Night Train

by David Quantick

  “Nice touch, eh?” said Lincoln. “You could never tell with him if he was being serious. I think this was one of the occasions when he wasn’t.”

  He turned and looked at the others.

  “You ever think about taste?” he asked.

  “Like salt and sweet?” said Banks.

  “Like good and bad,” said Lincoln. “I mean, to me this thing is beautiful. Imagine how much it cost. The leather on the seats alone is worth more than I am. It’s a work of art if you ask me. But Denning – he hated it. He said it was the worst trash imaginable.” Lincoln brightened. “Where’s he now, eh?”

  “He –” began Banks.

  “Be quiet,” said Garland abruptly.

  “It’s OK,” Lincoln said. “It was a rhetorical question. I have cameras everywhere, I know exactly where Denning is.”

  “Soup,” confirmed Poppy. “Salt, not sweet.”

  “It was you,” Garland said to Lincoln. “You put him in that room. With those things.”

  “Not me,” said Lincoln. “Well, yeah, it was me, in the sense that I gave the order. But I was, y’know, acting in the spirit.”

  “What spirit?” said Banks.

  “The spirit,” Lincoln replied, “of the Leader.”

  * * *

  He looked at them again.

  “Wow,” he said. “They really did a number on you.”

  * * *

  “I know I’m going to hate myself,” Poppy said, “but who is the Leader?”

  “Was,” said Lincoln.

  “Is he the reason we’re on this train?” asked Garland.

  “Honey, he’s the reason, full stop. He’s the reason the sun comes up in the morning.”

  “The sun doesn’t come up in the morning,” said Poppy.

  “Good point,” said Lincoln. “It will, though. We’ve been working on that. Just a matter of firing up the ionosphere.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Garland.

  “You think the explosions in the sky are a big party?” said Lincoln. “Oh wait. You probably think they’re the apocalypse.”

  “I would have said apocalypse,” Banks said. “If asked.”

  “Yeah, well, not asked,” snapped Lincoln. “You people. I don’t know.”

  He checked his gun, spinning the chamber.

  “Five,” he said. “Just making sure.”

  * * *

  They looked at the car some more. Garland reached into the glove compartment, but Lincoln stopped her.

  “No more clues,” he said.

  He stepped back.

  “Hey! Who wants to go into the bedroom?”

  Before anyone could reply, he brandished the gun again.

  “Rhetorical,” he said.

  * * *

  They squeezed around the car to the next door.

  “After you,” said Lincoln to Banks.

  Banks opened the door and they went in.

  * * *

  “This is a bedroom?” said Poppy.

  * * *

  The next carriage was opulent. Mirrors hung on every wall, gilt-framed and laden with cherubs. Heavy curtains hung around the windows, and the floor was carpeted in blue and gold.

  “What is that symbol?” asked Poppy, pointing at the carpet.

  “You don’t know?” asked Lincoln. He sounded surprised.

  “I’ve seen it on the carriages,” said Banks. “I thought it was the badge of the train company.”

  “The train company,” said Lincoln, shaking his head. “Tyrants have bowed down before that symbol, you know. Nations have trembled at the sight of it. The Leader used to have it branded on the faces of his opponents. It’s a sign of fear, and a sign of empire.”

  Poppy said, “So not the train company then.”

  * * *

  “This room is ridiculous,” Garland said. She was looking at the bed. It had a huge gilt column at each corner, carved with more symbols and supporting a thick canopy. The canopy was made of blue and gold satin, as were the bedspread and the pillows.

  “Matching collar and cuffs,” said Poppy. “Nice.”

  * * *

  There was a dressing table, with a gilt-framed mirror and a selection of hairbrushes. Banks opened a drawer. It was crammed with pill bottles. He took one out and squinted at the label.

  “Benzedrine,” he read.

  “The Leader was often required to stay awake for long periods of time as he planned affairs of state.”

  Banks picked up another bottle.

  “Viagra,” he read.

  Lincoln shrugged. “Like I said, affairs of state.”

  “Penicillin,” said Banks, reading a third label.

  * * *

  “He lived here?” said Banks.

  “This was the Leader’s personal carriage,” said Lincoln. “When there was a Leader, and there were places for him to go. This was his personal train.”

  “So all the things here were his?” asked Garland. “The apartments? The cages?”

  “The buffet cars?” said Banks.

  “The turtles,” Poppy said, wistfully.

  “Not all, no,” said Lincoln. “Things changed, you see. The world changed. You wouldn’t recognise it how it was and how it is now. But it changed, and it changed a lot. So the personal train became the government train, which didn’t make a great deal of difference at first, because, you know, the Leader and the government…”

  He pressed his hands together.

  “… so it was easier. Everyone in the same boat, or at least train. He could get around, he was safe, he could run things and it was a home from home.”

  Lincoln looked at Garland.

  “You remember any of this?”

  Garland shook her head.

  “I remember Denning,” she said. “But that’s all.”

  “It’ll come,” said Lincoln. “Did everyone drink their Cristal?”

  Banks nodded. Poppy froze.

  “He poisoned it!” she shouted. “The fucker!”

  Before she could move, Lincoln raised the black box over his head.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Why would I? I’ve got this, I’ve got a gun, I’ve got guards.”

  Lincoln smiled. “Process of thought,” he said. “Synapses firing in the brain, all that. Electrical connections, leading to new ideas and, equally, old memories. There was something in the Cristal, but it wasn’t poison.”

  “Then what was it?” said Garland.

  “Call it memory relaxant,” Lincoln replied. “Because I think it’s time you knew everything again.”

  He opened another drawer in the dressing table.

  “But it’s going to take a while,” he said, and pulled out a small paper packet. “So who wants to see some old snaps?”

  * * *

  There were ten photographs in the packet. The first showed a large, clearly new train festooned with ribbons and rosettes. A small group of people posed in front of the train, one holding a large bottle.

  “See anyone you know?” asked Lincoln.

  “There’s you,” said Poppy. “Only less fat.”

  “While ago,” agreed Lincoln. “Anyone else?”

  Garland noticed a thin, serious face. “Denning,” she said.

  “No show without Punch,” said Lincoln. “Now, a little test for you all, see if the memories are returning. Can you see our dear Leader?”

  They scanned the picture.

  “Is it the man holding the bottle?” asked Poppy.

  “Nope,” said Lincoln. “He’s just holding it before the Leader takes it from him. And he’s terrified he’s gonna drop it.”

  “Is it one of the men in the big hats?” Banks asked.

  “The generals? They wish. They’re just there for show.”

  “He killed them,” said Garland. “Denning. He tricked them and he killed them. I was there.”

  “Right,” said Lincoln. “I heard that, but it’s nice to have an eyewitness account. But you still haven’t identified the Leader.”
>
  “I’m bored now,” said Poppy.

  “And I am tempted to give you a little jolt, young lady.” Lincoln sighed. He jabbed the photograph.

  “That one,” he said.

  “No way,” said Poppy.

  “He looks like he works in a shop,” said Banks.

  They were looking at a small, chubby man with grey hair and glasses.

  Garland said, “Are you sure?” Lincoln walked over to the far wall and pulled away a curtain. Behind it was a small framed portrait of a man. The painter had given him rosy apple cheeks and the smile of a loveable grandpa, but it was still recognisable as the man in the photograph.

  “I’m sure,” said Lincoln.

  * * *

  They went back to the other photographs. There was Poppy, in her skiwear, and in formal dress at a banquet.

  “You were elite,” said Lincoln. “Even if you couldn’t ski for shit, you were from one of the Families.”

  “What families?”

  Lincoln ignored her. “It’s you,” he said, sliding a photograph over to Banks. “My, aren’t you pretty. Weren’t,” he corrected himself.

  Banks slid the picture back. “I don’t need to see that to know who I was,” he said.

  “I think you look better now,” said Poppy.

  “I agree,” Garland said.

  “Gee, get a room,” Lincoln said. He sounded disappointed. Then he brightened again.

  “What have we here?” he said, handing a picture to Garland.

  It was the largest of the photographs, blurry and black-and-white. It showed a small heap of something, white and indistinct. The heap was dead people. In front of it stood someone holding a gun and looking pleased with herself. It was Garland.

  “Target practice,” said Lincoln. “Don’t worry, they were enemies of the state.”

  * * *

  “That’s not me,” said Garland.

  “How do you know?” said Lincoln. “You can’t even remember what you were doing last week. Hey! Maybe this is what you were doing!”

  Garland took the picture and crumpled it up.

  “Three scientists, two of ’em married, and an author,” said Lincoln. “Point-blank range. Some people have weird hobbies.”

  “I don’t remember this!” Garland said. She might have been shouting. Poppy put an arm around her.

  Banks looked at Lincoln.

  “I don’t like you,” he said, “and I don’t like what you’re doing. You’re an unpleasant man and you’re enjoying this, which is disgusting. Stop torturing us and tell us the truth.”

  Lincoln put the photographs back in the packet.

  “Wow,” he said. “The worm turns.”

  He sighed.

  “OK then. The truth.”

  SIX

  A long time ago (Lincoln told them) there was a world and it worked.

  * * *

  It was degenerate and it was disordered, but it worked. People walked around in all weathers and told each other that they liked it. They ate some animals and kept others for fun, and they did the same with plants too. They didn’t eat each other but they did pretty much everything else.

  * * *

  They had to work, but less so as time went on. This was partly because a lot of work was unpleasant and they got someone or something else to do it, but also because people didn’t really like working. What they liked was talking to each other and taking photographs of each other, and taking photos of themselves and each other, and their animals and plants (both the ones they were eating and the ones they kept for fun). You can bet they took a lot of photographs.

  * * *

  They got on, generally. There were wars, but as these were work, little robots started fighting the wars instead. People were relieved, because originally they were going to fight the wars with big rockets, so little robots were a lot better.

  * * *

  What with the reduction in work, and the robots fighting the wars, and the photographs, everything was very nice. The people had a world and it worked.

  * * *

  And then one day everybody woke up to find the world didn’t work any more.

  * * *

  “What is this?” Poppy said. “This is a fairy tale.”

  * * *

  “It’s not,” said Lincoln. “It’s what happened. How I see it, anyway.”

  * * *

  “Let him tell it,” said Garland.

  * * *

  And then one day (Lincoln continued) the world didn’t work any more. The air wasn’t blue, it was black. And the black air killed the animals, and then the plants. The drones started to crash, and so did everything else. The world was broken, and nobody could fix it.

  * * *

  People couldn’t agree on how it had happened. Some said it was the environment, meaning the world had got too hot or too polluted, which was probably because of all the different ways people had found to avoid working. Some said God was angry with people, which was possible but unlikely, because normally there was an Ark when that happened, and this time there was no way out. And still other people said it was the photographs, because there were a lot of photographs, but nobody was printing them out, or throwing them away, and every day there were more and more photographs.

  * * *

  “I don’t think it was the photographs,” said Banks. “That’s a joke, surely.”

  * * *

  “Yeah?” said Lincoln. “At one point, people were taking more pictures on their damn cameras in a day than everyone in the entire history of the world had taken in a hundred years. So there were a lot of photographs.”

  * * *

  The world worked, and then it didn’t. People kind of went to pieces. This is when the Leader appeared. He was the Leader because he knew how to lead. I mean, really lead. He got the people together, got an army together. He started the world again, and nearly got it working. Made it run, you might say.

  * * *

  There were people who disagreed with him. They were trouble but not for long. But there were people who were trouble, so there were wars and this time they were wars with big rockets. The skies went from black to white to grey, and some of the cities disappeared. It would have been a lot worse, only nothing worked properly, including the big rockets.

  And when the smoke had cleared – not literally, it’s still out there – there was nothing left but the trains.

  * * *

  “Trains plural?” said Garland.

  * * *

  “Let him tell it,” Banks said.

  * * *

  The trains were the thing now, you see (Lincoln went on). They could hold a lot of people, and they were fast, and hard to stop, and hard to hit. People had mostly given up on the cities, and the country was kind of lawless, so the trains were where a lot of people went. In the end, even us. We were the last government, and we came here.

  * * *

  “I have some questions,” Poppy said.

  * * *

  “No you don’t,” said Lincoln.

  * * *

  He sat back and folded his arms.

  * * *

  “And that’s the truth?” said Banks.

  “All the truth that’s fit to print,” Lincoln said. “Obviously, I’ve edited here and there. The whole thing took more than a year or two, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

  “You’ve left out everything important,” Poppy said. “Like who Garland is, and how she got here, and why there are things on this train.”

  “I decided to spare your feelings,” Lincoln said.

  “Don’t,” said Garland. “I need to know.”

  “I, on the other hand, don’t need to know,” said Banks. “I have as much of my truth as I can bear.”

  “Oh,” said Lincoln, “we’ll see about that.”

  “I want the facts,” Poppy said.

  “I don’t,” Banks said. “I know who I am and what I did.”

  Poppy said, “All this is to scare us, isn’t it? Smoke and m
irrors and vague stories, to make us too scared to ask any questions.”

  “Ask me a question, then,” Lincoln said. “Anything you like.”

  Poppy thought. “What was his name?” she said. “The Leader.”

  “That was his name,” said Lincoln.

  “He was called the Leader?”

  “He may have been called something else once,” Lincoln said. “But that name wasn’t who he was. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he said to Garland.

  Garland said nothing.

  “Knows more than she’s letting on,” said Lincoln.

  Garland faced Poppy. “I don’t,” she said.

  “Stop,” Banks said. He sounded angry, and frightened. “Poppy is right, he’s trying to scare us, dragging all this up and not being clear, deliberately. He’s doing it to keep us in our place, and I don’t know about you –”

  Banks stopped. He took a deep breath.

  “– but it’s working. I’m terrified. I thought I knew who I was and where I was from, but I don’t know all of it.”

  “You surely don’t,” said Lincoln. “You think you were some big cool guy who betrayed this innocent kid. And you were. You did. But you don’t know it all.”

  “Wait,” said Poppy. She gave Banks a warm, deep smile. “Banks was cool?”

  “Cool for a geek,” said Lincoln. “Dressed well for a nerd, all that. And yeah, he was kind of pretty before we got to him.”

  “They changed my face,” Banks said.

  “I like it,” Poppy said. Garland nodded too.

  “Glad someone does,” says Lincoln. “I can barely look at it. We didn’t do it to uglify him, you understand. We’re not monsters. I mean, we make monsters, but we’re not actually monsters ourselves.”

  “‘We’re not monsters, we just make the monsters’,” repeated Garland.

  “Lady,” said Lincoln, “someone has to make the bad things, to keep the worse things away. Anyway, I was telling you how we made pretty boy here into much-less-pretty boy.”

  “You don’t have to listen to this,” Poppy told Banks.

  “He does,” said Lincoln. “Because he deserves it. We didn’t make him like this for fun. We made him like this because it was one of the Leader’s dictates. ‘People should look like who they are,’ he said. ‘A good person should look like a good person…’”