by Timothy Zahn
Abruptly, I stepped away from the window. “Come on,” I told Rebekah, grabbing her arm and taking a quick look around as I pulled her toward the compartment door. There was nothing here we couldn’t do without.
“Where are we going?” she asked as she stumbled after me.
“Down around and under the ground and out in the rain,” I murmured, pressing my ear against the door and listening to the faint sound of the newly arrived passengers as they moved down the corridor toward their compartments. The timing here would have to be perfect.
“What?”
“‘The Ants Go Marching,’” I explained. “Children’s song Never mind. Stay close, and be ready to run when I do.”
The footsteps faded away I gave it two more beats, then opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
At the front of the car Braithewick was halfway onto the train, watching as his trunk rolled slowly across the corridor toward the number-one compartment directly across from him. Standing in the open compartment doorway was a Juri, also watching the trunk’s progress. Both he and Braithewick looked up as I walked casually toward them. “Well, hello there, Mr. Braithewick,” I said as I came up. “Small universe, isn’t—?”
And in the middle of my sentence, I pivoted on my left foot and drove the edge of my right into Braithewick’s stomach.
He gave an agonized cough and folded over, the impact of the kick throwing him back to slam into the edge of the car’s doorway. The Juri, whom I hadn’t touched, gave a pair of jerks in unison with Braithewick as the pain from my attack flowed into his nervous system via the Modhri group mind. “Stay close,” I told Rebekah, and without breaking stride sidled past the groaning Juri into the compartment.
Bayta was sitting on the bed, looking pale and disheveled but otherwise unharmed. “Time to go,” I said as I crossed to her. Her hands were out of sight behind her back, but from the cuffs glittering on her ankles I could guess her wrists were similarly pinioned. “Where are the keys?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes flicking to Rebekah peeking out from behind me. “Frank, are you sure—?”
“I’m sure,” I cut her off. “Lean forward.”
She did so. I ducked down, got my hands under her thighs, and hauled her up onto my left shoulder in a modified fireman’s carry, her head hanging down behind me, her legs in front with her upper thighs pressed against my chest. “Feet in close; kick straight out when I say kick,” I told her as I curled my left hand around her thighs to hold her in place. Without waiting for an answer, I turned back around and headed to the door.
The Juri had moved to block me, his scaled face still screwed up in shared pain. I threw a kick into his upper leg, then scraped the sole of my shoe down along his shin to his three-toed foot. He howled in pain as the leg gave way and dumped him onto the floor. I stepped past his quivering body and out into the corridor.
A handful of other passengers had emerged from their compartments, weaving slightly as they headed toward me with pain and rage in their faces. First in line was one of the new Halkan arrivals, charging forward in a clear attempt to cut us off before we could make it out the door. I turned toward him and loosened my grip on Bayta’s legs. “Kick,” I said quietly.
Bayta’s legs straightened out convulsively, her heels catching the Halka squarely in the upper chest. I added a kick of my own to his lower abdomen, grabbing Bayta’s legs as I did so to keep her from rolling off my shoulder. “Rebekah?” I called.
“Here,” the girl’s voice came from behind me.
“Grab my arm,” I said, and turned toward the car door.
Braithewick was still hunched over in the entryway, his face turned toward me, a deadly fury smoldering in his eyes. “You can move, or you can get kicked again,” I told him. “You’ve got two seconds to decide.”
He used up both seconds glaring at me. I gave him one more, then kicked him again in the stomach. He folded a little tighter, and I stepped carefully past him. Rebekah held on tight the whole time, gripping my upper arm like it was a life ring and she was adrift in the North Atlantic. “Bayta, get the door closed,” I ordered as we reached the platform. “No, leave the Spider out here,” I said as the conductor standing beside the door started to move back toward the car. “He can get aboard once we’re clear.”
Behind me, I heard the door iris shut. “Now what?” Bayta asked, her voice muffled against my back.
I looked around. That was, I realized, a damn good question. On a smaller Quadrail station, where there would be only a few other people around, none of whom were walkers, we could have just left the train sealed and sent it merrily on its way with the Modhran mind segment pounding its collective fists furiously against the windows.
But this was a subregional capital, and there were a hundred or more Juriani and other aliens standing around gawking at us. More importantly, eight of those hundred were already on the move toward us from spots all over the station. Their expressions were hard to make out, but I had no doubt they were alien equivalents of the look I’d just seen on Braithewick’s face.
Which left us exactly one option. “Close all the first- and second-class car doors,” I ordered Bayta, turning toward the rear of the train and heading off at the fastest jog I could manage.
“What about the Spiders?” she asked. “They have to get aboard before the train leaves.”
“They will,” I promised.
“That’s only five minutes away.”
“So keep the doors locked for four,” I gritted, peering along the side of the train. The two baggage cars at the rear were about ten cars away, I estimated. At the rate I was going, four minutes was going to be pushing it.
“Mr. Compton!” Rebekah said urgently, her hand tightening on my arm. “They’re coming!”
I half turned, swinging Bayta’s body out of the way so I could see. The walkers I’d seen moving in our direction earlier had broken into jogs of their own.
And it didn’t take a computerized range finder to realize they would reach us well before we made it to the baggage cars. “Bayta, can you slow them down?” I called, turning back around and trying to pick up my pace.
There was no answer. But I wasn’t really expecting one. Clenching my teeth, I kept going, wondering how the hell I was going to take on eight walkers all by myself.
And then, with a multiple thunk of expanding car couplings, the Quadrail beside us began to roll forward.
What the hell? “Bayta?” I snapped.
“They’re moving the train forward for us,” she called back.
Thereby shortening the distance I had to run. “Good—keep it up,” I told her. “Let me know when the walkers are fifty meters away. Rebekah? You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she called bravely. But I could hear the trembling in her voice.
Small wonder. Back on New Tigris, she’d been quietly terrified at the prospect of falling into the Modhri’s hands Now, with the end of the journey beckoning, that same horrible threat was suddenly looming again.
I blinked the sweat out of my eyes. It wasn’t going to happen, I told myself firmly. Whatever it took, whatever the cost I was going to get her out of this.
We were running alongside the second to the last of the passenger cars when Bayta gave me the warning. “Fifty meters,” she called.
“Right,” I said, wishing I could look for myself but knowing I didn’t dare take the time. “Tell the Spiders to stop the train.”
There was a multiple screech as the Quadrail’s brakes engaged, followed by another sequential clunking as the couplings recompressed. The door to the last third-class car was just ahead, and with a final lunge I threw myself through it. “Close it!” I snapped. Rebekah was still gripping my arm, and I twisted my torso around a little to make sure she was all the way in.
“They can’t stay closed for long,” Bayta warned as the door irised shut. “The conductors are still outside.”
“Time?” I asked.
“Ninety seconds to departu
re.”
“Keep us locked down another thirty seconds,” I told her. Resettling her weight across my shoulder, I started down the aisle.
Travel, according to cliché, broadened the mind, and there was no doubt that the typical Quadrail travelers had had their minds broadened as much as anyone’s. Nonetheless, if the stares I collected on my way down the car were any indication, this was a new one on pretty much everyone.
Fortunately for them, none of them made any attempt to stop us.
We were about a third of the way down the aisle when the train again started up, jostling everyone in the car and nearly dumping me on my face. We continued on, and as the train started angling up the slope leading out of the station we reached the car’s rear door and slipped through into the first baggage car.
“What do we do now?” Rebekah asked as the door slid shut behind us.
“We get ready for company,” I said, gingerly sliding Bayta off my aching shoulder and setting her down on her feet on the floor. “Bayta, turn around.”
“There is a plan, then?” Bayta asked as she swiveled around to put her back to me.
“There was,” I said, pulling out my lockpick. “Unfortunately, it’s now been just slightly shot to hell.”
Bayta threw a look at Rebekah. “I hope you have a new one.”
“In production as we speak,” I assured her. “Rebekah, go push on the stacks of crates nearest the door. See if you can figure out which one’s the lightest.”
“Okay.”
Her tour of the stacks took about a minute, the same minute it took me to get Bayta’s wrist and ankle cuffs off. “This one, I think,” she said, pointing to the stack to the right of the door.
“Good,” I said, flipping out my multitool’s tiny knife, the only genuine weapon allowed inside the Tube. Stepping to the door side of Rebekah’s stack, I reached up and cut a long vertical slit in the safety webbing. I pried the webbing open, then jabbed the knife into the side of one of the crates midway up “Okay,” I said, getting a grip on the multitool. “I’ll pull. You two go around on the other side and push.”
The stack was a lot heavier than it looked, and it took a good half minute of grunting to get it to tip. But finally, and with a horrible crash, it came down, spreading its constituent crates all across the floor in front of the doorway.
“That won’t stop them for long,” Bayta warned as she surveyed our handiwork.
“It won’t stop them at all,” I corrected, hopping up on the nearest of the fallen crates and starting on the webbing of the stack on the other side of the door. “Bayta, can you climb up that stack over there and get ready to push the top of this one?”
“I’ll do it,” Rebekah volunteered before Bayta could answer. Grabbing a double handful of webbing, she started up.
I returned my attention to my own stack and finished slicing through the webbing. “Bayta, give me a hand here,” I called as I again stuck the blade into the side of one of the crates.
“They’re coming,” Bayta murmured as she got into position around the back side of the stack.
“I know,” I said. “Rebekah?”
“Almost ready,” she called.
I nodded and got a grip on the multitool. Dropping this stack on top of the first one ought to leave the door properly blocked.
I was still standing there, waiting for Rebekah to get into position, when the door slid open and a large Halka strode though.
For a split second I hesitated, trying to decide if I could take the time to pull my multitool out of the crate so that I would have at least that much of a weapon in hand. Probably not, I concluded regretfully, and started to step away from the stack into the Halka’s path.
But to my surprise, I found Bayta was already there. “Stop!” she ordered, her voice bold and menacing, her hands upstretched like a wizard from a dit rec fantasy standing against the oncoming hordes of hell.
It was so unexpected that the Halka actually stopped, the Modhri controlling him apparently as stunned by Bayta’s action as I was.
And as he and Bayta stared across the two-meter gap at each other, she with righteous anger, he with utter disbelief, I felt the stack beside me start to tip. Breaking my own paralysis, I threw my full weight against my multitool.
By the time the Halka saw it coming, it was already too late. He leaped into the car, but the top of the falling stack caught him across his upper back, slamming him forward and downward as the rest of the crates fell in a jumble across the doorway.
But he wasn’t down and out, not yet. Even as I charged him, he struggled to his hands and knees, his flat bulldog face sniveling back and forth as he looked for a target. He spotted me and reared up on his knees, cocking his arm and closed right hand over his shoulder.
I beat the throw by about a quarter second, sending a spinning kick to the side of his head that twisted him a quarter turn on his knees before dropping him flat on his face.
And as the thud of his landing echoed across the car, his hand opened and something small and lumpy rolled through the limp fingers onto the floor.
A chunk of Modhran coral.
Beside me, I heard a sharp intake of air, and I turned to find Bayta staring wide-eyed at the coral. “It’s all right,” I said quickly. “He never got it anywhere near me.”
There was a thud from somewhere. I looked over at the pile of crates as a second thud sounded, and saw the box immediately in front of the door quiver. “That’s not going to hold him for long,” Bayta said tightly.
“No, but at least he can’t send more than two walkers at it at a time,” I pointed out. “One of the many advantages of doorways.”
“I suppose.” She looked around the car. “We should probably make the pile bigger.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t,” I said. “The rest of the stacks are too far away to do any good, and most of the individual crates are probably too heavy for the three of us to manually move over to the pile. Time to retreat to the rear car and see what we can come up with there.”
“All right,” Bayta said. “Rebekah?”
“I’m here,” Rebekah called, coming around from the side of the stack I’d sent her to climb.
“We’re going back to the next car,” Bayta said as I took her arm and started toward the door leading to the next baggage car. “Come on.”
“Wait a minute,” Rebekah said.
We both turned back to her. “What is it?” Bayta asked.
Rebekah visibly braced herself. “I was thinking maybe I should stay here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bayta said firmly. “Come on, now.”
“I’m not being ridiculous,” Rebekah countered. Her voice was trembling, but her tone was as firm as Bayta’s. “I mean . . . he doesn’t want you and Mr. Compton.”
“If you stay, you’ll be putting your people at terrible risk,” Bayta reminded her. “You can’t do that, not even for us.”
“She wouldn’t be putting them at risk,” I murmured.
“If the Modhri gets hold of her—” Bayta broke off, staring at me in disbelief. “Are you suggesting she should—? Frank!”
Actually, that wasn’t what I was suggesting at all. I opened my mouth to tell her so—”Mr. Compton and I have already been through this,” Rebekah said. “I was willing to give up my life for you. I’m even more willing to give it up for the Melding.” She looked at me, a silent plea in her eyes.
I grimaced. But she was right. She and I already knew why capturing her wouldn’t do the Modhri any good. With Halkan walkers beating on our front door, there was no reason why Bayta needed to know, too. After all, the Modhri might decide he wanted a prisoner or two for questioning. Better if at least one of those prisoners didn’t know anything. “Your nobility does you credit,” I went on. “But Bayta’s right. We’re not leaving you behind, which means that all this conversation is doing is wasting time. So get in gear and let’s go.”
Rebekah hesitated, then seemed to wilt a little. “All right,” she
said as she finally came over and joined us.
“And don’t worry,” Bayta assured her, putting her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Mr. Compton will come up with something.”
“Actually, Mr. Compton already has,” I said. “Come on You’re going to love this.”
TWENTY
Every Quadrail passenger car came stocked with an emergency oxygen repressurization tank, a complete self-contained and self-controlled supply/scrubber/regulator system that was ready to swing into action in the highly unlikely event of a loss of air pressure in the car. The repressurization of the baggage car where the two ill-fated Halkan walkers had asphyxiated indicated that the non-passenger cars probably had the same setup.
We found the large cylinder and its associated control system in the rear car’s front left-hand corner. Getting the tank off the wall, we manhandled it into the vestibule between the two baggage cars. Stripping it of its regulators took longer than I’d expected, but at last we were ready.
“I don’t understand how this is supposed to work,” Rebekah said as I made one last check on the tank’s stability as it leaned against the vestibule wall. “I thought these doors only locked when there was vacuum on one side.”
“Actually, the Tube isn’t quite a vacuum,” I corrected. “Seven hundred years’ worth of leakage through the atmosphere barriers of multiple thousands of Quadrail stations has left a thin atmosphere out there. Not enough to breathe, but enough to keep your brains from boiling out through your ears.”
Rebekah shuddered. “Frank!” Bayta admonished me.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “To answer your question, your typical pressure lock doesn’t know what the actual air pressure is it’s dealing with. It doesn’t know, and it also doesn’t care. All it cares about is whether one side has significantly more pressure than the other. If and when that happens, a purely mechanical switch kicks in and locks the doors closed.”
Reaching to the top of the tank, I opened the valve, sending a hiss of cold oxygen into the vestibule and wafting into our faces. “And as the saying goes, if you can’t raise the bridge, lower the river,” I added, letting the door slide shut again. “There should be enough air in that tank to raise the vestibule pressure at least fifty percent, probably more. The pressure lock will kick in, and at that point there’ll be nothing the Modhri can do but break in the door.”
