Jim Baens Universe-Vol 2 Num 5

by Eric Flint

  Next thing I knew, I found my arm twisted up against my back, and before I could think what to do about it, she had a cable tie on my wrists. And she was pointing something looked remarkably like a gun at my head.

  "What . . ."

  "Shut up and keep walking," she said grimly. She pulled one of those ultra-slim mobile phones out of her bra, and made a call. "This is agent Melonie Brown reporting in from the Hartlepool stakeout. I've apprehended one of the principal perps behind global warming, Chief Inspector Nyarlathotep. I have his confession recorded. If you can bring the transport in, please." She slid the phone closed, put it back in its nest.

  "What? You're arresting me for causing global warming? What did I do? Fart?" I protested.

  "You created one of the two principal fossil fuel pollutants by your indiscriminate use of a stolen JB3764 food replicator," she said coldly.

  "Please. Our attempt to get the do-hickey to make Beluga caviar . . ."

  " . . . Resulted in suspect Van der Decken, Hendrik using a space-time anomaly to dump approximately 670 cubic kilometers of oil-precursor all over the Devonian, Silurian and Ordovician Eras, where the local dominant species had to resort to extreme measures of rapid landfill to prevent all life from dying of anoxia. This created perfect conditions for the formation of biogenic mineral oil. Now, I must ask you to come with me."

  "Where are we going?" I asked warily.

  "I would have thought that was obvious. To find Paul Bean, of course."

  "Hey. Listen, this was my fault. Paul tried to stop it," I protested.

  "Perhaps. But he is still responsible for the largest coal strata on earth. We have good reason to believe he caused the downfall of Yggdrasil, the proto-tree."

  "Oh, yeah. It had a trunk the size of New Jersey. I am sure he cut it down."

  "Possibly not. However he did carve his initials, name, and date of birth into it into it in 5 foot high letters. We found them in coal measure, along with the fossil remains of a Mesosaur and a solitary piece of eight. We have reason to believe his pen-knife may have been the vector for the disease that overtook the World Tree, which had no natural defenses against something that had not yet evolved."

  We'd reached the water's edge by then. Only this time it wasn't Van der Decken's longboat drifting in on the full tide.

  A shape slowly rose out the water. An ominous shape. Like a Polaris submarine—but entirely different, except for the ominous part. "Welcome to the Nautilus," she said coolly. A portal spiraled open like an iris and a telescopic walkway extended itself to the quay.

  * * *

  To be continued

  End of the Line

  Written by Holly Messinger

  Illustrated by Joey Jordan

  The planks of the depot trembled under Trace's boots, as thirty tons of iron and steam snorted and wheezed to a stop alongside the platform. Small children screamed in delight or terror, depending on inclination. The air smelled of hot metal and dust, coal and creosote, horse shit and unwashed bodies. Emigrants crowded the platform, most of them carrying little more than what was on their backs, rucksacks and valises packed with dreams of winning gold or souls or fertile farmland.

  The crowd surged toward the train like cattle scenting water, but the conductor held up a hand and a clipboard, shouting orders no one could hear. Trace held back; he knew from experience the third-class passengers would be loaded first, as the most unruly cargo the railroad had to handle. The second class passengers wouldn't be let on for some minutes. He nudged the saddlebags at his feet with one toe and stole a sideways glance at Boz.

  Boz was mad. His lips were buttoned up so tight the pink was almost lost in his dark skin. He was not speaking to Trace, which meant he could be silent for an entire five minutes of spite at a time.

  At least the weather was pleasant—cool and light, the kind of early April day that could make you forget about the six weeks of sleet and foggy damp that came before.

  Boz let out a sigh as strong as the steam engine's. "We really gonna do this, huh?"

  "Don't see as how we have much choice," Trace said, looking at his boots.

  "Bullshit," Boz said. "You said enough times we don't need her money."

  Trace grunted. "Told you, you were welcome to stay behind. Find work for yourself. I won't turn down your half of eight hundred dollars."

  Boz looked away, and Trace felt ashamed of himself. Not just because they were partners. Decent work wasn't an easy thing for a black man to find, even in St. Louis—Boz'd probably end up in the slaughterhouse, knocking steers between the eyes with a sledge. His skills were better suited to the trail than to town life, although he would have made a fine banker if given the chance. Trace sometimes thought Boz should just cut ties and go to Kansas or California, where the rules were looser and colored folk had a fighting chance to live decent lives.

  "Young man!" A trumpeting voice cut between them, followed by a short blocky man in black broadcloth. "Have you offered your soul to Jesus?"

  Trace was definitely not in the mood for this. "Matter of fact I did, but He sent it back."

  The stocky man wedged himself between them, forcing Boz to take a step back. The preacher was quite red in the face, perspiring and waving a Bible under Trace's nose. "I can tell by your clothes you live a rough life of sin and depravity," he announced. "Scrabbling for work in one low place after another, spending your wages on drink and vice, consorting with companions of an inferior race! Turn your soul over to Jesus, man, and He will show you the path to true prosperity and life everlasting!"

  "Get that book out of my face," Trace said, in a quiet but dangerous tone. "'Fore I show you a foretaste of hellfire."

  "Sinner!" said the preacher shrilly. "God will show you his vengeance! The day will come!"

  Trace took a step forward, his fists clenched, but Boz's hand clamped over his sleeve and pulled him away. "Come on, Boss. Ain't worth it. They're callin for second-class to load up."

  "He who walks with wise men will be wise," the preacher said. "But the companion of fools will be destroyed."

  Trace swung up his bedroll from the ground. "In his own eyes he flatters himself too much to see his sin," he said, and took satisfaction at the surprise and outrage on the man's face.

  Trace shouldered his pack and followed Boz to the edge of the platform, down onto the hard-packed earth alongside the rails. Heat radiated off the cars, reflecting the bright spring sunshine. Mostly box cars: a few passenger cars near the front, but no fancy Pullmans, the palaces-on-wheels. These cars were for transporting cattle—on two feet or four, it made no difference, except the steers had food and water troughs in their cars to prevent weight loss during transit.

  The conductor punched their tickets and handed them back to Trace. "Colored car is two cars back," he said, and waved them on.

  Trace stopped where he was. "Colored car?"

  "'Less your man means to ride with the drovers," the conductor said.

  "Since when do colored folks get their own car?" Trace said.

  "Since the passengers made a stink about it and the owners decided to make the passengers happy," the conductor snapped, glaring over his little square spectacles. "Now find your car, son, before I have you banned from this train."

  Trace turned away, fuming, to meet Boz's wooden expression. Without looking to see if Trace would follow, Boz turned on his heel and started marching down the platform.

  Trace hustled after him. "Where you goin'?"

  "Where they put me."

  "Don't you take that from the likes of him. You paid for a second-class ticket—"

  "And that's what I am," Boz said, no rancor in him at all. He said it calm, reasonable, as easily as he might have said his shirt was red. "In their eyes." He inclined his head slightly toward the line of people moving onto the train.

  "Shit, Boz, don't say that."

  Boz shrugged with one shoulder. "Don't change me none. 'Sides, I go sit back there I don't get some swell spittin' on my hat as he
passes by."

  "Yeah, but—" Trace's eye was caught by movement between two cars, the bent-over shape of a switchman lifting a massive link with one hand and shoving the pin home with the other. "—if you give an inch, pretty soon they'll take a foot, and next thing you know coloreds'll make themselves slaves again without anybody . . ."

  Trace's voice trailed off, as the switchman finished his chore and stood upright, half in the shadow of the car on his right: that part of him was solid. His left leg, shoulder and arm were in the sun and they were ephemeral, transparent. The dead man turned, as if sensing Trace's notice, and Trace winced to see the grotesque twisting of his torso, the dragging of the useless leg from a crushed pelvis, the chest pinched nearly in two when a foot had slipped, or the signal came too late, or the eye misjudged.

  Trace looked quickly away, suppressing a shudder. Injury and blood didn't bother him; the idea of getting lost between heaven and hell did.

  "What?" Boz demanded, noticing the flinch. It wasn't all that long since he'd found out about Trace's curse, and he got spooked every time Trace twitched, even if it was just horseflies. "You see somethin'?"

  "Railroads," Trace said shortly. "Graveyards on wheels."

  "Shit," Boz said. That had been his comment on everything for the past day and a half, ever since Trace announced he had a new job from Miss Fairweather, and he was going to take it. He stared at the space between the cars for several moments, while Trace tried not to look. "You reckon that's why she's sendin' us?"

  "Me, Boz." Trace drew a deep breath of iron-tinted air that tasted like blood. "She's sendin' me. You don't have to come."

  Boz looked shocked, then wounded. "Is that any way to talk to me?"

  "It's me she wants," Trace said, embarrassed by the words, their simultaneous arrogance and complicity. "I don't know why, but—" It was hard to explain. He knew Miss Fairweather had sought him out because he could see the dead, but he didn't know yet what she wanted from him, and her answers were slippery. "I just got a feelin' this is gonna get bad."

  "Then why you doin' it?" Boz said. "All your talk about not movin' over, not givin' an inch—how come that don't apply to you and Miz Fairweather? How come you're lettin' her push you?"

  * * *

  He'd tried. God knew he'd tried to find other work. There just wasn't that much wagon traffic going out of St. Louis these days. Even the folks headed for Oregon rode the rails as far as they could, then outfitted in Colorado or Dakota Territory. The papers said the line from Utah to Oregon would be finished in three years, and that would pretty much be the end of Trace's trail-guide days.

  He'd even asked around the stockyards, offering himself as a drover or extra hand for the branding, but for the first time in memory there were too many hands, too many men like himself, displaced by the war and the depression, come from the south looking for work; come from the north looking for opportunity. All of them seemed to cross paths in St. Louis.

  But he wasn't taking any more of Miss Fairweather's money. He and Boz were agreed on that. Her money was tainted, bloodied, and the things she asked them to do could put a man's soul in danger, let alone his life.

  Miss Fairweather was clever, though, and patient. She knew money wasn't what Trace wanted most. When her first two letters failed to elicit a reaction, she sent a third, hand-delivered by that Chinese of hers to Jamison's Post and General: Please come by at your earliest convenience. I have been investigating your condition and may be able to help you.

  The bitch. She knew nothing would fetch him faster. In the first years after the war, he'd sought out carny fortune-tellers and parlor spiritualists and even a hoodoo woman down in Lafayette, hoping to find one who could tell him how to get rid of his "condition," or at least control it, but all of them had been frauds or fools. Miss Fairweather was different: she had sought him out because of his gift, she seemed to know something about it, and Trace could not let that go until he had wrung some answers out of her, though it seemed more like she was the one doing the wringing.

  He fought her lure for two more weeks, a fortnight of approaching men with wagons, shaking hands and offering his services, hearing again and again, We're going by rail, or worse, If you'd just gotten here a couple weeks ago.

  Then he met the Baptist.

  Kingsley was his name, Martin Kingsley, taking a couple dozen Bible-thumpers out to save the souls of the settlers in Oregon. John Jamison got the story from them while they were rigging out at his store, and he passed along Trace's name as a guide—Jamison was good like that, reliable.

  Trace set out to meet Kingsley's party with a lightened heart, thinking it was a sign—this was the job he needed, a source of nourishment and a shield against temptation. He didn't even mind they were Baptists.

  Kingsley seemed a decent fellow, small and sturdy like a little Mexican burro, with a round jolly face and serious blue eyes. "Pleased to meet you," he said, shaking Trace's hand. "I hear you've made this trip a few times before."

  "Three years in a row," Trace said. "Had the same partner through all of it—used to be a supplies sergeant in the army." He always neglected at this point to say Boz had served in one of the Negro regiments. "He can take a look at your supplies, fit you out proper. Save you time and space both."

  "That's mighty kind of you," Kingsley said, shaking his head. "It's just a shame to have to tell you this—hate to waste your time, since I indicated to Mr. Jamison we'd be needing your services . . ."

  Trace's heart seemed to sink into his liver.

  "It's just we received a love donation last night . . . from a sister in faith. She had her servant deliver it specially, because she's in poor health and can't travel. She purchased railway tickets for the entire party and our cargo, so we could arrive at our destination and set up our mission that much faster. She even offered a generous portion for building our church in the wilderness—"

  It was the words in poor health that roused Trace's suspicions—she'd used that same excuse with him. "This servant—was he Chinese, speaks real good English?"

  "Why, yes. Do you know Sister Fairweather?"

  Trace nearly choked, trying to keep the harsh laughter in his throat. "She's a regular angel of mercy."

  * * *

  Trace had never been one to claim all Orientals looked alike, but he would admit to some difficulty at reading their faces. He could have sworn Miss Fairweather's manservant was smirking as he showed Trace into her house.

  Miss Fairweather's house was one of the finest and oldest in St. Louis. It had been built by a cattleman around 1830, and bought by a railroad man just after the war. The railroad man had died young, and the place stood vacant for nearly a decade before his wife's family sold it.

  It was large and grand and dark, in the quiet, still way of a mausoleum. Trace had already seen one spirit in it. He took care to keep his eyes on the Chinaman's back as they walked deeper into the recesses of the house.

  They climbed to the third floor, then up a narrow staircase into what had surely been servants' quarters at one time. The door at the top, however, opened into a large, bright, open room that ran the entire back half of the house. The sudden onslaught of sunlight made Trace blink.

  The north face of the roof was entirely glass, sealed with lead between the panes, braced by girders that slanted back into the gables. Trace looked up into the overcast sky. The clouds rushing overhead teased his balance and he grabbed the nearest cabinet for support.

  There were a great many cabinets along the wall, and wide trestle tables down the center of the room. Some of these were wood, painted black, but one was a single slab of white marble, and another supported a shining tin basin as big as a wagon bed.

  All manner of curious objects surrounded him: glass apothecary's jars, bins and boxes, glass tubes and rubber hoses. Against the wall opposite the glass ceiling was a row of cages and tanks, in which small creatures flopped and fluttered and whistled.

  Trace had seen Miss Fairweather's library, he knew she h
ad a capable and curious mind, but he'd had no inkling of this. He moved deeper into the room, trying to look at everything at once. The animals chattered at his approach.

  About halfway down the inner wall was a fireplace with extended wings, onto which was grafted a network of ovens and copper piping. Trace bent close to it, intrigued by the high-supported water casket and the leather bellows built into the hearth. It seemed water was heated in a copper drum over the fire, from which steam could be directed through various conduits, either to the tin basin or the marble table. Above the water drum, a vent opened every few seconds to let out a puff of scalding vapor.

  He touched one porcelain valve handle with the tip of his finger and it turned easily, letting a spill of water into the tin basin behind him. He heard it patter on the metal, and turned to see it run down a series of grooves, to a trough at the end of the basin, and down a tube into the floor.

  A throat cleared gently behind him, and Trace stood up fast, guiltily, as if she had caught him peeping in her window.

  Miss Fairweather was tiny and pale, with thin wrists and colorless lips. She wore her fair hair scraped back in a knot, as if she were too impatient to do anything else with it. Her gowns tended to be dark: of fine cloth and workmanship, but plain in design and trim. Trace was beginning to understand why.

  "So good to see you again, Mr. Tracy," she said, a touch of mockery in her voice. Her eyes were pale and reflected the gray of the sky. "I was beginning to think you had taken a dislike to me."

  Trace licked his lips. It wasn't in him to be uncivil to a lady's face, whatever he might think of her in his mind. His indignantly prepared accusations seemed to leave him. "This is a, uh, interestin' place you got here."

  "I find it so," she agreed. "Do you?"

  "Ma'am?"