In their impeccably black, close-fitted suits, they looked more like undertakers than killers; remarkably, they’d both somehow kept their narrow-brimmed bowlers perched on their heads. Each wore a glove of black leather on his left hand, and had removed the other to free the weapon concealed there: a messy intermingling of meat and mechanism, trading the luxury of five human fingers for a gear-studded stump and spitting death.
They were monsters of distorted science, and she might even have felt sorry for them were it not for their chill indifference. Whatever they’d endured, they had surely done so willingly, so as to become better weapons, so as to earn better pay. She was only another job to them, and Kieran and Palimpsest nothing at all.
Furian held a breath and tensed against the drag and push of the wind. There was a groove in the underside of the device on her wrist and she sighted along it. The man she was aiming at, the nearer of the two, made no attempt to get out of the way—for there was nowhere he could go. He only looked at her, with one good eye and the other a caved-in, bloody pit. He didn’t look afraid or angry, or even curious.
Furian twisted her wrist in just such a way, a switch in the dart weapon depressed, and with a shrill whistle it discharged the entirety of its remaining ammunition.
Four shots: four darts, expelled in a tight cone. With one or two or even three, she’d surely have missed. With four? But she couldn’t say. He hadn’t moved. He was still staring at her. No blood could show upon that pitch-black fabric. Then, still holding her eyes, he raised his own hand, and Furian knew she had wasted this, her one chance. She was going to die here, a stupid, helpless insect strung upon this web.
His hand closed on the rail. He leaned forward, and then his left leg gave out altogether, abandoning his weight. He sagged forward, and for an instant she was sure he’d fall. But at the last moment he managed to twist, so that he lay on his belly, one hand still grasping the rail and his other arm beneath him. Even then he could barely hold himself in place. He seemed torn between trying to remain on the collar and wriggling to take any weight off his leg—an impossible hope given that there was barely room to lie at all.
The dart must have ripped through the muscle of his calf. Between that and the tormented flesh of his face, he would be in inordinate pain. Still, Furian was glad she hadn’t killed him. And not just because she found the prospect of killing distasteful—for the second man, after a moment’s indecision, was hurrying now to rescue his partner before he inadvertently hurled himself into the ether. It was the best result she might have hoped for, the two of them both out of action—if only briefly.
She wasn’t about to wait and savour it. Furian pressed herself back against the netting and, as she did so, deliberately caught Kieran’s eye—taking a small pleasure in the admiration she thought she saw there. Then she was climbing with all her strength. The pinnacle of the rigging seemed closer than it had, and her movements were surer, arms and legs working smoothly together like the strokes of a swimmer.
A few seconds more and the hatch was almost within reach. In her eagerness Furian pushed up to her full length, strained against the flowing netting to hammer with one palm against the ironclad planks. It must be locked on the inside. No, it wasn’t, it gave, and she struggled harder, locking the muscles in her calves and thighs, taking sudden joy in the peaty scent of fresh-oiled hinges. Furian reached, pushed, sure that one hard shove would be enough, would mean safety . . .
. . . and her grip slipped, and then she was grasping at nothing, clutching empty air, knowing that when she fell she would surely take Kieran with her . . .
. . . but there was cold iron beneath his fingers, and Doran Floranov seized it with breathless gratitude. Even as the wind that slid across him in thundering sheets did its best to tear him from the top tier of the TransContinentia, he managed to slip his fingertips deeper. The window was stiff and so had been carelessly closed, a fact that had probably saved his life; but it meant that it took all his might to widen the gap. Yet he did, and in a moment there was room to compress his fist into the opening and wrench upward.
Only then did he dare to look for Kiera. He was grateful to discover that she was close behind him: stood upon the narrow rampart where the middle and highest levels of the colossal carriage met, holding herself in place with one hand jammed into a crevasse of the dull black metal. Doran wasn’t sure he had ever seen her nervous before; even now, she wore it subtly. As she looked back at him, only the slight flush of her pale skin and the intensity in her eyes gave it away. Her voice was calm as she said, “It’s all right, Doran. You go first.”
It wasn’t just selflessness, he thought. They weren’t trying to kill Kiera and so she was safe—as safe as one could be when clinging to the side of a train travelling at enormous speed. To be sure, Doran looked beyond her, seeking for Heleon Dorivic’s men. He could see the flank of the train coiling onward, a python whipping itself across the waters. Further, in the distance, across the red-stained, poisoned waters he had sworn to make anew, Nova Omsk rose in waves that made him think of beetles crawling, until the iron fortress at its heart thrust up to clutch the leaden clouds and render everything around it insignificant.
With an effort Floranov tore his eyes from the dismal edifice and once more scanned the nearer carriages—each as high as a two-storey house and half as wide—for Dorivic’s agents. In their neat, dark suits, and with the scene blurred by motion and sea spray, they had all but disappeared against the deeper darkness of the next carriage. It was not going well for them; the wounded man was making things difficult for his partner. He couldn’t stand, there wasn’t space upon the narrow catwalk that ringed the lowest edge of the carriage to rest him flat, and every time he struggled, he threatened to tip one or the other of them over. More, the wounded man was making it impossible for his colleague to pass.
Finally, as Floranov watched, the second man came to a decision. He drew out the stubby pistol he’d put away in his pocket. His wounded companion watched the motion carefully, though without obvious fear. Even when the gun was pointed at him, he didn’t react, other than to continue the irregular jerking motion that rocked his body. The snap of the gun firing was lost in the endless clack-clack-clack of metal wheels upon metal rails, like the crack of a tree struck down in a storm: a minor act of violence played out on too grand a stage.
The second assassin let a moment pass to make certain his colleague was not going to move again and then, with his foot, nudged the man’s legs through a gap in the railing. After a point, gravity and his weight took hold, and the dead man’s entire body was sucked along, dragged flopping across the lowest skirt of the train and over the edge of the sleepers and down the concrete embankment into the heaving, crimson waves of the Atlantic.
For some reason, this sudden, casual brutality and then the dead man’s helpless compliance with physics frightened Floranov more than any threat to himself. With the realisation that he’d stood numbly watching the entire act play out, he found suddenly that he could move. He turned again to the window and, with hands made unwieldy by fear, scrabbled at the entrance he’d created.
The opening was barely large enough, and he was grateful for the quirks of nature that had made him fine-boned. Another shot rang out; Floranov only knew that it hadn’t hit him. Fortunately there was a sturdy curtain rail bolted above the inside of the window, and once he had hold of that, it was merely difficult and horribly uncomfortable to haul himself in, then to twist and flop onto the nearest seat.
Within, the carriage was at once luxurious and austere. The walls were panelled with dark wood and the seats padded with dark fabric; the upper portion of the door was of smoked glass. The benches were wide and comfortable-looking, designed to double as beds, and a low table nestled between them. A smaller door to the left of the main one led off into what must be a private toilet. Cupboard doors might hide luggage compartments or, more likely, coolers for alcoholic drinks.
It was all a long way from the suffocating pre
ss of the prole carriages, where travellers were pressed in like chickens awaiting slaughter. Floranov had himself travelled in both, for only the Party’s money had ever been sufficient to provide him with this luxury. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t enjoyed it, even as a part of him had raged at the expense, the needlessness, the horrid divisions of a society that still wore the public face of egalitarianism.
Now Floranov gave the carriage only the briefest of glances and considered its connotations not at all. He lay on the couch seat just long enough to bring his breathing back under control and then reeled to the window and caught hold of Kiera’s outstretched hands. It was a struggle to draw her inside, but he managed it, and at the last she tumbled forward, her weight crushing him back down onto the seat.
Before Floranov had time to consider the implications of this sudden, uncomfortable intimacy too deeply, Kiera had rolled off him and over the table that separated the two couches. She ended on the other with a small “oomph” and lay staring up at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling in quick shudders.
“We need to keep moving,” Floranov managed. But when he got to his feet, he found his legs barely strong enough to support him. With an effort, he stumbled to the window and pulled the pane shut, drawing the curtain after it. It would only provide the briefest of delays, and if the sound of gunfire hadn’t alerted anyone, then there was little hope the shattering of glass would. Anyway, for all he knew the authorities were complicit in this plot of Heleon Dorivic’s. Floranov was not in a position to rely on anyone’s aid; except for Kiera, there was no one within a thousand miles he could categorically believe was on his side.
Yet even as he thought it, he registered the rigid set of her jaw, the suppressed fury in her eyes. He didn’t know what to make of her expression, except to realise it portended trouble for someone and to hope that someone wasn’t him. Not daring to ask, Floranov instead staggered out through the carriage door and into the corridor. It stretched a great distance in either direction, for the carriages were long. From the way the walls flexed with each slight bend, it would have been easy to believe they were travelling not on fixed rails mounted upon an artificial peninsula, but on the shifting surface of the sea itself.
Looking left and right, Floranov wondered if one way was better than the other. There was still something to be said for trying to stop the train. Out here, with nothing but ocean for miles, there was at least a hope of limiting the damage Palimpsest might inflict. Then again, every minute he wasted was one in which he might be challenging Dorivic, rescuing his creation, returning it to working order, or else neutralising it before something unimaginably terrible could happen. Yes, now that he thought of it like that, there was really no choice to be made. “I’m going after Dorivic,” he decided aloud.
“No, you’re not,” Kiera said. “Not until you’ve told me what’s going on.” She had moved ahead of him, in the direction of the engine car. She tried the handle of the last compartment of the carriage and, when it gave, eased the door open. “Come in here. Talk to me. Either you tell me or I’m going back to Heleon myself and I’ll make him tell me.”
Hurrying over, Floranov glanced anxiously back towards the compartment they’d just left, and then once more up and down the carriage’s long central aisle. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, through gritted teeth.
The slap took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have, he realised, putting a tentative hand to his jaw; and nor should Kiera’s strength, for she’d always been at least his equal in that department. “Listen to me . . .” he began.
“No,” she said. “You listen to me. I’ve been lied to by Heleon Dorivic, and you betrayed me a long time ago, even if it was only by omission. I owe nothing to either of you. But something’s happening here, I know it, something wrong, and you’ve both made me a part of it. If you want my help, then you’ll explain this to me right now. And if you don’t, I swear to you, I’ll ask Heleon. One of you should have the decency to tell me the truth.”
Floranov considered. He could refuse and keep Kiera safe, perhaps. Then again, he knew better than anyone that nowhere was safe from Palimpsest. And while he hoped her threat was meant only to provoke him, he couldn’t be certain. At any rate, there was more to concern himself with than his ex-wife’s safety, let alone his own—and he was very much in need of an ally.
“All right,” he said. Floranov pushed past, into the carriage, and drew Kiera after. He closed the door behind them and twisted the lock, which settled into place with a satisfying clunk.
It would be impossible to hear them from out in the corridor. These compartments, meant for officers and Party high-ups, were reinforced and soundproofed. If Dorivic’s man decided to start forcing each door, there was every chance he’d begin with the wrong one, find some Party mogul perhaps with his own bodyguards in tow, and then things would go badly for him.
Within, the cabin was identical to the one they’d left. That was the State all over, Floranov thought: even its luxuries were devoid of imagination. Yet luxury was still luxury, and the peasants in the prole carriages would still have been awed. Floranov sank thankfully onto the nearer bench. It was absurd, but he felt almost safe. He tried to remind himself that Dorivic’s thug was still out there, as was Dorivic himself, that even if the authorities were ignorant of this plot against him they would hardly be sympathetic—and that all of those dangers together didn’t equal one thousandth of the threat a malfunctioning Palimpsest might pose.
But all of that seemed distant. The seat was comfortable against his back and rump. When Kiera sat opposite him there was a cosy familiarity to the scene, for all that there was still irritation in the downturn of her mouth, insistence in the way her eyes held his. Palimpsest . . . how did he explain it? It was so hard to make sense of, even when it was working as it should.
Yet Floranov couldn’t stay silent beneath the gaze of those slate grey eyes. “I’m sure you know the basics,” he said. “Everyone’s aware of Ellinski’s elaboration of multiverse theory . . . her appreciation that the factors causing parallel realities to diverge from one another were more complex than had previously been hypothesised. She was the first to conclusively disprove that old cod-scientific trope whereby every choice, every apparently random event, would generate its own distinct reality.”
“I do know the basics,” Kiera said, without patience.
Floranov had always tended to forget what an omnivore of knowledge she could be.
“All right,” he said. “Then you know that Ellinski proved beyond doubt that while what existed was indeed a stack of alternative realities, each was in fact dramatically different from the next . . . but nevertheless interlinked, interdependent in ways we can hardly imagine. What Ellinski realised that no one before her had was that the differences between realities were far more significant than the old theories would have suggested. It was as if only the most vigorous, divergent realities could sustain themselves; the rest collapsed back into unbeing. As though it was all a deliberate process, a conscious process . . .”
“Please don’t tell me you’re talking about God,” Kiera said disdainfully.
She had always been even more contemptuous of the old theologies than the State required her to be. Perhaps that was one of the real reasons Floranov had hid Palimpsest from her, for in truth she had a point: his creation had always seemed to him to fall upon the intersection of science and something measureless and strange.
“No, nothing like that,” he countered, trying to sound as if he meant it. “All right then, think of it like a machine, or an organism . . . one that constantly remakes itself through experimentation. A deliberate evolution.”
“To what end?” Kiera asked.
“Who knows? Could we even imagine? Maybe there is no end. Maybe the experimentation is an end in itself. Perhaps the multiverse, the reality stack, just likes to dream itself anew each day.”
“You sound like a zealot,” she said. “Is that what happened to you? Why you were so dist
ant for so long? Did you get religion?”
“No, not at all,” Floranov said sourly, not knowing if she was serious or joking, or attempting to hurt him, or all three. “I’m just trying to make you understand the theory.”
“Then say I understand. You still haven’t told me what this machine of yours actually does.”
“No,” he agreed. “Well, that’s more tricky. Bear with me, will you? You see, at first the idea was that Palimpsest would allow the viewing of realities further down the Stack. That was where my research money came from; some obscure R & D division in one of the more esoteric State departments. Only, the officer who authorised it died and they couldn’t find a replacement, and somewhere along the way it all got snarled in red tape. I found myself working in a vacuum. I realised they had no idea what I was up to, or else they didn’t care.”
Floranov paused, tried to gather his memories. It all seemed so long ago; the experiences of a younger, more naive and—he could see now—a happier man. Even in the bad times, the months when it had seemed that all his work would be for nothing, there had been a sort of certainty, an underpinning of reality, which had vanished in those latter days. How much of that had come from the woman opposite him, he wondered? And for a moment he hesitated—for it seemed to him they were on opposite sides of a gulf of terrible knowledge, and it would be an inordinate cruelty to share what should be his to bear alone.
Yet the choice was out of his hands. Her grey eyes held him, drove him on.
“But even with no one paying attention,” Floranov said, “for a long time my work felt like a dead end. I got close, very close, but the pieces wouldn’t come together. I was obsessed but I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t in love with it. It had no application. Oh, the State would find some purpose, maybe harvest technology concepts from other realities, maybe spy on other iterations of themselves and learn something that way. I could see uses. But I couldn’t see anything that was useful. Our world is broken and bleeding, growing worse by the day, and I wanted to heal it, in however small a way. But Palimpsest was the only idea I had, and I didn’t know how I could bend it to do that.”
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