Night Train

by David Quantick

  “– soft,” said Lincoln. “We figured that because he was old, and sick, he didn’t know what he was doing. Blue skies, for goodness’ sake.”

  “What?” said Poppy.

  “Oh, and letting people go free, and make decisions, and all that kind of bull,” said Lincoln, contemptuously. “The man was pissing on his own legacy. ’Course, he wasn’t well. We knew he was dying, so we had to act in a hurry. Which, unfortunately, we did.”

  “I don’t understand,” Banks said.

  “Not understanding is your brand, son,” Lincoln said.

  “What he means,” said Garland, “is that the operation was done in a rush. It was botched. The clone had some of my cells and some of his, but his – they were diseased.”

  “We should have just rinsed your fucking brain,” said Lincoln. “Two birds with one stone, know what I mean?”

  “Why did they use your cells?” said Poppy. “What had you done to him?”

  Garland said, “I was his only child, the only one with his DNA.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Banks. “The Leader was your father?”

  Poppy looked at him. “Oh, come on,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Banks. “A lot has happened lately, and I’m starting to feel that she’s part of it.”

  “She’s done nothing,” said Poppy. Less certainly, she said to Garland, “Have you?”

  “Well,” said Lincoln, filling the silence, “have you… Garland?”

  “If that’s her name,” Banks said.

  “Banks!” Poppy shouted. “Of course it’s not her name!”

  “OK,” said Banks. He turned to Garland.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell us.”

  * * *

  Garland told them.

  * * *

  There was a chess set on the table. At least, she thought it was a chess set. She was eight years old and, as her governess told her when nobody was around, she didn’t know everything.

  The chess set looked like a normal chess set except for one thing: it was entirely black. Instead of being a pattern of black and white checks, the board was black, and instead of one set of pieces being white and one black, both sets were black.

  She found it annoying, because she liked chess, and she liked things to be right. An all-black chess set clearly was not right.

  “Why is it all black?” she asked her governess. Her governess, who didn’t like to be wrong but frequently was, said, “You should ask your father,” in the hope of ending her interest in the topic.

  So she asked her father. He knelt down to her – they were standing on opposite sides of the chess board at the time, as if about to begin an impossible game – and he said, “To remind me of an important lesson.” Once, he had been in an art gallery somewhere abroad – somewhere decadent – and he had seen another chess set. “Was it black, too?” she asked. “No,” he said, “it was white. All the pieces were white and so was the board.”

  The artist had been there, her father explained, and he had asked her – it was a woman, as is common in decadent cities – why she had made this chess set. Well, he said “asked” (he and his daughter both smiled at this, because he was the Leader and he never asked anything, he just said it, and it happened) but really he just told the woman artist that it was a bad chess set because even if you could move the pieces on an all-white board, sooner or later the fact that they were all white meant that both players would become hopelessly confused and nobody could tell which pieces belonged to which side.

  And the woman artist had said to him, “Exactly.”

  * * *

  Her father had not liked this, but it wasn’t his city and it wasn’t his chess set, so when he came home, he had had this set, the all-black set, made.

  “In my chess set,” he said, not a little proudly, “both sides are black because both sides belong to me. The board is black because the field belongs to me. There is no chance of confusion because I control both sides.”

  “But you can’t play a game. Not with someone else.”

  He looked at her, and he was smiling.

  “Not with someone else, no,” he said. “Exactly.”

  * * *

  Where they lived was the palace and it was by far the nicest place in the world. The rest of the world was foggy and lacking the colour that everywhere filled the palace. There were green ferns and white orchids and orange fruit and all kinds of beautiful things. She wanted for nothing, except a pony because there were none to be had, and a mother, because hers had died giving birth to her.

  “I am surprised your father did not break it to you more… gently,” said the governess.

  “I’m surprised you still have a job,” she replied, and the governess was silent.

  * * *

  She loved her father, who was also the father of their country, which meant she had to share him, but she didn’t mind, so long as the country only had him during the week and she got him to herself at the weekends. She knew the country loved him because wherever she went with him, people waved and cheered, and held up their own children, as though hoping that her father might take the children home with him. She could understand why they might want him to do that – she could tell from their clothes, crisp and white though they were, that these people did not live in a palace.

  * * *

  As time went by, she found that even life in a palace wasn’t perfect. For a start, she spent too much time in the palace. There were many things to do – she could read, or swim with the turtles – but not enough. By the time she was thirteen, she felt that she had swum with the turtles enough, and the books were very dull (there was one about making films, written, she was sure, by the dullest man in the world: she hoped never to see any of the films he had made).

  “I miss my mother,” she said to her latest governess, hoping to provoke her into saying something that would get her sacked. But the governess was wise to her tricks now, and simply said, “That is a natural feeling.”

  * * *

  Her father grew older. He was ill, she could see that. He had started to need her, first for simple tasks like finding his glasses and bringing him tea, but then for more difficult things, like helping him with his speeches. He was having trouble finding books and sources for them, he told her, although she also noticed that he was having more trouble finding the right words to put in the speeches.

  “We need to – what is the word?” he asked her once. “Not transient, not transfer.”

  “Transition?” she said. It was a reasonable guess, as lately he had become fond of the word.

  “That’s it!” he said. “What would I do without you?”

  He kissed her. She flinched.

  “Your breath,” she said apologetically.

  “One day,” he went on, apparently not having heard her, “all this will be yours.”

  “The palace?” she said, teasingly. This was one of her favourite conversations, almost a game. But today her father did not seem to be playing.

  “I need you to take on my grand plan,” he said. “It will take seven years, and I don’t have seven years.”

  “But –”

  “You know what my plan is. To – transition – to a limited social democracy. To give the people back their country.”

  “I thought you were giving it to me,” she said, smiling to show it was a joke. She didn’t want a country. She just wanted him.

  “I am,” he said, smiling back. “But only to look after. One day, who knows, you will have a son –”

  “Or a daughter,” she frowned.

  “Perhaps. And he, or she, will preside over the final handing over of power. But it will take many years.”

  He put down his pen to massage his arm.

  “I have many enemies,” he said. “I did not want you to know, and I have tried to – what is the word, like confuse?”

  “Conceal,” she said.

  “I have tried to conceal this from you. But they are like weeds. I cut off
one head and ten more spring up. Many are here.”

  “I know,” she said. “I trust nobody.”

  “Good,” he said.

  He looked away from her, and for a moment she wondered if he was quite present.

  “Do you remember when we talked about the chess set?” he said. She nodded yes, and he went on, “I wanted the world to be all the same, all controlled by me. It would be a safer world, I thought, and one without conflict. But you cannot have a world without conflict, without dialectic, without opposing views.”

  “Shall we get a new chess set then?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Maybe not just yet,” he said.

  * * *

  She began to accompany him to official events. Her photograph was printed in the papers. Her face appeared on a coin.

  One day, Denning appeared with a doctor. “We need your DNA,” he said, without further explanation.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Your father is ill,” said Denning.

  “Open your mouth, please,” said the doctor.

  “Will this help?” she asked.

  “Just going to take a sample,” the doctor said.

  * * *

  Her father was very ill. Every day she helped him dress, helped him to the window so he could see the crowds below who had come to wish him well. He waved at them and they waved back.

  * * *

  One day he waved at the crowds and suddenly something hit the window and cracked it.

  They watched as troops ran into the square below. Smoke filled the air and there were screams.

  Denning appeared with two identical men, who gently moved her father away from the window.

  “Let’s not do that any more,” he said to her father as the men laid him on the bed.

  * * *

  Her father never left the bed again. She saw him give instructions to Denning, but she doubted that they were ever followed.

  * * *

  One day, a man called Lincoln came to see her. He was sweaty, and looked as though his suit hated him.

  “Have you come to make my father well?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  “Then why are you here?” she said, losing interest.

  “There are people who want to kill him,” said Lincoln.

  “They needn’t bother,” she replied. “He’s dying anyway.”

  “When he dies,” said Lincoln, “they will kill you.”

  “They can’t,” she said. “I will be Leader, and I will implement his policies.”

  “Which is why they will kill you,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I represent a faction,” said Lincoln, looking around him as though for spies, “who are opposed to those who oppose you.”

  She stifled a grin.

  “And we want to take you to a place of safety,” he went on.

  She stood up.

  “I am in a place of safety,” she said. She tapped her chest with her hand. “So long as I am here, for my father, I am safe.”

  Lincoln stood too.

  “OK,” he said, his tone of respect gone.

  “Just stay away from the windows, that’s all.”

  * * *

  Time passed.

  * * *

  She stood with Denning beside her father’s coffin. He was putting a piece of paper in his pocket.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Denning nodded, as if relieved. He turned to one of the soldiers guarding the coffin.

  “You, Garland,” he said, reading the woman’s name badge. “Change clothes with her.”

  * * *

  She walked with Denning onto the platform, the green uniform feeling odd.

  “This is my father’s train,” she said.

  “It was,” Denning said. “We have requisitioned it for the emergency.”

  She looked the train up and down. It was magnificent, a home from home. But now soldiers were running in and out of it, onto the platforms and back again. Furniture was being loaded out, and food loaded in.

  “We’ve added more buffet cars for the men, so they can eat,” said Denning.

  “And a few – experiments. Work in progress. Useful work.”

  “I don’t need to know,” she said. “Just show me to my quarters.”

  “A pleasure,” said Denning. He made a strange gesture. Two soldiers appeared from nowhere and one of them pinned her arms behind her back. The other crammed a wet cloth into her mouth and she passed out.

  * * *

  Denning leaned over her inert form. He jabbed a needle into her wrist and emptied its contents into her veins.

  “Fucking bitch,” said Denning. “Throw it in the caboose.”

  SEVEN

  “You remembered!” said Lincoln. “You even remembered me. I’m touched.”

  “I should have gone with you,” Garland said.

  “He wanted to kill you, I bet,” said Poppy.

  “Even if he did, I should have gone with him,” said Garland. “I’m just as bad as them. Him, and Lincoln.”

  “You’re not,” said Poppy.

  “She is,” Banks said.

  They looked at him.

  “Banks!” said Poppy. “She wasn’t in charge. She didn’t do any of this.”

  “She was there,” Banks said. “She could have done something. She could have said something. Stopped all the bad things.”

  “He’s got a point,” Lincoln said. “I mean, at least I tried to stop some of the bad things. True, I had my own reasons, but I’m not supposed to be the good guy here. Whereas she was going to be the knight in shining armour.”

  He looked at Garland. “That was your plan, right? You were going to undo all your daddy’s works, good and bad, and make a happy land, where children could play in the street and everyone had pie in the sky for dinner.”

  “I was going to institute his reforms,” Garland said.

  “See?” said Poppy. “She was going to institute his reforms. Sounds fine to me.”

  Banks turned away.

  “Banks,” said Garland. “This isn’t fair.”

  “You were at the heart of it,” Banks said. “The evil… you were right there. For all I know you gave the order to have him killed.”

  “I didn’t,” Garland said. “Even if I had known, I wasn’t allowed to make decisions.”

  “That’s true,” said Lincoln. “Which kind of makes all this pointless.”

  “What do you mean?” Poppy said.

  “Ever heard of Kerensky?” said Lincoln. “He was a reformer. Lasted about a week. Ended up in exile, teaching kids who weren’t listening to a stupid old man. History remembers him as a well-meaning loser. Cheers, history.”

  “Banks, I never knew,” Garland said. “I never hurt anyone.”

  “And you never stopped anyone being hurt,” said Banks.

  “I didn’t know anything,” she said, near tears.

  “You never tried to know anything,” Banks said, and walked away.

  Garland went to follow him, but Poppy put a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “No,” she said.

  “I couldn’t do anything,” Garland said. “He needs to know that.”

  “He needs to be left alone,” said Poppy. “And you need to imagine how he feels.”

  Lincoln clapped his hands.

  “All righty,” he said. “We had a fine jaw around the old campfire, didn’t we? We chewed us some fat and we’re all square. Cards on the table, genies out of the bottle, a frank exchange of truths. Is everybody happy? I mean,” he said, looking at them all, “in a metaphorical kind of way.”

  Garland went over to him.

  “I want to see the driver,” she said.

  “I thought he was the driver,” Poppy said.

  “Honey, believe me, I’m not the driver,” Lincoln replied.

  “He’s not the driver,” said Garland. She looked at Lincoln again. “The next carriage is the last carriage
, isn’t it? The locomotive itself.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then take me to him. Take me to the driver.”

  Lincoln looked at them all again.

  “All righty,” he said, and beamed.

  * * *

  The three of them – Poppy on the alert, Garland tense and Banks sullenly silent – followed Lincoln down the carriage.

  “Kind of a tricky manoeuvre here,” he said as they approached the end. He opened the door. Between the carriage they were in and the next there was a gap. The two carriages were connected by four or five shifting steel panels, like the plates on some armoured creature’s back.

  “You have to sort of shimmy across,” said Lincoln. “Not for the faint of heart.”

  “The person who designed this train ought to be shot,” said Poppy.

  “Funny you should say that,” Lincoln said. “After you.”

  Poppy ignored the moving panels below them and jumped across the gap, grabbing the handles on the other carriage and opening the door.

  “Now you,” she called back to Banks.

  “I can’t do it,” said Banks. “I’ll stay here. I don’t care about the driver –”

  Lincoln shoved him. Garland gasped. Banks staggered across the plates, arms flailing, and stumbled forward. Poppy grabbed him with a free hand and pulled him across.

  “Now me,” said Lincoln, and stepped into the darkness. He moved across the plates like a man who knows a secret path.

  It was Garland’s turn. Somehow she got across the panels as they slid away from her, but at the last minute she lost her footing and her legs gave way under her. She thrust out a hand. The nearest person was Banks.

  He looked at her hand, as though wondering what it was.

  For a moment there was nothing but him and her and the rush of air and sound beneath her.

  “Banks!” Poppy shouted.

  Without speaking, he reached out and took her hand. Garland righted herself and Poppy pulled her into the carriage.

  “Thanks, Banks,” Garland said. Banks didn’t reply.

  * * *

  They were in a short, dark corridor. It was narrow with machinery and hot enough to make them take their jackets off.

  “That way,” Lincoln said.

  Poppy stopped.

  “You go first,” she said.