by P. G. Bell
“Made to last,” he said, giving the panel an affectionate stroke. “Of course, they say the landing is the tricky bit.”
He craned his neck, fighting against the g-forces that pinned him to the seat, and looked out of the starboard porthole. The curvature of the world was visible outside, and the blue sky was darkening to black as he left the atmosphere behind. His body relaxed a little as the g-forces began to slacken, and gravity released its hold on him. Soon, he would be completely weightless. “Good thing I skipped breakfast,” he mused, making sure his seat belt was secured.
He made a few course adjustments and brought the H. E. C.’s nose around. Over the rim of the horizon, the moon was just rising.
27
TUNNEL TROUBLE
There was a noise like a thunderclap as the tunnel mouth fell in behind them. But unlike a thunderclap, the sound didn’t fade away—it swallowed itself, turning into a sucking absence of noise that somehow felt every bit as loud.
Suzy suffered a moment of disorientation as her brain tried to process the sound that wasn’t really there. She staggered, and Ursel caught her.
“Hrunk?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “How’s your arm?”
Ursel shrugged and hooked a claw in the direction of the fallen tunnel mouth. As if on cue, a burst of gray light split the darkness in a web of fractures, reaching out from a ghostly furnace glow directly behind the train.
“What’s going on?” screeched Frederick from her pocket. “What’s all that noise? Somebody tell me what’s happening!”
Ursel growled, her fur standing on end.
“Who said that?” yelled Stonker.
“Just pretend you didn’t hear it,” said Suzy, stuffing her hand into her pocket to muffle Frederick’s voice. “And tell me how much trouble we’re in.”
“The tunnel’s rolling up like a tube of toothpaste,” said Stonker, who was welded so tightly to the controls they might have been a part of him. “We’ll never make it through!”
“Can’t we outrun it?” Suzy shouted, joining him and trying to make sense of the various dials and readouts.
“We’re already at full speed,” he shouted. “Everything’s wide open—our pressure’s in the red. It won’t be enough!”
Suzy swallowed a lump of raw terror; she simply didn’t have time to be scared right now. “What if we lost more mass?” she said, thinking aloud.
“What?” bellowed Stonker. “I can’t hear you!”
Without wasting any more time on words, Suzy turned and raced to the ruined rear doorway. “Ursel! Help me!” She lay on her front and reached down out of the cab to the chain that coupled them to the still-blazing tender. The pin locking it in place was even harder to remove than the one behind the tender had been and only started to give when Ursel leaned out and closed her teeth around it. They pulled together, and with much effort, it slid free. Suzy tossed it aside as Ursel unhooked the chain. Then, together, they put their weight against the tender and gave it a shove.
It separated from the cab and had only fallen a few feet behind them when the cave-in claimed it. Suzy, who had been expecting an explosion of debris, stared in fascination as the tender unfolded into a neat little fractal pattern of cubes and squares. Like crystals in a kaleidoscope, the shapes multiplied and folded in on themselves, smaller and smaller, until they formed a single point of matter, which was swallowed by the glare. Then it was simply … gone.
Suzy stared into the gray fire, hypnotized. Just as she could sense the noise it made without actually hearing it, so she realized she couldn’t actually see the cave-in properly. The light wasn’t really light. If she turned her head just a little and looked at it from the corner of her eye, it strobed in and out of vision. She didn’t understand it—this was something that even Einstein would have struggled with—but it was here. And it was getting closer.
“Did that help?” she yelled, retreating to Stonker’s side. The troll set his mouth in a hard line and glared at his instruments.
“We’re lighter,” he barked. “Might have bought us a few seconds.”
“Is that enough?”
Stonker pressed his lips together until they almost disappeared. He gripped the controls so hard his knuckles glowed white. Then there was a pop! and one of the pipes beside the mantelpiece split, venting steam. Stonker flinched.
“We’re pushing her too hard. She can’t keep this up for long.”
As if in confirmation, the glass in one of the pressure gauges shattered, and the needle inside it went flying past them, out of the back of the cab, straight into the maw of the cave-in.
“But we can’t slow down,” she said.
“I know.”
Suzy watched the firestorm sucking up the rails like steel spaghetti just a few feet behind them, inching ever closer. “We can make it,” she said.
He shook his head, as though it weighed more than he could bear. “Nobody’s ever beaten a cave-in.”
“Because nobody’s ever tried it with the Belle de Loin,” she said.
His answering smile was weak, but it lit a fire in her. She reached out and placed a hand over his. Then she reached out to Ursel, who wrapped one huge paw around both their hands, locking them together.
Suzy didn’t feel brave—not really—but pretending she did felt surprisingly close to the real thing.
“If we were about to die, you’d tell me, right?”
Suzy blushed as Frederick spoke up, and Stonker and Ursel both looked sideways at her.
“I’m trying to pretend I didn’t hear it,” said Stonker, “but he’s making it rather difficult.”
They all turned at a dull, metallic note behind them and immediately shrank back against the fireplace. The gray fire of the cave-in was pressing right up against the back of the cab now. Through the empty doorway they could see it unraveling the loose coupling chain into a dizzying series of loops that stretched out to impossible distances before being compressed into nothing. Within a few seconds, half the chain had gone and the rear wall of the cab began to stretch and distort.
“It’s got us!” said Stonker. “Once it reaches the wheels, we’re done for.”
Brick by brick, the rear wall began unraveling, breaking into strings of two-dimensional matter. Inch by inch, the Belle de Loin was being devoured.
“All hands to the gangway!” ordered Stonker. “We’ve got to stay ahead of it.”
Suzy pulled the door open, and Ursel scooped her and Stonker up under one arm, loping along the gangway in huge, swinging strides. “I’m afraid this is it,” said Stonker as Ursel set them both down at the far end of the gangway. The fractures were all around the train now, huge and jagged and inescapable. “May I just say, it’s been an honor serving with you both.” He adjusted his jacket and snapped off a salute.
“What?” screamed Frederick. “This can’t be right! You’re supposed to protect me. You promised!”
Suzy barely noticed. In fact, she hardly felt anything, not even fear. There was no use for it anymore—the worst was happening. They had lost, and her heart felt like it was breaking. “I didn’t want it to be like this,” she sobbed. “It’s all my fault. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.” Tears started from her eyes, breaking Ursel, Stonker, and the glaring tunnel into a blurry mess of colors. “We were so close! It almost worked! It almost—”
“Hurk!”
Ursel grabbed Suzy again, and she thought that Stonker thrust his hand out in front of her face, pointing wildly at something. She turned to look, but everything was a kaleidoscope of black and gray. And then, suddenly, shining white, and a blast of new air that tasted like copper and dust and furniture polish.
Stonker burst out laughing in her ear, and she pressed her palms to her face, forcing the tears away. She opened her eyes to another world.
* * *
The Belle de Loin raced along beneath a milky-white sky, crisscrossed with glittering trails of silver. There were hundreds of
them, like a giant spider’s web, and it was only when Suzy saw other trains hurrying along them that she realized they were rails. They hung unsupported in the air, as though weightless, each of them ending in a tunnel mouth that seemed to be set into the very sky itself.
Suzy leaned out over the handrail, the wind whipping at her hair, and saw that, sure enough, the rails beneath the Belle’s wheels were floating in the air like all the others. That wasn’t too surprising. What was surprising was that there was no ground in sight below them, just more sky. It surrounded them in every direction for as far as she could see—flat, white, and featureless except for the tunnel mouths.
The final death of their own tunnel was audible as a muffled explosion behind them. The cave-in had done its work, leaving nothing inside the archway but an expanse of fractured white rock.
Suzy looked again and finally realized, with a shock of revelation that left her breathless, that they weren’t surrounded by sky at all; they were inside a gargantuan sphere of white stone, perhaps a hundred miles across, glowing softly with its own inner light. They had emerged through one of its walls and were racing toward the center.
The Belle’s wheels were screaming in triumph. Suzy, Stonker, and Ursel screamed with them, hugging each other and letting the wind carry away their tears of relief and elation.
“We made it!” Stonker clapped Suzy on the shoulder and jumped up and down with excitement. “I can hardly believe it, but we made it. Look!” He pointed ahead of them, and Suzy squinted into the onrushing wind.
An immense column of white stone stood in the center of the sphere, running from top to bottom like the core of an apple.
“The Ivory Tower!” said Suzy.
“So we’re not going to die now?” said Frederick. “Honestly, why can’t you people keep me up to date?” She ignored him.
“How do we get inside it?” she said.
“Through Center Point Station,” Stonker said, jabbing a finger toward a ring of sleek white buildings surrounding the center of the tower.
Like the dozens of rails that led to them, the station buildings hung suspended in the air and didn’t appear to touch the tower itself. Suzy could see a large gap between them.
“The tower doesn’t let just anyone in, remember,” said Stonker, anticipating her next question. “We have to get off at Center Point and show them a Fact of Entry. Then the tower will lower the drawbridge to let us across.”
She followed his finger, looking for the drawbridge. She couldn’t see it, but she did notice something else about the tower. “Uh…,” she said. “It’s getting closer. Very quickly.”
“Good grief!” Stonker went rigid. “What am I thinking? I forgot to slow us down!” He pushed past them and ran back to the cab. Suzy ran after him, so she was just in time to catch him by the collar and save him from plunging straight off the back of the locomotive.
Most of the cab was missing: Barely two feet of floor remained.
“It took so much,” said Suzy as Stonker dusted himself off and edged out onto the remaining stub of floor behind the controls. He reached the brake lever and, with obvious care, put his weight against it. “I’ll have to slow us down gradually, or the shock will tear what’s left of the old girl apart.”
There was an answering screech of metal from the chassis, and the brake lever began to vibrate like a tuning fork. Stonker vibrated with it.
“Come on!” he grunted. He pushed the lever over harder. The screech of the brake blocks grew louder.
And then the lever broke. It came up out of the floor with a short, sharp snap! and Suzy had to grab Stonker again to stop him from pitching over the edge and onto the track. He held up the severed lever and stared at it in horrified wonder.
“Oh dear,” he said.
Suzy looked from his wide, scared eyes to the useless length of lever. “What do we do now?” she said.
“Frumf,” said Ursel, sticking her head in through the door.
“I’m afraid she’s right,” said Stonker. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re a runaway train.”
28
BREAKING AND ENTERING
“Maybe we could jump,” said Stonker.
Suzy took one look at the blur of track racing past just beneath their feet. “At this speed?” she said. “We’d be smashed to pieces.” She buried her fingers in her hair and clenched them into fists, willing her brain to work more quickly. It refused. “I’m out of ideas,” she said.
“So am I,” said Stonker. “At least we’ll go out with our boots on.”
“I’m not wearing boots,” said Suzy. “And I refuse to die in my slippers. There must be something we can do.”
“There isn’t,” he said, calmer now. She could tell he was already preparing himself for the inevitable and wanted to remain dignified to the last. “We’re going to hit Center Point like a sledgehammer.”
She fought her way past Ursel and onto the gangway, suddenly desperate to see the final, fatal end of their journey.
Center Point raced toward them, a yawning mouth with a curved glass roof, already close enough for her to see the busy platforms inside. Their track dead-ended in heavy buffers, beyond which was a large concourse filled with people. Behind that, the station’s rear glass wall offered a spectacular view of the Ivory Tower. She supposed she might appreciate it more if it wasn’t about to kill them.
“Just so I’m clear,” said Frederick, “we’re about to die again?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“This is it,” said Stonker. “Brace yourselves.” He let a long, screaming note out of the Belle’s whistle as they rocketed into the station. Heads turned. People ran.
Suzy threw herself back into the cab and wrapped her arms around as much of the pipework as she could, a second before the Belle hit the buffers with a crash and jumped free of the tracks. Suzy’s feet left the ground. She caught glimpses of people leaping clear as the Belle slammed back down, barely slowing as it plowed a screeching furrow of sparks and shrapnel across the concourse. Ursel howled, and even Stonker cried out as they smashed pastry stands and ticket barriers to scrap beneath their wheels.
Suzy tightened her grip on the pipes and turned her face away from the flying debris outside. And there, right in front of her, was the dial with the words THIS WAY UP. A sudden, desperate idea flared in her mind. “Is gravity really negotiable?” she shouted.
“Usually!” Stonker yelled back. “But why do you want to—”
Then, with an almighty crash, the locomotive smashed through the station’s rear glass wall and flung itself off into the gulf between the station and the tower. There was a horrible moment of weightlessness as the Belle’s forward momentum fought to stave off the pull of gravity. Suzy felt her feet leave the floor again, but this time they didn’t come back down, as they began their fatal plunge toward the bottom of the sphere, so many miles below.
She twisted the dial.
* * *
For a second, she was afraid her idea had failed. They were still falling. But as she looked out of the cab, she realized they weren’t falling down anymore. The dial had done its job—she had shifted the pull of gravity on the train, and they were falling sideways. Straight toward the tower.
“Hang on!” she shouted as the huge wall of white stone filled the view through the front windows. It was massive, maybe even bigger than the Obsidian Tower, and as it grew closer she could see stained glass windows blazing in a rainbow of colors in its sides.
“Are you mad?” Stonker cried in her ear. He was hanging on to her arm with both hands, the rest of his body suspended in the air behind her. Ursel, who was gripping the mantelpiece with her uninjured paw, looked equally unhappy.
“I know what I’m doing!” Suzy cried, praying that it was true.
Ursel grunted and pointed through the front window. They were heading straight for one of the stained glass windows.
“Hold on!” Stonker shouted, and ducked his head against Suzy’s shoulder. Ursel wrapp
ed the two of them in her huge arms, and Suzy buried her face in the bear’s warm fur.
Glass smashed. Then there was a jarring shock, a dull explosion, and everything went dark.
* * *
“Are we alive? Did we make it?”
Frederick’s voice reached Suzy through roiling clouds of dust and smoke. She sat up and waited for everything to stop spinning.
The Belle de Loin lay at a drunken angle, surrounded by the wreckage of the stained glass window. A few embers guttered in the cab’s fireplace, and the cooling metal of the boiler ticked and pinged. Otherwise, the great locomotive was finally silent and still.
“I think we did,” she said, her voice jittery with adrenaline. “Is everyone all right?”
The floor stirred underneath her, and she realized that she was sitting on top of a tangle of yellow fur and oversized mustache. She rolled aside as Ursel and Stonker both sat up.
“Grunk,” said the bear, rubbing herself on the head.
“Yes,” said Stonker. “It’s not quite how I would have chosen to get here, but we all seem to be in one piece. How’s our mystery guest?” He nodded at the bulge in Suzy’s pocket.
“I’m fine, no thanks to you lot,” said Frederick. “Now let’s go before something even worse happens.”
“Go?” Stonker raised his eyebrows, unleashing a puff of dust from each of them. “Go where?”
“We’ve got to find the library,” said Suzy. “We’re looking for a book.”
“Then you’re in luck,” said Stonker. “Look around you.”
The last of the dust had settled, and Suzy was finally able to see the space they had invaded. A great many old wooden bookcases lay strewn around like toppled dominoes, and the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with yet more shelves. Books lay in piles amid the debris, their pages torn and dirtied.
“Oh dear,” she said. What if Harmful Spells and How to Break Them was among the wreckage?
Stonker climbed to his feet and inspected the controls. Every single one of them was dead: the glass in the panels cracked, the mantelpiece broken, the carriage clock smashed to fragments on the floor. He prodded the embers in the fireplace with his toe. They let out a weak cough of sparks and died. He rested his forehead against the ruined pipework and drew in a shuddering breath. “I hope this is worth it,” he said with a quaver in his voice.