He turned back to his bed and saw his wife stirring under the sheets. He looked at his infant child, sleeping fitfully in her crib. It occurred to him that he did not have a wife, or a child. And that he did not live in Calcutta Bubble.
But he did, of course. He had been born here, schooled here, married here. At age twenty-three, he had entered service as a conductor on the King’s Railroad. He could not play the piano. He had never even seen a piano, except perhaps in photographs, and on the television.
His name was, and ever had been, Terry Hawthorne.
And so it was Terry Hawthorne who watched Mr. Renault step reluctantly aside, at last. It was Terry Hawthorne who hurried past him, and began the process of removing one set of sheets and applying another. It was Terry Hawthorne who strove fruitlessly to ignore the jangling stateroom bells ringing up and down the length of the corridor outside, and it was Terry Hawthorne who reconciled himself to the stern reprimands he would now inevitably receive from the head conductor.
Virgil Smythe was present still, but only as a memory. A false memory, at that. Virgil Smythe had never existed.
3: THE PIRATE IN SECOND CLASS
Something was happening outside. William looked up from his book and saw a crowd forming around a lady who had collapsed onto the platform. It was hard to make out her face—she was just a mound of lace and bloomers, at the moment—but she seemed young. Probably another corset incident.
A little farther away, near the platform’s entrance, a small troupe of train officers were applying electrical truncheons to a flailing dromedon. William watched the poor creature convulse and shudder and flip helplessly from shape to shape.
“Good lord, what’s all this about?” said his cabinmate, a young fop in a bowler hat. He peered through the window. “Ah. Some damnable dromedon mischief.”
“Quite,” said William. He’d reserved a private cabin, but the train was full, and they’d placed him instead in a shared berth with this creature: a spoiled wastrel heir named Percival Wiggins, who proved himself to be as loud as he was insipid, and apparently incapable of silence.
Worse: William was disguised as a spoiled wastrel heir, and was thus compelled, by the edicts of his assumed class, to carry on a conversation with this man.
“What I don’t understand,” said the fop, “is why we don’t get rid of the lot of them. If those beastly dromedons are so unhappy living among us, why don’t they just go away?”
“Indeed,” said William, determined to say nothing else. And yet he said: “Of course, they didn’t ask to be here.”
“Oh?” Percy turned away from the window and smirked at William. “Father tells me that they sneak across the border for work. Taking jobs away from good bubble citizens, etc., etc.”
“Well—I’ve a friend who works at the bubbleworks in Kingsbridge. Good chap, brilliant fellow. He tells me that these creatures were caught up in the causality field when the bubbles were forged. They’re native betweeners, I gather, atemporal and all that. Most of them just died when we imposed time on their habitat. But a few survived. Adapted, I suppose.”
“Atemporal? What on earth does that mean?”
William checked his watch. They’d be out of Hampshire Bubble in twenty minutes, and then there would be an interval of ten minutes before they could begin. So another half-hour with this ridiculous creature. “Atemporal? Oh, I think it means that they can’t exist in time. There’s no time in the between, you see. Just the raw substrate of events, floating free, with no particular relation to one another. Nothing really ever happens out there—or rather, everything happens, at once, and forever.”
The fop laughed. “Good lord, Willy. You sound like one of those loathsome intellectuals that father dotes on. Speak English, won’t you?”
William forced a chuckle. “Forgive me, old chap. Mother insisted that I attend university this term. I’m afraid some of the schooling managed to penetrate.”
“Quite all right. Knowledge happens to the best of us.”
“Yes. Well, as I understand it, the dromedons were a kind of lifeform that existed in the between. Not life as we’d understand it, of course, rather some sort of quasi-sentience that could withstand and even thrive in a causeless environment. Trapping them in time was like hauling a fish out of its pond, or exposing an anaerobic cell to oxygen. That’s why so many of them died.”
Percival was losing interest. He brushed an arrant something off his trousers, and said: “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it though? And think of the implications. Taking something that’s completely free of the notion of time and squeezing it into a body that’s utterly shackled to it. It would feel like prison, I imagine. If not torture.”
“Oh dear, how melodramatic. I, for one, would welcome that kind of structure to my day.”
“Quite, quite. That is their grievance, however. Or so they claim.”
“Well, then, I say it again: they should just go back to their formless void, if they’re so very unhappy.”
“But that’s the problem, you see. They can’t. Once you’re part of time, you simply cannot go back. The ones who made the attempt suffered the same fate as we would.”
“Which is?”
“Madness.”
“Oh. That.” The fop shrugged. “Well, if all of that rubbish is true, I suppose they’ll just have to learn to live with us. God knows they’ve had enough time to adjust.”
“But time is exactly what they don’t want, old man.”
The fop threw up his hands, and laughed. “Enough! You win. The dromedons are poor downtrodden unfortunates. Humanity is a pack of beastly genocidal colonist occupiers. Satisfied?”
William thought about the machete in his valise. “Oh dear, Percy. Please don’t mistake this little intellectual exercise for actual beliefs. I’m merely trying to pass the time.”
“Good. I was beginning to suspect you of convictions.”
“Heaven forbid,” said William. They were lifting the woman on the platform onto a gurney, now, and strapping her down. She writhed and screamed, continuously. The sound filtering in through the thick glass of the window was strained, attenuated, feral. “That woman seems to be in a bad way.”
“Women,” said Percival. “Now there’s a subject I can warm to.”
William checked his watch again. and half-listened to Percy blather on about his latest conquest, some lady’s maid in Kingsbridge Bubble. His thoughts returned to the machete secreted in his valise, and he fell happily to contemplating its many excellent uses.
4: THE DROMEDON IN THE BAGGAGE COMPARTMENT
Jeremy Albert Benjamin tapped the lid of his small prison. He did this methodically, one action following the other: starting at the corner nearest his head, and sliding his fingers down the velvet-lined inner surface of the chest, tapping, listening for the tell-tale hollowness, tapping again.
Presently, he found what he was looking for. He curled his hand into a fist and rapped the spot with his knuckles, and then withdrew his pocketknife and cut a hole in the velvet, exposing the wood underneath. He probed the hollow area with his fingers, and then pressed. Nothing. He tried again, pressing harder, and was rewarded with a soft click. He replaced the pocketknife, and, using both hands, pushed upward on the lid, praying that nothing had been stacked on top of him. It lifted easily.
He opened it a crack, and peered out into the hulking gloom of the baggage compartment. Dark squarish shapes surrounded him, suitcases and valises, crates and chests, boxes and coffers. A cat prowled back and forth in its cage, eyes slitting the darkness like twin filaments of green flame. Moving quickly, he lifted himself out of the crate and landed crouching by its side, then paused, listening. Birdcages rattled, crates shifted, leather creaked, the cat hissed—but otherwise, silence.
He withdrew his tuxedo from the chest, and dressed quickly. He was, as ever, stymied by the bowtie, tying and retying it several times before he was satisfied. He was something of an obsessive when it came to human neckwear.
A badly tied bowtie was, he maintained, a dead giveaway. He fancied himself something of an expert on the subject. This was, after all, not the first time he’d attempted to infiltrate human society.
Dressed at last, he crossed to the full-length mirror strapped to a steamer trunk near the back of the car, and studied himself. He was short and squat, though neither as short nor as squat as most dromedons. He had two hands, each with the requisite number of digits, and a head that could be compelled to stay in the same place for long stretches of time, overtopped by a thatch of something that looked very much like hair. He also had facial features that approximated the sensory organs of the sequentials: a squat nose flanked by two holes filled with gelatinous ocular balls; and an oblong hole above his chin line guarded by a pair of fleshy pink extrusions, able to both admit food and emit conversation.
Jeremy Albert Benjamin’s resemblance to the men and women who had enslaved his kind was an accident of circumstance, but a fortuitous one: he was a natural spy. Today he would be Frederick Howells, a prosperous banker from Kingsbridge Bubble, bound for Piccadilly Bubble. He had a suit, a passport, a pistol, and a tiny golden device secreted in the front pocket of his waistcoat.
He adjusted his bowtie, and then closed his eyes and said a prayer. He prayed for the soul of Philip George Herbert, who had supplied the necessary distraction on the platform; for the Viceroy’s daughter, sunk now in the pit of her own insanity; and for the sequentials on this train, all of whom would shortly suffer the same fate. He did not pray for himself. The things that he had done, and would do, in the service of his cause rendered him unworthy of that particular balm.
He made some final adjustments to his bowtie, took a breath, composed himself, then opened the baggage car’s door, and stepped out into the train.
5: THE CONDUCTOR IN THE SLEEPING CAR
Virgil reached Number 14 just as the bell sounded again, knocked, then slid the door to. A large, froggish woman, wrapped up in some monstrous pink chiffon concoction looked up at him. Her porcine face was an alarming shade of red.
“Ah, Conductor,” she said. “You have come. How very good of you.”
“Forgive me, Madame. I was preparing Monsieur Renault’s bed for the evening.”
“I rang thirteen times. Thirteen times exactly. Is that the correct number? Thirteen?”
“No, Madame. You need only ring once.”
“I rang once twelve times, and you did not come. But on the thirteenth ring, you came. That is the basis for my hypothesis.” She sniffed. “I suppose I should consider myself fortunate.”
Virgil said: “Forgive me, Madame. It is inexcusable.”
The duchess glared at him. “Fetch my spectacles.”
“Of course, Madame.” He paused, and said: “Would Madame be so kind as to tell me where I might find them?”
“Tonight, in my prayers,” said the woman, “I will ask God to forgive me for whatever transgression has doomed me to a conductor who is not only deaf and cretinous, but blind.” She gestured toward a small table at the foot of her bed, which held an ashtray, a small paperback romance novel, and a pair of reading glasses. “But perhaps I should be more specific. It is that object consisting of two small circles of glass encased in a metal frame. We in the sentient classes use these devices for reading. You’ve heard of reading, Conductor? It’s a kind of preserved talking.”
“Indeed, Madame.” He picked up the woman’s spectacles, walked the two steps to the chaise on which she was splayed, and handed them to her. “Will there be anything else, Madame?”
She gave him a long, level look. Her face had dimmed from its original curried scarlet to a sort of sunset crimson, but her chins still quivered with indignation. “Not at present, thank you.”
He bowed and backed out of her compartment, slid the door shut, and closed his eyes. He applied the same curative principle to anger that one did to splinters embedded in the skin—teasing it out slowly, letting it rise to the surface. Patience, he thought. Patience.
A door opened on the opposite end of the carriage and a small fat man waddled through. He was dressed in the opulent style of a bygone era, tuxedo and spats, small vermillion bowtie and matching cummerbund, black tophat.
“Good evening, sir,” said Virgil.
“Good evening,” said the dwarf, and smiled. He was possibly the ugliest man that Virgil had ever encountered, his features seemingly configured with the explicit purpose of triggering revulsion. And yet he had a sincere and friendly smile, and Virgil warmed to him instantly.
“I’m afraid I’ve quite lost track of the time,” said the dwarf. “Is dinner still being served?”
“It is, sir. But you’d best hurry. The kitchen will close in twenty minutes.” Virgil lifted his arm and pointed with his index and middle fingers. “Six cars down.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the little man, tipping his tophat, then proceeded past Virgil. He moved with a laborious rolling gait, as if crossing the pitching deck of a storm-tossed ship. Virgil smiled. The little man reminded him of the odd academicians who’d frequented his mother’s salon, back on Piccadilly Bubble.
This memory gave rise to other, less-pleasant ones, and he turned to the squat gentleman, just now reaching the end of the carriage. “Sir?”
The man turned. “Yes?”
“May I see your ticket please?”
A pause. “I believe I already showed it to my conductor.”
“Yes, sir. It’s merely a security precaution.”
“Oh, indeed?” He began to make his way back down the carriage. “Are we in danger?”
“Oh, no sir. This is simply routine. Pirate activity has increased somewhat, of late, and there is a small fear of dromedon terrorism.”
“Goodness.” The little man reached into his jacket. “How distressing.”
“I assure you, sir, there is no cause for concern.”
“As a matter of fact, there is.” The dwarf seemed a little sad. He drew out a small pistol and pointed it at Virgil.
“Terribly sorry about this,” he said, and fired.
6: THE MADWOMAN IN THE INFIRMARY
Everywhere was forever, and each atom of that endless landscape contained in turn its own eternity, complete and entire. It was a fractal explosion of time and place, simultaneously infinite and nonexistent, all of it occurring at once, and forever, and never.
Chloe’s mind struggled to encompass this landscape. For all of its liquid adaptability, the human mind is founded upon a few basic prerequisites: sequentiality, finitude, smallness. It could not contain everything that she had seen on the platform. But neither could it stop trying—it bent its every effort toward taming the jumbled chaos of the disordered multiverse it had seen.
But it was all madness, madness and madness and madness. And so the lady screamed.
In some small corner of her consciousness, still tethered faintly to the objective world, she knew that she was strapped to a narrow bed in a small room; that the room contained a woman in a white nurse’s uniform and a gentleman in a long frock-coat; that she was screaming, continuously. But all of that was a diaphanous filament in an ocean of churning chaos, and she could no more grasp it than she could gather sunbeams.
Suddenly, a blinding light arced across the landscape of her dementia, and her world went black, and when it swam back into view it encompassed only the small room, and the nurse, and the gentleman in the frock-coat, who was applying a pair of what appeared to be plastic earmuffs to her bare chest. Thick coiled wire emanated from each earmuff, and disappeared into a large, blinking machine beside her bed.
“Will that be enough, Doctor?” said the nurse.
“I’m afraid not. She is already regressing. Increase the voltage, if you will.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
They faded again, washed away on a tsunami of madness, and she screamed forever.
And then she was in the small room again. There was in the air the tangy scent of burnt flesh.
“Uncanny,”
said the gentleman, shaking his head. “There is no stopping this. Nurse, please...”
No more, she thought. No more. A manic strength seized her, burning down the avenues of her body like a demon conflagration. She bulged and tightened, strained and swelled, surging against her constraints until they snapped and whipped away from her like flailing adders. She surged off the table, roaring.
The nurse barely had time to scream before Chloe was on her, thrusting her back, grabbing her head with both hands, slamming it against the wall. Once, twice, three times, and with each blow Chloe felt the chaos inside of her recede a little more—her mind clearing, the terrible visions dimming, and then disappearing.
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