"I was really just wondering what’s inside. Live cargo, like another tiger?"
Walter smiled. He was beginning to sweat with the effort of disassembling the box cover.
"Goats. Yuri’s idea, sort of a weird New England thing. You know what I'm talking about?" He said.
"Not really. Alright - " Together we pulled the heavy green canvas off the crate. Four healthy black and white haired goats were staring back at us. The nearest one stomped and scrapped his horns against the grating.
Also in the box was a lump of the green canvas wadded up in the far corner. The lump stirred and the canvas was flung away. A tall man got up trying to stand but was forced by the low ceiling to stoop, bending at the knees and neck.
"Geake?"
"Hi Lieutenant. Small world, isn't it. Can you let me out of here?"
Walter and I each pulled out a pin and the gate dropped. Geake duck-walked out, elbowing past the disinterested goats.
He looked different. His clothes and hair were filthy from the crate. His eyes looked stressed but he had a confidence about him that was not there in Alaska.
"Explain yourself sergeant." I said.
He brushed the straw and dust out of his hair,
"I'm not sergeant anymore, sir. Suspended for four weeks and demoted. What about you?"
"Booted out. Why were you trying to sneak aboard? I must have been a bad influence on you."
"No sir."
Walter piped up, "OK guys, let’s deal with this livestock first. We gotta get them into the dining car. From there the hologram will guide ’em the rest of the way."
*
We were in the dining car. Geake stuffed his face with sausage and black bread while I got the story out of him. Walter and I drank Kölsch while grazing on a basket of soft pretzels.
"The colonel was pretty mad about what happened. So, I figured better get my ass home, you know, stay out of sight, out of trouble while doing my suspension. I get back to Kennewick and, I mean it's been ten years? And my girl’s gone. I found her mom, though. She said it was her that had been writing the letters all this time, like, for the last two years. Then she told me how my girl couldn't stay at the university anymore and that she got on a train and that was the last she'd ever heard from her.
"I didn't know what to do. I went walking around downtown to maybe ask around or something. Hardly anybody there. So I went to the old station and it was empty, totally empty, but there was this big crate sitting by the tracks. Then the train came by – Estrella, red and white, like her mom said - and I knew she was on it. After that this little thing came by and started loading up the crate. I put two and two together and jumped on top. I got myself squeezed inside just in time before it really started moving."
"We’ll help you out, sure," Walter said, "But there are a lot of girls on this train, Geake. How will we find yours?"
"If you've seen her once, you'll remember her. Gray-green eyes. Olive skin and long, curly brown hair. Thin, lean really, with wide flared hips and big breasts. Long legs. Long arms. She smiles a lot and she means it."
Walter looked at me, "It sounds like he’s talking about Penny." He turned to Geake, "Yeah, I know the girl. Everybody knows her."
"That's her name. Do you know where she is?"
Walter shook his head, "We’re going to have to find her. The party's on. Not as easy as it sounds. It might take awhile, maybe half a day, at least. Your buddy here will explain why. I'm gonna go get Tyndall off of that broad so he can help us, too."
*
I told Geake about the train and the nonstop party. He still didn't understand why it would be difficult to find Penny and I couldn't easily explain. Walter’s comment seemed to be exaggerating the situation.
Tyndall burst through the door. Disoriented from entering normal space, he almost lost his feet. He was laughing, extremely high on something, and ricocheted off one wall to plop down at our table.
“What's wrong with this guy?” Geake said.
Tyndall held up his hand telling us to wait.
“Take it easy, Geake.” I said.
“OK, now...” Tyndall took a breath. His eyes cleared;
he'd recovered,
“Walter’s checking out the first two cars. We’ll go on from there as a group - I hear it's gotten really wild in Miami.”
"You guys are worried we won’t make it on our own? How bad could it be?" I said.
"Bad? I don't know, let’s wait for Walter. He won't be long," Tyndall said and slumped, tired in his chair.
"Sir, do you think Penny’s OK? Have you seen her lately?" Geake said.
Tyndall didn't answer. The question seemed to unsettle him.
Geake and I rose from the table as Walter came in.
He was already sweating through his shirt,
"No word or sign of her. Alright! We’re searching car to car. We’re going to stick together. Everybody take a length of rope." Walter passed out to each of us 3m length pieces of elastic cord.
"Geake, tie yours around your waist and give me the other end. We gotta do this. You’re next. Dr. Tyndall’s last.
"When we get to Miami, everybody remember: The next door is always directly ahead. Despite what you're seeing, you're still in a regular old train car. Try to keep your head straight." Walter said going around to each of us to test the knots.
Tied together with about a meter of rope between us, we entered the first car single file. The courtyard was dead quiet except for two monkeys playing in a palm tree just outside the surrounding wall. I caught myself mesmerized by the bay glittering under the red setting sun.
"Wow, this beats any of the training simulators. All of this in a train car - are they real?" Geake said pointing to the tree.
"Not those, not here, but some later on could be. Don’t assume anything, keep on task." Walter said.
We moved on to the Bavarian castle. I saw several party-goers had crashed, hunched over tables with a few lying on the floor. They were refugees from the fray, ran too hard and desperately needing a break, tending their wounded minds with cold lager and quiet, clean air.
"Why don't they just go back to their rooms?" I asked Tyndall, keeping my voice down.
"They're not allowed to, not until the party’s over. Every car above the last simulation is closed off. Our cars are forbidden to them. Only planning committee has access."
"Who decided that?" I said.
Walter answered,
"Who? Your old buddy, Ed the Head. And Leland signed off, no doubt."
Under the chandelier in the center of the main room, Walter grabbed a waitress by her upper arm and interrogated her until she got angry and pulled away.
“Sometimes you have to ask twice, right?” he said.
We waited near the exit. To my surprise, she returned after about a minute and spoke softly to Walter, too softly for Geake and I to hear.
Walter was satisfied with her answer and signaled us to go. He pushed on the iron seal set in the door and, one by one, we were on the front step of the white mansion.
"Stay focused, men, and don't listen to anybody. Don't look at 'em. When we find her, Geake, you pick her up and we’ll protect you."
The front door fell away at a touch. Immediately every sense was pervaded and engaged to capacity. This was the true peak of the party here, the wildness before was nothing in comparison. The room was vibrating. The grand piano played itself, exploding with the throbbing, hypnotic drums, bass, horns and organs coming from the omnipotent invisible speakers. It was as humid as a hot bath. There was a mass of tanned and oiled humanity ahead of us and we headed into it.
Walter threw up a forearm to deflect two dark-tanned bikini girls coming at him with handfuls of white powder. They skittered on their spiked heels and one of them threw her powder into Geake’s face as she fell.
Walter promptly helped Geake clean it off,
"Watch your eyes! It's gonna be soaked into your skin some already. Just try to keep calm. It’s OK, not that bi
gga deal, probably."
"What is it!" Geake said.
Walter licked his fingers,
"Mostly cocaine. You’re lucky. Stick with us, don't look at them."
The girl on the floor got up to her knees and began tugging at Geake’s waistband. He stepped back,
"Hold on, lady, take it easy." Geake said holding onto his belt.
She picked at the knot on his rope with her long fingers then pulled on it with her perfect teeth.
A muscle man sidled up, dancing between Geake and me, grinding his crotch into Geake’s arm.
"Let’s go!" Walter yelled and surged forward yanking the three of us off balance. I slapped onto the marble floor. Muscle men piled on. I couldn't get to my feet. We were all slipping in grease.
Pulled down by his rope, Walter toppled over and started dragging himself away from the scrum. He led us to the door, army crawling, all of us still linked by the straining lengths of rope. Bikini girls swarmed, humping Geake’s neck and riding his back. Muscle men escorted our passage out, viciously slapping our asses, dancing the whole time.
*
Total darkness met us with a dry dusty smell. We gathered ourselves. No one spoke. As our eyes adjusted I noticed a thin line of yellow light above our heads.
I put my hands up to touch the crack and felt rough stone. Walter did the same and we pushed, not very hard, and the ceiling moved away.
The four of us, still tied together at the waist, stepped out as if emerging from underground.
Geake turned and grabbed my arm,
"Do we know Penny wasn't back in that other place?"
"She wasn't." Walter said for me.
We all paused to take in the surroundings. We were in an enormous space, a field of yellow and orange stone and sand. The sky was deep indigo. It seemed endless.
We shuffled forward. Geake couldn't help himself,
"This is amazing, I saw the train from the outside and..."
Tyndall explained, "They really went big on this one. It works like this, Geake: the image is projected from the surfaces of the walls and floors. It's all we can see and it's capable of adjusting to us individually. Everything you see is going to be just slightly faster, coming sooner than you're expecting. By this it can slow your movements, bit by bit, almost instantly.
We barely perceive the effect because it looks and feels like you and I are moving normally. It conserves the space. It makes its own space. The 50m we just walked was probably around 3 or 4m in the car."
"Stay on track, everybody. You save your questions for later," Walter said.
We walked onto the grounds of a huge ruined temple. Sandstone pillars two meters in diameter reached out to the open sky and stars. Far ahead of us, statues lined a sheer cliff, carved into the face of it, the largest a sitting man’s body with the head of a dog.
The sand underfoot became an intricate pattern of tiles. Fires burned in brass stands illuminating our passage between the pillars. Geake dropped to his knees and held his head in both hands,
"Guys, please, let’s take a break." Geake’s eyes were tightly shut, "It's gotten to me. It's too much."
I needed a rest myself. The pain in my heel was getting worse. The awkward gait I was forced into was now effecting my other leg.
A dark figure flashed behind one of the lamps. I pulled Geake up to his feet. More shadows moved. We formed a defensive circle facing outward.
"Hey, sir, that thing there..." Geake was pointing back the way we had come.
It was brown and moving, low set and rounded on top. As it came to within a hundred meters, its head rose up with antennae swiveling. A beetle, dark burnished gold, its prominent jaw opened and snapped shut twice in rapid succession.
Roped together, we ran as well as we could. Single file then in a ragged group. The beetle gained quickly moving on six clockwork legs. I didn’t look back again. The jaws snapped together sounding close.
Off to the side was a stairway leading underground. Walter pulled the three of us together and dove head first, arms out in front, down the stairs, dragging us with him.
I remember hitting a thin wooden floor and it collapsing under our weight. We fell further down a dark shaft, at least another floor level it felt, to land sprawled on the cool floor of a small chamber.
Of course we weren't injured. Looking back up the shaft, all I saw was the distant blue-black sky. I untied my two ropes and stretched out on the floor to rub my foot.
Tyndall tucked his end of the rope into a pocket and wandered off, ducking his head under a low horizontal shaft. There was a soft flickering light around the corner along with a murmuring of voices.
Geake’s voice was hoarse, "Sir, do you think Penny could be through there?"
Walter answered, "I doubt it, son." His face illuminated with faint red light as he drew on a plastic pipe.
"Not to be rude, sir, but how can you be so sure?"
"My father once said a man who can't do math is not much more than an orangutan," Walter said and let out a sigh. He put his pipe away, "I don't want you calling me sir, understand? You can call me Dr. Fick if you can't bring yourself to call me by my first name."
With that he untied his rope and threw the end at Geake,
"Let’s take a walk, kid."
Walter left followed reluctantly by Geake and then me.
There was only one room around the corner of the shaft. It was softly lit with smaller versions of the brass lamps we saw above ground. The room was wide and low ceilinged, adorned with settees upholstered in zebra skin. Women lounged on them.
I watched Geake take in the scene. He was desperate. He looked back at me pleading for my help.
Walter flopped onto a settee and was met immediately by two thin strangely costumed lively women who straddled his tired but willing body.
Scanning the room for a sign of Penny was almost impossible. Staring at any one particular spot made us dizzy, forcing us to look away. The holographic trick was pushed to the limit in making this room so big in this small space. Everything past the range of a few meters in the dim, yellow lit room was blurred. The distant walls seemed too distant. They shimmered as if through a haze of heat.
A figure approached striding between settees. It wore a full set of gold and leather armor that creaked as it moved.
It stopped in front of us and took a step toward Geake, intruding into his space. It was tall, taller than Geake, and breathed audibly through the grill of its helmet.
Bending forward, a boot came off followed by the other, bringing the top of its head down to below Geake’s eye level. It had small feet swaddled in brown leather stockings.
The helmet lifted off and dropped to clatter on the floor. She shook out her hair and dropped a glove to wipe her forehead with a delicate hand.
"El Tee, what's going on here?" Geake said. The girl stared plainly back at him with a faint smile.
"Hi, brother. I missed you. Did you miss me?"
"Jeanie - you shouldn't be here."
"Well, I’m glad you remember me. Do you remember these?" She unbuckled and shed the heavy armored cuirass. Her white breasts were flushed red from rubbing the coarse leather padding.
Geake covered his forehead and closed his eyes,
"Is she real, sir?"
She slinked closer and started rubbing his chest, giving him a curious, hopeful look. He remained stoic. He wouldn't look at her.
"I seriously doubt it, Geake."
That was enough for him. With one hand he pushed her away while with the other he deftly snatched the crook-ended bronze sword from her belt. Her voice was sweet and pleading.
"Please don't,"
*
On pure instinct we ran, with Walter behind us. For a second I thought he might be trying to stop us.
I don't know who she was. She couldn't have been Geake’s sister. He didn't think so either, that's what he said. Why he killed her I don't really know and I never asked him.
We crashed through the narrow hal
lway, probably more scared of what we'd done than to escape any retribution. Walter followed. Tyndall we left behind.
Back at the first room, the vertical shaft to the surface looked impossible to scale, maybe 10m high and made of smoothly finished stone blocks.
Geake with his weapon guarded the door while we tried to figure out a way up. Walter showed me a trick. By closing one eye the perceived distance would shorten to near its real dimension. Doing this also reduced the dizzying sensation from resisting the illusion.
King's County Page 10