And All the Stars Shall Fall

by Hugh MacDonald

  Nora smiled at Tish, and then watched the tunnel flashing hypnotically past in the space between Alice and her mother and to either side. She watched for a few minutes, although there was little of interest to see. She noticed before long that Tish was watching her again. Nora smiled kindly at the girl and this time, timidly, the child smiled back.

  “You used to like my mother, didn’t you?” Tish asked, looking into Nora’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. “We were very fond of one another.”

  “And you left because of the baby,” Tish said. The girl turned and looked back at Adam, who sat in the front of the car behind them next to Ueland. “Are you glad you ran away?”

  “Hush,” said Alice. “Don’t be impertinent.” Nonetheless she waited, interested in the answer if it should come.

  Nora hesitated. She had no interest in coming between the girl and her family. “It wasn’t easy at first, but I’m glad Adam is alive and here with us today.”

  “Were you scared?” Tish continued. “I’d be too scared to do something like that.”

  “I was very scared. I thought we were both going to die. But we didn’t. And, yes, I’m glad I ran away. But I was sad that I hurt your mother and made your grandmother angry. And I’m sad that all those people had to die.”

  Nora tried not to cry, but tears welled up and ran down her face, though she managed to weep briefly in silence. Her mind carried her back to Aesop and Brin and the old ones and to the many Rangers who died in the battles because they were Blanchfleur’s slaves and they were powerless to resist.

  Nora knew that Alice and Blanchfleur must have heard the conversation behind them, but they gave no sign of it.

  Tish looked at Nora with a sad expression on her lovely young face. Nora noted the dampness around the child’s eyes that glistened in the dim light provided by the headlights of the car following them. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, as if it were something she herself had done.

  Tish looked away again, but a while later she looked at Nora once more with a wondering stare. “What is it?” Nora asked.

  “Was it scary living with the big Ranger? Were he and the outsider boy dangerous? Did they ever hurt you?” Tish said, then looked down toward the floor of the car.

  Nora reached and touched her gently on the arm. The girl looked up at her, embarrassed.

  “It was never difficult living with him. He is the gentlest person I’ve ever known, and the sweetest. Adam is his equal. They were only dangerous to those who threatened us, they never hurt me, ever.”

  “Would they hurt me or my family?”

  “No, they will only help you and your family.”

  “But my family tried to hurt you,” said Tish.

  “We know…and that time is over. We will never hurt one another again,” said Nora as she and Tish looked with open hearts and minds deeply into one another’s eyes. Tish turned and looked back at Adam beside Ueland and smiled. The boy waved and smiled back. He looked surprised and pleased. She felt much safer now than any time since the final morning she awoke in Aahimsa.

  Chapter 17:

  In the Car Behind

  Adam was gently rubbing Lucky’s ears. The old dog had slept for the first part of the dark journey in spite of the slight, irregular bumps when the wheels met seams in the rails beneath them, but now he was awake and restless. He whined from time to time as the walls of the tunnel slid eerily past. Adam wondered how much better the dog could see than the rest of them. Adam focused on the car ahead of them, since it received most of the benefit of their service car’s tiny headlights. Still, he glanced around enough to see that they had passed at least three service buildings.

  As he stared at the rear of the car ahead he noticed that his mother and the girl, Tish, were busy talking to one another and Tish had glanced back more than once toward his car. One of those times she actually seemed to smile at him. He was happy that she may not be as afraid of him and Mabon and even Doctor Ueland as she used to be.

  “The girl smiled at us,” he said to Mabon, who sat behind Ueland, who was handling the speed control and had one foot always on the brakes. Ueland’s eyes seldom left the track or the car ahead. He maintained a small distance between them.

  “I noticed,” said Ueland. “I expect she was smiling at you, however. She has never shown much interest in me. Why would she? To her I’m an old work beast. Tish and her mother have always maintained a respectable distance between themselves and me.”

  “But you and Blanchfleur are friends,” Adam said. “I don’t get that.”

  “What don’t you get?” asked Ueland, concentrating on his driving.

  “How you could trick her about the old ones and about us and still be friends with her? She had the power to punish you, or even kill you, and she didn’t ever.”

  “We aren’t exactly friends,” the doctor said. “We worked together for many years building the Manuhome. She trained me and proposed all the major plans. She set up the business and managed the trade and distribution of product and goods manufactured. I figured out how to implement and develop what we manufactured and grew. We made a pretty good team. I guess you’d say we have mutual respect, so perhaps that’s why we care what happens to each other.”

  Adam said nothing, satisfied for the moment, though he suspected Ueland wasn’t telling him the whole story.

  “Do you think Blanchfleur cares about anybody but herself?” asked Mabon from his seat behind them. He had been following the conversation with considerable interest.

  “Yes, a bit too much sometimes. She was the one in charge of everything and everyone. When you’re in charge in this world, you do what you have to do, or else. I’m sure that shooting arrows at Rangers and setting them on fire wasn’t something you’d always dreamed of doing. When we get backed into a corner by violence we fight back, or we die and let our friends and loved ones die,” said Ueland.

  “So you’re saying we’re as bad as she is?” said Mabon, a bit annoyed.

  “No, I’m saying no such thing. You were trying to save your family’s lives and those of your friends. She was trying to save her city and protect her assets. Of course, she may have been thinking of her family and the lives of her workers. I’m just saying that things are never simple. Blanchfleur didn’t invent the city-states, but she was an important part of the system. We’re all born into systems and situations. We start off where we land, and we do what we think is best, even the worst and the most unprincipled of us.”

  “So you’re protecting Blanchfleur?” said Mabon.

  “I’m protecting all of us, in case you haven’t noticed,” said Ueland, his voice gruff and impatient and showing more emotion than usual.

  “Yes, but why her?” continued Mabon relentlessly.

  “Why not? I have various reasons for protecting all of you,” said Ueland, smiling at Adam and turning back to face Mabon.

  “What reasons?” asked Adam as he glanced toward the car ahead of them. “Look out!” he shouted, his shrill voice joining the screams from the voices and the braking steel wheels of both vehicles.

  Ueland had pushed hard enough on the brakes that they stopped just short of the rear bumper of Blanchfleur’s service vehicle. Ueland turned off the electric motor of their car and jumped down to the rail bed, followed by Adam and Mabon and the dog. They hurried past the front car and Ueland shone his pocket flashlight at the huge, dark mass that almost completely blocked the tunnel ahead of them.

  Adam glanced toward his mother, Tish, and Blanchfleur, who sat staring open-mouthed at the back end of what he now saw was a large passenger rail car blocking the rails dead ahead of them. They had come pretty close to being part of a serious accident. He bent down to try and silence Lucky, who had begun to growl and bark at the rear of the darkened car. He drew the dog close and patted him as he spoke quietly until the old
dog settled, still occasionally whining.

  “Come with me, Mabon,” said Ueland as he stepped toward the massive train car that blocked their way.

  “I’ll go too,” said Nora, and Blanchfleur and the others followed her cautiously, not knowing what to expect.

  “I don’t get this,” said the mayor as she caught up to Ueland. “Did you know about this railcar? This rail line hasn’t been fully operational for over three years. There has been nothing scheduled to go this way since we permanently shut down the holiday excursions to the River Islands. It’s only been used for special, official traffic that was under my control, or so I thought.”

  “No, this rig is as much a surprise to me as to you. My maintenance workers have serviced the buildings and the rails for occasional or emergency use as we were instructed, but the line hasn’t been authorized for any other use that I know of.” Ueland left them and walked up to the car, standing next to the steps leading to the rear platform.

  He gestured to Mabon and Adam, who climbed the metal steps onto the rear platform, where they found the door locked tight. “Do you have a key for this?” asked Adam as he turned toward Ueland. The doctor reached into his pocket and tossed his ring of keys to Adam.

  “Second short brass key to the right of the leather tab,” said Ueland. Adam held the ring up against the lights from Blanchfleur’s car and quickly found the key, then opened the door, which swung easily on its hinges.

  “Check it out,” said Ueland.

  Mabon and Adam entered cautiously and then all climbed aboard and pressed inside the upholstered interior. They huddled together and looked nervously here and there about the dark car, not knowing what to expect. Adam flicked a wall switch out of curiosity, and to his great surprise, the overhead fluorescents flickered on. As they walked through the car between the seats, the others looked into overhead storage compartments, and into the small washroom at the end. The toilet still held remarkably clean water.

  “This carriage must have left Aahimsa just before we did,” Ueland said. “I wonder who was aboard and where they are now.”

  “I wonder,” said Blanchfleur. “I wonder —” Her face showed that she was worried and thinking she might know who was involved.

  “What is this?” asked Nora, pointing to her right. She stopped beside one of the seats and dug around until she discovered a single apple jammed halfway down between two of the plush, comfortable seats. The shiny red fruit was still looking quite edible. It couldn’t have been there too long or it would have spoiled. She handed the sweet-smelling globe to Blanchfleur. The mayor looked at it and handed it back to Nora.

  “Perhaps one of the youngsters would like it. It’s still hard and cool,” said Blanchfleur. “So, obviously someone fled the city immediately before the attack. Perhaps they had the means to know it was coming. We will have to be even more vigilant from here on in. They must be around here someplace or not far up ahead. They may indeed be armed and dangerous. But at least they’re not robots. It’s easier to deal with people than robots.”

  “How do you know they’re not robots?” asked Tish, staring at her grandmother.

  Blanchfleur tousled her hair and smiled warmly. “Robots don’t eat apples, do they?”

  Mabon cleared his throat. Nora looked at him. “What?” Nora said.

  Mabon hesitated. He caught Nora’s eyes and she smiled her encouragement. He cleared his throat again. “Could they have been picked up by one of those helicopters?”

  Blanchfleur nodded. “Of course, you’re right. Some or all of them may have been. But it would be a long walk to Aahimsa from here. More likely, they may be up ahead or back in any of the service buildings we passed today. We don’t know who they are or what they stand for. We can’t assume they are enemies or friends, dangerous or helpful. But they may indeed be hostile to us and we must prepare to treat them as such. Even if they mean us no harm, they can still intentionally or accidentally report our presence to the Federation. That would be dangerous or perhaps fatal for more than one of us.”

  “I wonder why they stopped right here?” Tish asked.

  No one had seen Ueland enter the car from outside. “Cave-in,” he said. “Up ahead. Part of the ceiling is down; there’s a large boulder in between the tracks. Perhaps shaken down by one of the explosions.”

  “Is the train wrecked?” Adam asked Ueland.

  Mabon put his arm across the boy’s shoulder and held him close. Nora watched her two men with pride, and awaited Ueland’s answer.

  “I don’t think so,” said Ueland. “I couldn’t see much with this small light. But I could tell that several people with small shoes had been working for some time to clean up the mess and move the stone. It was pretty large and they either failed or just gave up in frustration.”

  “I bet we could do it if we all worked hard,” said Adam.

  “Can we get the train going again if we can clean up the mess?” asked Blanchfleur. “Are the tracks badly damaged?”

  “There is still plenty of power in the batteries and there’s a small gasoline engine and generator that would take us easily to the next service building where we could quickly give it a full charge. And there are the batteries from both of our service cars. And, no, I don’t think the tracks are all that seriously damaged. I think we can move the boulder, in spite of its size, and clear things up if we all pull together.”

  “Why don’t we just continue in the cars we’ve been using?” asked Tish.

  “It would be a major task to get them past this train,” said Ueland. “There are six full-size cars up ahead, and the engine. Those service cars are mostly iron and steel, not something we could lift or carry, and seven cars’ distance is a long way to move them even if we could.”

  “So there could have been a big crowd aboard,” said Blanchfleur.

  “Anywhere from a handful to several hundred if they squeezed in,” said Ueland. “My guess is that was a last-minute decision, so perhaps we’re talking a small group of traitors who were caught off guard by the attack — some of your own people who favoured the Federation’s politics.”

  “You may be right,” the mayor said. “There were more than a few of them.”

  Mabon approached and waited patiently, not wanting to interrupt. Ueland signalled for him to speak.

  “We’re ready to work,” said Mabon, “Adam and Nora and I.”

  “Let’s get at it,” said Blanchfleur. “I’ll get the others organized.”

  “We’ll get all the gear we can find aboard the storage compartments of the engine and the cars and set up the lights,” said Ueland. He led the three former residents of the Happy Valley through the train toward the front, stopping by each car and picking up as many tools as they could carry.

  Chapter 18:

  A Good Night’s Sleep

  A few hours later, the rock had been rolled to the side with the help of two lengths of I-beam steel, from the broken ceiling, used as a pry. Mabon used his great strength to transfer the heavy reserve batteries from the service vehicles while others repaired and reinforced one of the damaged rail ties and moved hundreds of smaller rocks and debris.

  Ueland and Mabon rigged up the two spare batteries and connected them to the train’s power system, Mabon supplying the brawn and Ueland his skill and knowledge. Then the two men, with the assistance of Nora and Blanchfleur, disconnected the final four cars while Adam and Tish and her mother looked on.

  Then everyone climbed aboard and waited nervously while Ueland and Mabon started the engine and slowly and carefully towed the two front cars of the train past the crudely repaired site of the cave-in. Then they walked back together to the site of the cave-in to drag the boulder far enough back across the rails to block the track, preventing anyone from pursuing them easily via this route.

  After a very short conversation where the men suggested they get going, and the older o
f the women reminded the men of everyone’s fatigue, they unanimously decided to catch some sleep in the relative safety and comfort of the stationary train before setting off into the darkness ahead.

  Ueland and Blanchfleur showed the others how to make up the seats into relatively comfortable beds, complete with small pillows. Tish and Adam were delighted with the apple and were quick to insist on keeping it so they could eat it later.

  “Put it in your jacket pocket,” Tish said. “Don’t you dare eat it.”

  Adam nodded, happy to be carrying the apple. He would take good care of it. The others snacked on crackers and peanut butter from the bag of items taken from the service building they had last visited.

  “Where are we going tomorrow?” asked Tish.

  “Let’s talk in the morning,” said Alice. “Let’s just dream of better days ahead as we try and get some sleep while we’re exhausted and somewhat relaxed.”

  “Well put, Alice,” said Ueland. “We can talk as we zip along in the morning. Make sure everyone has loaded all of their things aboard. You may very well wake up to find the train moving swiftly along.”

  “Would anyone mind if the insiders sleep in the rear car and the outsiders in the front one?” suggested Alice.

  “Sleep where you want,” said Nora, “but I intend to be with Mabon and Adam, even if it means sleeping in the engine car.”

  “There’s no need for that,” said Blanchfleur. “We’re all outsiders now, I believe. I’ll be sleeping in my clothes. If anyone wants to change there is the toilet compartment. I suggest sleeping wherever you feel most comfortable. This could be the last day of comfort for a while. We may have enemies ahead who wish us evil.”

  Nora shot her a warning glance and pointed to the young ones. “That, too, can be a topic of conversation for the morning. So, goodnight!”

  “I suggest we adults talk for a few minutes now,” Mabon said to Nora, just loudly enough that Blanchfleur and Ueland heard.