The Unwinding House and Other Stories

by Jared Millet

  The man stood mute while his face turned the color of ash. “Yes, ma’am. Understood. Deepest apologies, ma’am.”

  I concealed a grin. “Miss Despre, I hope I’m not being impertinent, but might I have the pleasure of your company at breakfast?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Adsworth,” she said. “We can assess the state of the automated staff and see if this hotel is living up to its contractual maintenance obligations.”

  The clerk turned a satisfying red. Before I burst out laughing, I excused myself and bid the lady good night.

  ~

  “Have you heard about the ghost train?” she asked.

  We were back on the way to Cheyenne and would arrive by mid-afternoon. I’d been gazing at the Rockies, but her question jolted me out of my reverie. I wasn’t sure if her interest was casual or professional, so I gauged my response.

  “I’ve heard rumors.”

  “What have you heard?” Her query was pointed, not whimsical. Did she already know about my assignment?

  “Wild stories,” I said. “The kind passed around by drunks in saloons.”

  “I didn’t peg you for a saloon-going man.” She smiled and evidently decided to bait me. “I heard it’s a big, black 4-8-4, and it’s been seen tearing through the countryside north of Iron Mountain every Sunday after midnight.”

  I sighed. “It’s a Merrimac 4-6-0. It was spotted heading east from Orin Junction two weeks ago.”

  “There’s no fork off that line before Crawford. What happened when it got there?”

  “According to the Crawford signal tower, it never did.”

  She grinned. “Interesting.”

  “So you know why I’m going to Cheyenne.” I gave her my best accusatory glare. “Did you know all along?”

  “Not as such, but it seemed reasonable.”

  “If you’ll pardon my asking, what’s Cotton-Perrilloux’s interest in the matter?”

  “I should have thought it was obvious.” She adjusted her gloves and looked slyly from under the brim of her new hat. “Assuming, of course, that the railroad isn’t haunted, we have more than a stolen locomotive on our hands. Someone’s managed to repurpose one of our difference engines. More than that, they’ve compromised at least one signal tower, and possibly our whole network. It’s not just a question of protecting industrial secrets. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Is the government aware of the problem?”

  “Not yet. Cotton-Perrilloux wants to keep things quiet until we know the magnitude of the situation. It’s only fair, though, for Northern United to be involved.”

  “I should say so. Well then, Miss Despre, how do you suggest we proceed?”

  “Call me Evie. I’ve got just the idea.”

  ~

  The Cheyenne signal tower was a concrete needle in a web of crisscrossed cables. A dozen locomotives rested in the yard, waiting for their next assignments. Each one clutched the nearest guide wire with a retractable arm. Through these guide wires, the Perrilloux computing engines inside each train received information regarding timetables, routes, and potential hazards. Trains roaming “in the wild” could only communicate via wires embedded in the rails themselves.

  “If I was going to steal an engine,” Evie said while stepping across the rails, “I wouldn’t sabotage it directly. I’d break into a signal tower and rig it so that the train believed it was receiving valid instructions to abandon its original schedule.”

  “I’d think that would be the more difficult task.”

  “Difficult, yes,” said Evie, “but the only way the kind of theft we’re talking about is possible. If you altered one train’s destination without adjusting the whole schedule, you’d inevitably cause a collision somewhere on the line.”

  At the door to the tower’s base, she produced a key. The interior was not what I’d expected. I’d imagined whirring gears, pounding levers, and clacking circuits. Instead there was a short, dark corridor. A bulb flickered to life, revealing a lift at the tower’s core.

  It was big enough for two, but only barely. I apologized for impinging on Miss Despre’s modesty as we pressed against each other. We rose in darkness surrounded by hundreds of electric drums, all spinning in silence. There was an odor of oil and ozone, and something like a hint of magnolias. It took me a moment to realize that the latter was Evie’s perfume.

  The chamber at the peak of the tower was unlit save for the sunlight that strained through the smoke-blackened windows. Evie swore an unladylike curse and hunted for a working bulb while I cracked one of the windows open to take in the vastness of the Wyoming countryside. Behind me came a shout of triumph, and the room filled with illumination.

  This chamber was more what I had expected. Four great brass cages of interlocking gears sat on the floor like points of a giant compass. Beside each cage was a desk with a typewriter and ticker-tape machine. Evie sat at one of these.

  “The trick isn’t to look for the train,” she said. “Whoever stole it would have instructed the system not to reveal its location, and we’d have to tear the network apart to find the original orders. We can assume, though, that the signal towers do know where the train is. They’d have to in order to route traffic around it.”

  “I see. So all we have to look for is the hole in the schedule.”

  “Exactly. I’m also going to have the tower assign one of the trains in the yard to assist us in the hunt. This may take a while. Why don’t you run back to the station and get us something to eat?”

  I bowed and donned my hat, then left her to her work.

  ~

  The engine Evie selected for us was a 4-6-0 similar to the one we were hunting. Its engineer was a freckled young man named Wrigley. I was shocked at how boyish he appeared, but younger railmen have proved more adaptable in this new age of automation. He circled the locomotive with an oil can, topping off the grease cups for the driving rods.

  “Strange charter, sir,” he said. “We ain’t pullin’ no freight?”

  “None. Speed is imperative.”

  “Just you and me, then?”

  “And the lady.” Speak of the devil, she came charging out of the signal tower with a sheaf of papers and a beaming grin.

  “I’ve found her,” she said. “How fast can we get moving?”

  Wrigley’s jaw dropped. I nudged him with my elbow. He took off his cap.

  “Right away, ma’am, as soon as we get the boiler going and the all-clear to travel.”

  “You’ve got the all-clear now. Stoke her up. Our target is making for the Dakota border.”

  We were soon underway. I worried that Evie was being optimistic. Even pulling nothing but a lumber car for fuel, we would be hard pressed to catch up to an engine with that much of a lead.

  We blew north through Wendover without slowing for the station. We shot by another train on a detour track too fast to see the faces of those aboard, but I could imagine their indignation at the delay we had doubtless caused. We reached Orin Junction after sundown, screeched to a halt as quickly as we dared, then negotiated the Y-turn to the eastbound line before resuming our chase.

  Even though it was summer, I shivered in the brisk night air. The sky was clear, and a crystal canopy of stars rotated gently overhead. In the engine room, Evie drummed her fingers on the interface with the train’s Perrilloux. So as not to ruin another dress, she’d switched to the garb of a railman, including an engineer’s cap into which she’d tucked her hair.

  “You should come look at the sky,” I said. “It’s magnificent.”

  “Can’t. We’ve got problems.”

  “It’s pretty queer, sir,” said Wrigley. “We’ve got the boiler as hot as hellfire, but she’s not making the time she ought to.”

  “It seems to me we’re moving at a good clip.”

  “But not as fast as we should be.” Evie wiped a streak of grease across her forehead. “It doesn’t make sense. The difference engine is holding us back
and it won’t say why.”

  “Interference from our train thief?”

  “Maybe. He could be sending commands through the rail line to slow us down, but that would mean he knows we’re after him. Unless one of us in this cabin tipped him off, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “What about the timetable? Are we still gaining?”

  She shrugged. “For now.”

  We drove on through the night, passing one station after another as the signal towers cleared the way for us. Evie played the invisible strings of the network like a maestro, organizing an untold number of schedule changes and reroutes from her nest in the heart of our engine.

  And still we lost speed.

  It was past two in the morning and we were well into Nebraska when I finally made a suggestion. I’d kept from speaking earlier, because I knew she wouldn’t like it.

  “What if we disconnect the Perrilloux from the signal towers?”

  The glare she stabbed at me bore less fury than the one she’d given that incompetent engineer two days before, but it flowed from the same well.

  “Without that connection, the train will be blind, deaf, and dumb,” she said.

  “Which is what we need. If our thief is countermanding your orders—”

  “It would be cruel. Imagine someone forcing you to run across a highway wearing blindfolds and earmuffs.”

  “Carriage drivers put blinders on horses all the time. It’s up to the servant to trust its master. If you shut off the signal, will this train trust you and keep going?”

  She thought before answering. “It might. If it doesn’t, we’ll lose the chase.”

  “We’re losing anyway. Do it, or we’ve wasted all our work.”

  She mulled it over.

  “Wrigley, pull up that panel. I’ll tell the engine to expect a loss of signal.”

  With haste, they dismantled a section of the engine room floor. I offered to help, but Evie waved me off with a wrench. Apparently she didn’t trust me not to hurt her precious machine. When she typed her warning into the Perrilloux’s number board, I swear I felt the engine jump.

  Beneath the floor was a whirlwind of spinning brass. Evie reached inside, expertly avoiding harm, and gripped a steel rod at the heart of it.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  She pulled the rod upward. The train lurched and the pistons thrummed an uneven beat.

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” Evie typed further instructions to the difference engine. Was there a way to translate soothing affections into machine language? She seemed to think so, but there was no tenderness in the way she barked at Wrigley and me.

  “Don’t just stand there. Throw more fuel in the furnace, anything, just keep this train going.”

  It was no use. The locomotive rattled in fits and panicked starts, but the Perrilloux at its heart was having none of it. After an hour of struggle, the train shuddered its final refusal, threw its brakes, and ground to a stop, an island of metal in a sea of prairie. Evie wiped her hands with a rag, threw it to the floor, and shoved past me out of the compartment.

  “Next time you get an idea, Adsworth, make it a better one.”

  ~

  Our train refused to move even after Evie reconnected it to the signal towers. When at last it deigned to carry us, it did so only as far as an unfinished spur in order to let a freight hauler go around. Afterward, the engine shut down and would not come back to life until Evie and I had physically removed ourselves from its person.

  Evie swore like a brakeman and kicked the gravel. In the distance, an automated track-laying tower chugged along like a great metal snail. I wondered if the handful of men supervising the new spur’s construction had noticed us and whether we should seek their aid.

  It turned out to be unnecessary, as only a few hours passed before our rescue arrived. The train that found us was long, black, and sleek. Its wheels were in a 4-8-4 configuration, but otherwise the design was unknown to me. The smokestack was small for its size, and it pulled no lumber car for fuel. The legend “Sable Cannonball” was emblazoned on its side in garish red.

  “Oh my god,” said Evie. “Is that a diesel?”

  “I suppose it must be. I didn’t know we had any operating in the West.”

  The train pulled to a stop near our own delinquent locomotive and extended its connector arm. Our former engine did the same, and the two arms met at the apex.

  “That’s… odd.” I’d never seen two trains synchronize with each other that way.

  “I’ll say.” As Evie walked closer for a better look, a block of a man wearing a sharp suit climbed down from the engine to greet us.

  “Miss Despre, such a pleasure. And you must be Adsworth.” He flashed his Northern United badge. “Joseph Kinneson, central office. I see our young Evangeline has roped you into her goose chase.”

  “Not at all. I was given my own orders to investigate the matter. Our joining forces was simple happenstance.”

  “May I see those orders, sir?” His tone was that of a border guard. The hair on my neck bristled, but without knowing Kinneson’s standing in the company I thought it unwise to voice my indignation. Instead, I passed him the telegram from my coat pocket.

  “Hmm,” he said. “From Will Stanford. He’s always eager to jump when Daniel Cotton snaps his fingers.”

  “Once you’ve finished needling your associate,” said Evie, “do you mind taking us back to civilization? Because if not, I’d rather cut this short and start walking.”

  “I’m here to do more than that. I’ve brought you a present.” He waved at the train behind him. “Your benefactor has convinced the board of directors to help you resolve this ‘ghost train’ issue, and I’m here to make sure you don’t waste any more time.”

  “What about fuel?” I asked. “There can’t be much diesel in this part of the country.”

  “An additional supply is being shipped, but the Sable can run for days on its current reserve. The board expects you to resume the chase immediately.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Evie. “We’ve lost the trail. We’ll have to backtrack to a major switchyard and start all over again with the signal towers.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The new model Perrilloux in this locomotive has the same computational speed of a signal tower in a twentieth of the space.”

  Her eyes widened. “You put a Perrilloux Alpha… in a train?”

  Kinneson’s smug look was his only answer. He handed me a letter to replace the telegram I’d shown him.

  “These are my own termination codes. I’m placing them in your charge, Adsworth, not Miss Despre’s. Once you’ve found the ghost train, type these commands into the Sable’s control panel. Your quarry will shut down and I will immediately be notified of your position. With luck, you’ll catch our train thief red-handed.”

  ~

  Kinneson remained with the hapless Wrigley and our former locomotive. I was sad to leave Wrigley behind, but I was glad to see Kinneson vanish in the distance.

  The Sable was a wonder of modern design. The control cabin, unlike that of any other train I’d ridden, was immaculate. The console for the Perrilloux machine – what Evie called the “Alpha” – was enshrined on a lacquered desk, not hidden under a floorboard. Most remarkable of all was the fact that, despite the presence of Miss Despre and myself, the train needed no crew at all.

  “May I provide you with refreshment?” asked the dogsbody that hung from the control cabin’s ceiling. “I can offer a selection of wines, beer, and cold water. Please press the button on my panel that corresponds to your selection.”

  The dogsbody, like the train itself, was painted a gleaming black, though an artist had added a genial face and red bow tie at the appropriate height from the floor. After admiring it for a moment, I pressed the button for merlot.

  “An excellent choice, sir.” It spun away to the small crew cabin in the rear and returned with a glass in its wooden claw. I thanked it, though it could
n’t hear me. It only knew where I stood from the pressure of my feet on the floor. While I sipped, I unfolded the letter from Kinneson. A slightly smudged telegram tumbled out.

  “I can’t believe Kinneson gave you his kill code,” said Evie.

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He’s a starched ass in love with his own authority. I’m the best Perrilloux mechanic in five states, but he only tolerates me because of Uncle Danny.”

  “Uncle Danny,” I said. “So when you told that hotel man you had a letter from the president of Cotton-Perrilloux, you were serious?”

  She looked up from her console.

  “My folks were free Creoles who worked on the Perrilloux estate after the War. Old Jean-Baptiste, the man who invented this thing—” She waved at the electrical brain of the engine. “—was my godfather. So here I am, keeping up the family business.”

  I picked the telegram off the floor. It was Kinneson’s orders from home office to locate Miss Despre and me and deliver this roaring new engine. At once, it struck me as wrong.

  “Evie,” I said, “back in Cheyenne, did you notify anyone that we were traveling together?”

  She paused in her work. “No, and when I requisitioned that other train, I used only my identification code, not yours.”

  “I don’t think I spoke to anyone but Wrigley, not even the station agent. But this telegram mentions both of us. By name.”

  “We both used our codes when the train out of Denver went crazy.”

  “Someone was watching the network very carefully to pick out a scrap of information like that. Home office?”

  “Or our train thief.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. I downed the rest of my wine like a shot of whiskey.

  “Where are we heading right now?” I asked.

  “East to Dakota Junction. Hopefully by the time we get there, I’ll have figured out where our ghost is.”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. From the junction we need to go north to the signal tower at Deadwood.”