heap, and then acted like everything else was their creation.”
“Bare! Bare!” Law cried as the tip of the blade had drawn blood. “One question!” Law pointed at the track display. “You can save yourself if you just tell us what you know about that train. Why is it just sitting there?”
“Shut up, monkey!” the male growled. “You gibber away pretending to speak our language when all you’re doing is aping the sounds. Nothing has been done to improve your people since you climbed down out of the trees. You still cling to the stupid idea of paradise after you’re dead because you live short, disease-ridden lives. Your people are only good as a constant reminder of how much our lords have done for us. That they will do again. We will be gods and you will stay ugly little…”
“My Law is not ugly!” Bare Snow shoved the blade home.
“Bare!” Law cried. “No!”
It was too late; the male was dead.
“Oh jeez, Bare! We didn’t find out anything.”
“He did not want to tell us about the train.” Bare Snow jerked out her knife to let his dead body slide down the wall. It left a smear of blood. “There are others of his ilk here. If the train were not important, he would have delayed us by answering all our questions in detail.”
Law glanced at the wall. What was so important about the train that he was willing to die for it?
* * *
The Elfhome railroad followed the Monongahela, bending and twisting with the river, the track bed built up from the level flood plains. At Charleroi, it used a newly built bridge to cross over the river. Beyond that point, the right of way wound its way in a mostly eastward direction, cutting through empty towns and abandoned farmland. The Rim had taken out the little town of Wyano leaving behind a large level area to build a siding.
Law took old Route 70 to Wyano. At the exit ramp, she turned off her motor. The back roads were quiet places and the oni would hear her Dodge coming. She coasted down the long hill into Wyano. The Rim sliced across through the heart of the small town, a thin band of destruction backed by towering mature ironwood trees. The forest was overtaking the town with saplings overshadowing the Earth maples and black cherries.
Just shy of the Rim, Law pulled into a weed-choked driveway.
“We’ll walk the rest of the way. It will be quieter.” Law climbed out. Brisbane scrambled down from the cab. “You stay with the Dodge, Brizzy.”
Brisbane complained loudly.
“You’re too loud and you walk too slow.” She pulled out a sack of wormy apples from the back of the truck. “I’ll make sure you won’t starve. You wait here.”
He grunted in disgust but accepted the offering of apples poured into a small pile beside the Dodge. She tried to estimate what he might eat in an hour since she didn’t want him wandering off; they might have to leave quickly.
Bare Snow stripped down to her lovely alabaster skin. In the leafy shadows, her white-ink tattoos were imperceptible. She stretched in all manner of distracting ways. It did all sorts of things to Law’s heart to watch her. It had only been three months, but she couldn’t imagine life without Bare Snow.
“We need to be careful.” Law knew that it didn’t need to be said; Bare Snow had “careful” beaten into her by her mother. Law had been the one who had gotten shot in their last big fight. Still it felt like asking for a blessing; things would be good because they spoke the words aloud.
“They won’t know what hit them!” Bare Snow cried in English. Law wasn’t sure where she learned the phrase until Bare Snow added, “In the name of the moon, I will punish them.” She struck a Sailor Moon pose.
* * *
Walking with Bare Snow was like walking alone. Law knew that she was nearby but could neither see nor hear the female. Another person, she would have suspected of running ahead or falling behind, but she knew that Bare Snow worried for Law’s safety and kept close.
They crossed the cracked pavement of the abandoned street. Wyano had been a scattering of two-story wooden farmhouses on large lots. The paint on the homes had peeled off long ago and the exposed wood turned to gray. The houses hunched like ghosts in yards given over to ironwood saplings. Law picked her way carefully through the dead leaves, trying not to make noise and failing. Hidden sticks snapped and popped under Law’s feet. Someplace nearby, Bare Snow walked silently. Law caught sight of her shadow once or twice and wished that she hadn’t. It would be better if Bare Snow’s invisibility were flawless.
The saplings became mature trees as they crossed the Rim. Another fifty feet of virgin forest and they reached the main line railroad tracks. Ironwoods overshadowed the track bed, keeping the berm free of underbrush. The twin shining rails came from the west in a straight shot. To the east, they disappeared around a bend as the track bed curved to avoid a steep hillside. Law’s footsteps crunched loudly on the crushed rock ballast. She shifted over to the creosote-soaked wooden ties.