by Ian McDonald
Him.
“You, you turd!” Sweetness shouted.
Serpio.
Devastation Harx pulled the gunners away from their crank-wheels and chain feeds and Gatling sights and cast them aside like a Poor Claireen purging a stockmarket dealing pit.
“Stop it, stop it at once, buffoons, fools, po-heads, cretins. I, your Harx, command you! Cease fire! Cease fire! You are shooting at lies! Lies!”
But convincing lies. For the first moment, when the blast doors opened and he saw the things he had always dreaded, always dreamed, flocking and swooping outside the Gatling turret, his parts had shrivelled with pure, superstitious dread. In that moment, the Nagging Demon that pricks all holy men and preachers whispered, you had to do it, didn’t you, you push and push and push and in the end, you succeeded, you pissed the Panarch Himself off, and now look what you’ve done, saints and angels coming out of the sky like hailstones at a holiday barbecue. Well, I hope you’re happy, Devastation Harx. Just for the first moment. Then for the next moment, he saw his brave boys, his mail-order crusaders, meet the limitless powers of the Omnipotence with whooping determination and good marksmanship, their grim-set mouths foam-flecked with zeal. Then he had seen the white stutter of tracer pass harmlessly through the seemingly corporeal divine hosts, the cloudy wakes they left behind as they howled and loomed and Pride Demon said, Call that an effects budget? When the Seven Trumpets play sweet bebop and God the Panarchic calls out the boys, you’ll know about it.
Then Devastation Harx felt a towering rage, that the enemies against whom he pitted his every strength and resource should insult him with ghost candles and magic lantern spooks and mists of ectoplasm.
He straight-armed the shrieking gunner away from the triggers, slapped up the safeties and turned to thunder down on his faithful.
“Illusions!” he proclaimed. “Deceptions! Flim-flammery to dupe us from the real enemy! We are infiltrated, our enemy is within, in this sacred place, on our own sanctum, and in here.” He touched finger to head. Devastation Harx frowned, touched finger to forehead again. He shook something that was not lingering battle gas out of his head, swivelled his eyes upward to the main bulk of the cathedral hanging above. His mouth opened, a quiet ah went out of him.
“Did you feel that?” he asked his cowed, stoned disciples. “Did you feel that? Some…thing went out of me. Some…thing touched me.” His eyes went wide. “No! They have it! Bastards!” He raised his cane. “With me, people! They must not get away with this! We shall recapture St. Catherine.” He leaped from the gun platform and was borne out of the turret on a surge of ululating, drug-berserked believers.
Ben’s Town to Annency; Annency to Perdition Junction; Perdition Junction to Laurel Hill. Woolamagong. Serendip. Acacia Heights. Atomic Avenue. The nameboards blurred past, waiting passengers stepped back, then stepped forward to stare after the vision of blue and silver and steam that had thundered past them, drawing all their newspapers into a rattling dance in its wake. Class 88 Catherine of Tharsis broke all records for the Grand Valley mainline. The fusion djinns howled inside their tokamak bottles, the drive rods shuddered and jumped in their housings, every loose scrap of metal and under-tightened bolt rattled and hummed as the Ares Express came through. Scruffy little commuter shuttles, ill-bred schoolgirl specials, slow local stoppers bustled out of the path of the furious monster on to branch lines. Thousand car freighters and Intercity Limiteds were herded and held on sidings; even the transplanetary expresses found themselves inexcusably held at orange as the Insane Train ran every signal and flaunted every speed restriction. Central Track Control sent command after command, all ignored as Grandfather Bedzo, with a saliva-y smile, opened up the throttles and poured in the steam. In the panoramic Central Dispatching Room of the half-kilometre-high glass nail of Central’s control tower, despatchers in the ankle-length beige duster coats of Great Southern Traction debated throwing the runaway on to a long run of branch line. They ran the figures on their wrapround Track Display Visors, thought again. At its current speed, the intruder would tear through the points like a child ripping open a birthday present. A four-hundred-and-eighty-kilometre-per-hour derailment and subsequent tokamak explosion would take a ten-kilometre square section of the planet’s most densely utilised rail network out of commission for a time measured by half-lives.
Let them get where they are going in so all-fired a hurry, was the conclusion. Re-route, hold and divert and pray the Angel of Trains they don’t meet anything coming in the opposite direction. We’ll get them in the courts later.
Then, amazement in the tower of glass. The Runaway Train was slowing. Senior Signallers summoned Track Regulation Officers Grade II to confirm the information on their visors. They ran to their Dispatch Assistants levels 2 and 3 and returned with the reports from the Signal Attendants: yes, out there in the green fields of Canton Thrench, Catherine of Tharsis was coming to a halt.
“What is happening, why are we slowing?” Child’a’grace chirped as, through her boot soles, she felt the subtle shift of weight that meant that her train was losing speed. Bedzo’s face was tight with either concentration or constipation as he applied and released the brakes. The rising screech of hot brake shoe filled the driving bridge.
“What is going on?”
“Something on the track ahead,” Romereaux said, frowning, trying to read traffic information from the data-sphere.
“Another train?” Child’a’grace asked.
Catherine of Tharsis had slowed to a undignified commuter-train lope and still Bedzo applied the brakes.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Romereaux said. “Looks more like, lots of little things.”
“Little things?”
“I can’t get any detail on this effort,”
The great train had slowed to walking pace. Psalli called from the window.
“I see them, I see them!”
Her tone brought Romereaux straight to the curving glass.
“Full halt!” he yelled. Bedzo complied with a thought. Everyone on the bridge staggered as brakes bit hard, steam billowed, drive shafts flailed and kicked into reverse. Wheels screeched on steel rail, then all was quiet. Catherine of Tharsis stood panting gently on the Grand Valley up line. Facing it across a hundred empty metres was an army of robots. They were twice the height of a man and twice as broad, had four metal legs and four metal arms all of which ended in stabbing, slashing or snipping weapons. They had beaked metal insect-heads with complex metal mandibles that opened and closed and chewed in a horrid way. They glowed golden in the Grand Valley sun, their eye clusters glittered. They said, we are painless and tireless and relentless and merciless and perfectly professional about what we do. Every one of the watching faces pressed to the observation glass up on the bridge could see that very clearly.
“What the hell are those?” asked young Thwayte Engineer in a very adult voice.
“Those are a thing I and all of I’se people hoped never never to see,” Child’a’grace said gently. “Those are moon-warriors, fallen to earth. Their presence can mean only one thing: our world is under attack. We are at war, they have come to defend us.”
On which cue the entire phalanx, fifty by fifty, took a ground-shaking step forward.
“I’m not so sure about the defend bit,” said Anhinga nervously.
A metallic click, audible through the armoured glass. Like the Skandavas in the collaged caves of Attaganda, each of the machines cocked its four arms. Blades flashed in readiness.
“And where is Taal exactly?” Psalli asked.
“Exactly on the far side of them,” Romereaux said.
“Full reverse!” Child’a’grace suddenly commanded, swirling away from the window to Bedzo’s side. The old patriarch grinned toothlessly. At long last, his beloved train was his again. Let the man who still has a drop of juice in him get his hand on the drive rod, not that arrogant, prudish stick of a son of his. No Engineer in his heart.
“Ha ha!” Bedzo said and, with
a pulse of his mind, the tokamaks blazed and the boiler seethed, the cranks pumped and the wheels turned and, with gathering speed, Catherine of Tharsis backed away from the army blockade.
In their high glass tower, the Beige Controllers read the new reports from Thrench Regional and decided it might just be best to call it a day and all go home.
Out in the green fields, Harx’s occupation force noticed a change in their parameters and clicked into advance mode. A thousand metal hooves churned up the summer grazing. Bedzo put a clear two kilometres between the train and the advancing troopers, then stopped. The big train waited.
“Now!” Child’a’grace shouted, and everyone in the cab saw the years and chapatti dust fall from her and she was again the Child of Grace, the bright, vivacious, dotty and energetic woman who had sold her freedom for marriage to a train. “Full steam ahead!”
“Wa!” Bedzo shouted. Hydrogen raved into helium. Every piston exploded superheated steam. The abused drive shafts kicked again, the journel bearings shrieked. The wheels spun as tons of sand was poured on to the track, found purchase, bit. Three thousand tons of Class 88 fusion hauler leaped forward like a speed-dog from a trap, wreathed in steam like a Shandastria geyser elemental. At the sight of their target stopping, the robot soldiers had broken into a heavy trot. Now as it bore down on them, whistles shrieking, they stopped, tried to turn, scatter, flee. Too late, too slow. Catherine of Tharsis bowled them over like pins. Amputated limbs; gnashing, severed insect-heads were strewn hither and yon. A rain of blades embedded themselves in the soft green turf.
“There’s one on our port fairing!” Psalli shouted, peering out of a shunting oriole. “He’s climbing up!”
Grandfather Bedzo rolled and farted under the coronet of his cyberhat. A twitch of the corner of his mouth, a blast of steam from the overheat release valve sent it spinning half a hundred metres. The old man rocked and laughed as the mutineers put the rout beneath their wheels.
“I see her, I see her!” Miriamme Traction called from the forward observation balcony, Sweetness’s former vantage. “She’s waving a flare!” But even before Child’a’grace could call full stop, Bedzo was already applying the brakes. These striplings today understood nothing, respected nothing. Understood nothing because they respected nothing. Had no pride. Bedzo Trine Cirrus Minor Asiim Engineer 10th had been Engineer of Engineers. He would bring his train in so sweet, so smooth, the old lady would not even have to walk to the steps.
“I don’t know where you popped up from, but you’re going right back again,” Sweetness said to Serpio, centimetre by centimetre climbing her legs. She clubbed him hard with the St. Catherine pyx. He cried out, lifted his hands to his bleeding head, fell heavily to the ground.
“To think, I gave up a perfectly good stainless steel kitchen for you,” Sweetness said, leaping nimbly over Serpio and sprinting for the other, unbarred door. But he was already on his feet, after her. God, he might be a Waymender, but he was fast. He dived for Sweetness, was knocked sideways with a crunching oof as Pharaoh came barrelling in in a sliding tackle that would have had any soccer player red carded. The two men rolled over and over in a tangle of attempted blows. Sweetness reflected casually, and inappropriately, how alike they looked.
“Out!” Pharaoh shouted. “Down and out!”
“You mean?” Sweetness winced as Pharaoh took an elbow in the ribs.
“The aperture, go on, go! Jump! I’ll catch up.”
They fell to it again. Sweetness hit the door catch, pelted down the short curving corridor and almost knocked down a very tall, very big woman dressed in purple cycle gear. Big muscles too. Sweetness jumped back. The big woman blocked her escape. She smiled, beckoned with her hand, give, here.
“Uh uh,” Sweetness said and pulled out her beanie gun. Sianne Dandeever grinned like a skull and took a step forward.
“This will hurt, you know,” Sweetness said, and shot her point blank. Sianne Dandeever’s hand moved like a snake striking. She caught the bean bag in midair. She tossed it, caught it in her palm, smiled. Then she dived and brought Sweetness, beanie gun, canister and all down in a crunching tackle.
“Get off me, you big fat lesbian dyke!” Sweetness shouted and looked for something to bite but the big woman’s big hands were forcing her fingers open. Then she heard a noise like wind-rotor blades slicing air, a soft-edge whistling, glimpsed, past the big body crushing the wind out of her, something back-flipping fast down the corridor. The willy-willy demon whirled past, something caught Harx’s lieutenant a hefty whack on the back of the head, sending the big woman sprawling.
Skerry rolled out of her tumbling sequence as Sianne Dandeever shook the impact of grip-soled left foot out of her head and came up slugging. A savatte kick under the jaw sent her straight down again. Skerry cuffed her wrist to ankle with plastic wire grips.
Sweetness scrambled up, backed away, beanie gun levelled.
“I’ll have that,” Skerry said, advancing toward Sweetness.
“You will not.”
“Look, I’ve had a difficult day. Just hand it over.”
“Get away.”
“I’m the government.”
“You would say that.”
“Don’t make me take it off you. I can. I will.”
Sweetness shook her head. Skerry saw her finger twitch on the firing stud of the beanie-gun.
“I think I should tell you, I’d not just catch that, I’d throw it right back at you as well.”
“Oh yeah?” Sweetness said, swinging the beanie-gun a millimetre and firing at the pressure-seal emergency door switch she could see and she knew Skerry could not. Skerry caught a fistful of air as the metal semicircles slammed together in her face.
“Balls!” she muttered. She called up Seskinore. “The girl’s got the thing and she’s making a run for it. There’s still a chance.”
The bloody show must bloody go on.
“Please deposit three million dollars for the next ten minutes of personalised weather,” the computer voice at Grand Valley Regional Weather said without the least flicker of irony. Weill lifted the telephone receiver away from his ear, looked at Seskinore.
Seskinore, listening on the monitor, shook his head and cut his throat with a terminating finger. Weill hung up without a word. Together, they watched the apocalypse dissolve into the early afternoon sunlight. Pursued, pursuer and pursuer-of-pursuer were now so far away down the long tunnel of Grand Valley only the airborne cathedral was visible, a wobbling orange oval. Rather like a flying dog-biscuit, Weill thought inconsequentially.
“The mission is a complete and unqualified lemon,” Seskinore said ringingly. His fancies of summer seasons, charabanc picnics, celebrity bingo, maybe even once again doing the cruise trains, had evaporated like the cloud saints and angels. He was now and forever an unfunny comic with weak material in a too-small suit.
“No it isn’t!” Skerry roared on the comline. “Get Mishcon in here, I’m going after the girl.”
“Such a pro,” Weill said, admiringly.
There comes a time in running, Sweetness discovered, when it is very easy to forget just why you are running, where to and who from. It is just running, pure and purposeless and absolutely chemical, and therefore very very silly and very very dangerous. She willed herself to stop, think, think girl. Think. Down and out, he had said. Back to the aperture. Aperture. Where had that been? Where was she now? Sweetness looked around for landmarks. Few and featureless in these circular corridors. Some cathedral this. No shrines of the saints, no centavo-a-candle angelic light-’em-ups. No swinging censers, no hand-hammered carillons, no statues with scary eyes that followed you around the place, suspicious of sin. No bells, few smells now that that weird perfume Pharaoh had complained about seemed to have dispersed. Not even piles of leaflets or self-sew purple habit kits or whatever mail-order paraphernalia the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family needed to conduct its business with God. The single piece of religious engineering she’d come acro
ss she’d climbed all over with her size sevens. She’d seen more spiritual tat in an arcade game.
Refreshed by her brief exercise in cynicism, Sweetness peered at the outer corridor wall. It sloped very slightly inward from top to bottom. Southern hemisphere. Any down ramp around her would do. She slipped back into running mode. Anything that got in her way, stuck a face round a corner, looked vaguely in her direction, she roared at. The things fled, shrieking thinly. There was obviously very much more going on here than she knew about; the angel-thing she had glimpsed through the shattered dome, the seeming plague of mass hysteria, the fit girl in the green leotard. All of them were up there, behind her somewhere, with the big hard woman and Pharaoh and that Serpio, and, ultimately, Harx himself. Don’t think about it, Sweetness Octave. You’ve got what you came for. You get in, you get it, you get out. The rest will sort itself.
Her traingirl sense stopped her in midstride. Here. She skipped back a step. The tunnel looked the same as all the others in this forsaken burg, but ripples in her water insisted: here, yes, really. She rounded a dog’s leg and saw sky. A lot of sky. Into which she was meant to jump with little more than her trust in the home-brew parafoil on her back. And she had done the Point of Worst Personal Threat bit. The Feisty and Resourceful (But Cute With It) Heroine was into narrative terra incognita. She edged up to the lip. Crosswinds buffeted her; the cathedral started and swayed as if taking evasive action. She could still hear gunfire from overhead. She crept forward, took a peek at the ground. Seen worse. Risked higher. Still far enough and hard enough to kill you dead dead dead.
“Why is there never a Plan B?” she pleaded with the Laws of Universal Narratology as she secured the Catherine bottle in a breast pocket of her track jacket and braced herself against the side. Wind whipped her hair into her eyes. She tried to comb the greasy, stinky, sticky stuff out of her eyes, lost her balance as the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family seemed to drop out from underneath her and fell into the void.
“Aaaagh!” she cried, staring at a plan view of the undulating drumlin country of Canton Thrench. Then her hands found the rip cord, thirty square metres unfolded above her and she was jerked up into the air. “Oooh,” said Sweetness Asiim Engineer, flying. Pharaoh had given her verbal instructions in the control of the parafoil but they had been strictly just-in-case. Sweetness shifted her weight in the harness, pulled on the guys to scoop air into the left winglet and went spiralling up the side of the cathedral.