by M F Sullivan
The car was still. Miki did her best to resemble a helpless pinup model while Dominia pointed the gun at her head. “It’s because half of you didn’t think I was real, and the other half of you have been praying I’m not. I’m sorry to say that I am real, and in possession of what I imagine to be one of the only guns on the Light Rail—if not the only. I am not, however, needlessly cruel. With that in mind, will all passengers class C or lower please leave the casino.”
A few people tarried to say the name of the God they worshiped; a handful of others dashed, mostly shabby, tired-looking people but one or two better-dressed, probable class Bs smart enough to get while the getting was good. She let them go, because those who were smart enough deserved to be rewarded, and those who stayed behind had opted the route of donation. “The rest of you”—she took the oversize purse of some wealthy lady wearing a fox-fur hat, who gasped as if she had been slighted at a party rather than robbed of her possession—“hand over your cash, your rings, necklaces, and watches.”
A thrill passed through Dominia, who found herself the sort of figure she’d admired in spirited stories of the Front’s ancient Old West days. Only the tiniest thrill, understand. As much as she dared. She had always dreamed herself more the lawman-hero type, but beggars couldn’t be choosers when living on the fringes of normalcy—if this was still a shade of normalcy at all. One brave (stupid) porter released a childish war cry and charged for her. She let him run his nose into the butt of her gun and land, crying, on the floor.
“Any more questions?” she asked.
The queue which formed was more orderly than any she’d seen. She had to temper thrill with a healthy, quasi-religious sense of naughtiness. Otherwise, there was too much temptation to dive into the abyss of amorality and come out the other side a warlord of esteem more terrible than that of her preexisting reputation. Better to stay Robin Hood than Genghis Khan: but, if the Sheriff of Nottingham pinned her with false accusations, he deserved something to blame her for.
Not five minutes later, the bag was full of riches enough to make Miki’s eyes bug when Dominia, having dragged her from the car, showed her the contents. “There. Feel better?”
The girl shrugged, and through teeth that sought to gnaw the belt to get her tongue, made a noise resembling, “Well…” Her hands had stopped clutching a tongue they could not reach and now seemed to be struggling to enact a choreography in which they could not engage; Dominia was relieved to see Lavinia wasn’t feeling very homicidal.
Behind them, Basil’s tail wagged, accompaniment to his joyful bark. The trio marched onward with Dominia’s gun leading the way, aimed (playfully) at Miki while they beat their long and ragged path through the many cars of coach. In a kind break, they were beset by no more heroic porters or passengers, and were left to their own devices by people who quite rightly did not want to risk their lives. It was relief enough that no passengers from the Dining Car had made their way up, but that did make perfect sense, since they were busy dancing along to the beat that pumped through the cars like some sort of stupid music video. Grating, that. It was almost a relief when they reached the first of the Burlap Economy cars and the music paused with a bing-bong electronic chime to set the stage for Cicero’s announcement.
“Good morning! This is your emergency engineer speaking. As most of you are by now aware, we have a special guest on our train today: the terrorist Dominia di Mephitoli.” Dominia clenched her teeth so hard she thought the remaining ones might shatter; she hauled the human at a faster pace. “You may all remember the Disgraced Governess for such battlefield exploits as the Reclamation of Mexico”—many around her gave a cry of terror or sob of recognition, with some hissing as though she were a theater villain—“that infamous, single-handed sweep through a sleeping barracks known as the Nogales Rampage; and her integral part in what humans refer to as ‘the Black Night.’ But you know, I believe I once heard Dominia call it”—“No,” she shouted at the intercom, but Cicero had already said—“Garbage Day.”
The martyr winced. English speakers and those with cochlear implants translating for them screamed in outrage; even Miki gave Dominia a hard look from the corner of her eye. She was almost through the door by the time the first shoe hit the back of her head. Then came another, and then, because she had to shelter Miki with her body, she took quite a few other strange objects. Nothing expensive like a book or a leather bag, but a lot of garbage like phones and tablets, cheap in the East where such devices were plentiful. The hard amalgamations of metal and glass bounced off her head and back to skid across the floor in a clatter almost sufficient to drown Cicero’s words. “You know the one. All those poor people in Trimalchio’s camps! Just because the old man was killed—which worked out for her in the end, anyway! No amount of gentle governance makes up for that war crime. She’d like you to think she’s changed, but she hasn’t. Not in almost a hundred years. That’s right—this is only what she did in the last hundred years, to your friends and relatives in the Front…I don’t need to remind my Japanese passengers of what she did to Tokyo, since your classrooms have reminded you since infancy. If any of you would like to shake the hand of such a famous military figure, I recommend you take the opportunity now, as she makes her way through Burlap Economy–class Cars C through A. And”—his tone, which had already been bright, cheered further—“those passengers interested in having a good time on the way to their destination are encouraged to visit the Dining Car, where I can assure you, you won’t be disappointed. If you like dancing, good music, and fast friends, be sure to drop by. We are now five minutes from Kabul. As always: thank you for choosing the LRT.”
Between the cars, Dominia tried to catch her breath, but Basil surged forward with purpose. This automatic door slid open to a far more savage booing and throwing of objects. Car B, having had time to coordinate their effort, assaulted her with wads of paper, phones, shoes, and once an old lady’s umbrella. Their hate had been given time to boil like a teapot; now it whistled out at her, and she could only hurry along and take it, to her shame. It was all true. If she was honest, she deserved this, and worse. When Trimalchio was assassinated by South American Hunters for what he’d done by encamping those vast swaths of humans, the vengeful General Dominia’s knee-jerk suggestion to her Father had been the mass slaughter of every last human in those camps. It wasn’t so much that she cared about Trimalchio; she barely knew the man. But she had made the suggestion because it was what she thought her Father wanted to hear. They had not been real people to her at the time, those souls in the camps. There was no point in her life other than violence; therefore, the lives of others deserved to have the mere possibility of point violently wrenched from them. The awful, awful things she had done—the awful person she had been. After Nogales, she was forced to face it. And the day she started to face it, Cassandra showed up.
Did Cassandra change her? Or was her love of Cassandra mere manifestation of her own desire to change? Maybe she was still that same awful person she had been all those years before. The same shameful person who had enacted genocide with the flippant disrespect of a child kicking through a sibling’s army men. She was ashamed, and that shame turned into fear to imagine what the last batch of humans would do to her.
Of course, as trepidation for the anger of the class A passengers melted into horror when the door opened to a terrible stillness, she considered that, for as bad as she was, she was far from the worst member of the Holy Family. Miki let out a terrible cry but couldn’t shut her eyes against the gory sight because, of course, what proper dancer kept their eyes closed? All Dominia could do was shield the human’s head against her shoulder while the dog went ahead, sniffing the blood dripping from the hands of slumped passengers and, once or twice, giving it a lick. The windows with their digital images flickered and buzzed, some of them broken and at least one passenger’s skull attended by holographic birds that skipped forever between the same three positions. Grimacing, Dominia nudged Basil along with her boot, pus
hed him through to the baggage car, and walked the gangway suspended across the stacks of bags. Miki trembled, silent tears rolling down her cheeks at the horror of so much death. More death than the poor human had ever seen at once.
The door to the engineer’s cabin was unlocked. In United Front trains, these areas were different, and the job of the engineer was more involved. The LRT required less effort in some ways and more effort in others: timing was the most urgent concern of a Light Rail engineer, followed by the watching of a great many scales, monitors, dials, and the Lamb knew what else. Dominia would have taken more time to look around were it not for the engineer slumped in the corner, and the sight of Cicero wearing the dead man’s hat. While El Sacerdote looked over the dials in his stead, Dominia tried to lay Miki down and found her body yet moved with too much strength to be stilled, even bound and exhausted. Cicero spoke without looking from the security camera footage on the screen below the map.
“You know, sister, I didn’t think they’d have the gumption to take me up on my offer. Now I think it rather a pity Lavinia and I exterminated Car A: they would have thrilled for a chance to detest you to your face! Ah, humans. They get so excited to be part of a mob.”
“Why would you kill all those people, Cicero?” Annoyed, Dominia freed one of Miki’s hands and slapped the empty cuff around a rail welded to the wall—presumably for when the engineer had to pull the breaks on a giant train traveling excess of six hundred miles per hour. While the human protested and her now-free arm began to engage in a series of choreographed gestures resembling semaphore, Dominia continued, “This is unnecessary. Bringing Lavinia…you could have just found me.”
“Yes, well, no one planned to bother you on your train adventure, but unfortunately your…companion”—he offered a sneer in the direction of the prostitute—“was too canny when it came to René Ichigawa’s sight. It became apparent that the whole Family needed to get involved. Lavinia will be collapsed with exhaustion by the end of this! Do you know the poor girl was shipped by jet to Almaty just to get on the train to Kabul! She didn’t even have a look around. A fine first trip to the Middle States—and for such a pitiful reason. I must say, Dominia, I’m disappointed you would turn on a friend over something so simple as his being blackmailed by Father. That rules out a quarter of the adult martyr population from your pool of potential friends. Anyone in politics, for certain.”
She barely listened, too busy rolling up her sleeves and emptying her gun of bullets. “I guess it wouldn’t have been a concern if this particular blackmail didn’t put me at risk. Sort of funny how that works.”
“You always have been sensitive.”
Before the butt of her Remington made contact with the back of Cicero’s head, his hand caught hers with such speed that it seemed it had always been there, crushing her wrist. By this wrist, Cicero whipped her around to slam her head against the glass with an audible thud, but wasted time trying to aim her unloaded gun at her own head. When he’d made it click, she had managed to twist her knee hard up into his groin while her free hand landed a nasty jab to his throat. Hat askew, Cicero wheeled back with a noise that was as much a laugh as a wheeze; Dominia righted herself, then her fists.
“Trying to keep me from Kabul? From meeting Lazarus?” A few swift jabs were ducked by Cicero, who fought with as jolly an attitude as if the scene had occurred two hundred, three hundred, years before. Back when he still seemed Family. “You thought if you brought Lavinia on board, I’d be faced with a moral dilemma.”
“I thought you would try to ‘rescue’ her,” admitted Cicero with a laugh. He took a wide hook in the jaw but managed to fend off the trailing uppercut. While his hand lifted to his cheek, then came away in a fist that jabbed (almost) quick as the Hierophant’s, he tutted. “Terrible shame you’ll let those people in the Dining Car meet their ends. Such a terrible way, too. Although I may suggest Lavinia draw it out for them, give them time to disembark in Kabul, assuming we stop at all. Have you ever seen an entire city overtaken by mass hysteria? I mean, one the size of San Valentino?”
Once, twice, thrice, she tried to punch the smug light out of his eyes. Each time, she missed. Cicero glanced behind her with a smile while he countered her strikes, landing a few sharp jabs in her sternum while he said, “At last, here we are! But what a pity that it seems we’ll overshoot it. I do so hope you weren’t planning on meeting anyone—”
Was as much as Cicero got out before he was interrupted by the bark of a dog: the boxers paused to look in the direction of the noise. Basil, tail wagging, stood on his hind legs in all his canine glory. To Dominia’s astonishment—and Cicero’s humiliation—the border collie made defiant eye contact with El Sacerdote while, with a paw too deliberate to be accidental, he applied sufficient pressure to drag the brake lever down into gear.
“Did that dog”—was as much more as Cicero managed before Miki (sweet Miki!) used her one free hand, some understanding of the pattern of her dance, and the butt of Dominia’s fumbled gun to crack the Holy Family member twice in the back of the skull. To the General’s profound relief, Cicero fell, unconscious, to the floor.
“I could kiss both of you,” said Dominia. Amid a great deal of squealing and grinding, the train sought for purchase, found it in the bottom of its translucent tunnel, and slowed as they emerged from their belowground track to the distant silver pool of Kabul’s elaborate buildings. Even with the brakes on, the sweet vision grew larger, building itself out of the desert to swallow them in welcome. “But we don’t have time.”
She didn’t have time because Cicero, as usual, was right. All they needed was for one dancer to disembark at Kabul. Then there could be a real problem on her hands, as well as the hands of the human officials running the city. She had to hurry: but the train offered a real advantage in distributing a cure. The intercom system. She was quick to find and activate its fuchsia button, which banished the stupid music by its happy chime. On air, as it were, Dominia cleared her throat. Outside, the buildings whipping by did so at an incrementally slowing pace. Through a great deal of research, the Holy Family had discovered one way to consistently cure the effects of Lavinia’s hysteria, and enacting said cure made Dominia self-conscious. However, now was not the time to doubt her capacity for recitation.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” While Miki arched a skeptical brow that waggled in time with her dance, Dominia tried not to smile and stared out the windshield. “Thou are more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
It always seemed like magic. Lavinia’s memetic virus could be definitively cured in even the weakest minds given sufficient exposure to quality art. To thinking art. The experience of reading or hearing Shakespeare was always effective, but afflicted humans had been given tours of the Louvre or, in less time-sensitive cases, brought to a Wagner opera to equal success. As Dominia recited sonnet eighteen, Miki’s eyes brightened, and her body’s movements stopped; as Dominia recited the second piece which popped into her head, Cassandra’s favorite, which began, “When I do count the clock that tells the time, and see the brave day sunk in hideous night,” the train slowed past an industrial district and cruised home into the shopping center that was its station. Miki’s dancing and gnawing had stopped, and instead she laughed with joy. Basil, tail a-wag, put his forepaws upon the nearest window to bark at the people passing. Miki was her gauge for how the Dining Car looked without bothering to flip through the security feed, and by the time sonnet twelve was over, that living gauge was still. As their bodies swayed with the slowing train, Dominia unbuckled the belt around Miki’s mouth and winced at the deep indents at the corners of her lips, about to apologize when the human exclaimed, “That is bitchin’, dude!”
“I don’t mean to sound like a preachy three-hundred-year-old, but if more humans read Shakespeare rather than playing with their phones, Lavinia wouldn’t have so much power.” After accepting the gun from her
friend, Dominia frowned at her brother. What was that about Cicero and fatalities?
“You should kill him now and save us trouble later,” said Miki, but Dominia shook her head.
“I can’t do it. If I did, I’d be everything they said I am. A terrorist. Then he’d really be a martyr”—she smirked—“and I would have no hope. They’d throw everything they have at me. The Hierophant loves Cicero too much.” As did the Lamb, who was surely on the train. A shot into Cicero’s head would cause the gun to backfire; or she would discover the remaining bullets were somehow blanks; or another improbable event would be elicited. El Sacerdote would live to fight another day.
“Who loves such a creep?”
“More people than you’d expect.”
“Well”—Miki snatched the plundered bag to assess its contents with a petulant sigh—“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you were right to leave that luggage behind. All those years of clothes, though! Oh, my shamisen. My mother gave me that.”
“I’m sorry, Miki, but—”
“It’s fine.” The girl shook her head before straightening her power suit and smoothing the bun of her hair. “Once we pawn all this stuff, there’ll be enough money for twenty shamisen, and I know just the guy.”
“And how will we get there?”
“The same way anybody gets anywhere,” said Miki, laughing while she ducked back through the baggage car. “We’ll get a cab.”
