The food tastes as good as it looks. Munching, we follow the gandy dancers on a tour of the Ghost Train. This means riding a moving sidewalk, like in airports, down a long, long corridor that must run the length of the whole train. Doors hurriedly mark themselves PRIVATE as we approach. I’m not bothered. I don’t want to see where they fold time and space. My crisp sandwich is very tasty, although the Pepsi I ordered to go along with it tastes like sweet, flat water.
“They can’t do carbonation,” Caleb says.
“Ah you’re joking. No beer?”
“Not ‘less you like it flat. But if you drink spirits, the Johnnie Walker ain’t bad.”
American whiskey is atrocious. I’ll have to see if the wall can do real whisky, without an e. A naggin of Bushmills would really help right now.
Sam slides up beside me. “What do you think was behind the wall?” he mutters.
“A wee alien short order cook with eight arms.”
“I bet it was a Duplicator.”
He’s using the nickname, as found on backers’ wishlists, of the nanotech-based duplicator machine discovered some years back on Seventh Heaven. That one coughed up several perfect duplicates of wristwatches, rocks, and a iPad before conking out, never to be successfully repaired. Idjits! If I’d been one of those explorers I’d have dropped a stack of thousand-dollar bills into it, not my fecking wristwatch. Those copies were perfect down to the atomic level. To be fair, they probably did not have a stack of thousand-dollar bills handy. Still.
“It can’t be a Duplicator, Sam. Where would it get the things to duplicate?”
“Maybe it has everything in storage.”
“Not a chance.” I hold up my sandwich. “I’ll bet you anything you like that I’m the first person who’s ever asked it for a sandwich of white bread, tons of butter, and prawn cocktail Taytos.” I take a big bite.
After a minute, Sam says, “You are really eating that.”
“The pinnacle of Irish cuisine.”
“Prawn cocktail flavor?” Finian booms. “Jesus, that’s disgusting. Cheese and onion is the only way to go!”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Anyway,” he says in an undertone, “maybe it’s not a Duplicator, but are you getting my drift here, Fletch? That’s just one example. The buyers would cream their pants over basically everything we’ve seen so far.”
“You’re forgetting one thing we’ve seen so far.”
“What?”
“Bones, Sam.” I hate to be the one to douse the fire of avarice in his young eyes, but someone’s got to do it. “You saw bones inside that Denebite ship. I saw some while I was looking around, too. Maybe that’s what happens to smartarses who try to kidnap the short order cook.” Or maybe it’s what happens to everyone who boards the Ghost Train, sooner or later, but there’s no point sharing that dismal speculation.
Sam has already thought of it himself, anyway. I can see it in his eyes.
He laughs humorlessly. “I really wish we had the treecats,” he says, gesturing at the latest batch of PRIVATE doors we are passing. “They’d be able to get in there.”
Thinking of the treecats makes me think of Harriet and Donal. Donal is my best friend and Harriet is his girlfriend. They helped us with the robbery on Treetop. I wonder if they know what’s happened to us? Does everyone in the galaxy know by now?
Probably not. I can’t see King Zuckerberg of Treetop publically admitting that someone tried to steal his Gizmo of Rejuvenation, and almost got away with it—did get away with it, actually. The Gizmo is in the cargo pocket on my right leg, and bloody heavy it is too, dragging my Carhartts down from the waistband. The lightsaber in my left cargo pocket balances it out. I’ve caught Caleb looking speculatively at the lightsaber’s outline: with its powerpack swung down, it is sort of the same shape as a gun. Little does he know that I was going to use it on him if I got line-of-sight.
The moving walkway passes through a misty partition and dumps us into a large, dim, circular room lined with screens.
No.
Windows.
Stars sprinkle a small portion of the wraparound view. The rest of it is a still-life maelstrom of chemical reds and greens, veils of color, dark cirrus streaks, and thunderheads with blazing hearts.
“Welcome to the observation deck!” Caleb says. “That’s the Eagle Nebula.” He strolls to the nearest window and bends his eye to a telescope. “Where you at, baby? … There.” He beckons us. “Have a look at the Stellar Spire. She’s breaking up, but she should be good viewing for another thousand years or so. Whoa! Got a bunch of new stars wasn’t there last time we came this way. They’re formin’ from the cold gas of the nebula. Ain’t that right, Pew Pew?”
“THAT IS RIGHT, CALEB.”
I turn on the gandy dancers. “Are you expecting us to go all the way around the galaxy with you?”
“THAT IS UP TO YOU, FLETCH,” says Dizzy, the cheeky little cow.
I am upset. The Eagle Nebula is 7,000 lightyears away from Earth. It would take a fast spaceship three months to get here, and now the whole interstellar mess is splayed across the Ghost Train’s windows in spectroscopic 3D color, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. We’ve been travelling for a couple of hours at most and we’ve already gone further from Earth than all but a few of the most reckless explorers have ever ventured.
“What do you mean it’s up to me, you cheeky bugger? You abducted us. You’ve already whisked us seven thousand lightyears from our own neighborhood, and now you’re saying it’s up to us if we want to come?”
“WE DO NOT ABDUCT ANYONE.”
“The feck you say,” Finian joins in. “You abducted us in broad daylight. Or is it you’ve got a fetish for collecting vehicles, and we just happened to be inside? Jesus! Kidnapped by the vintage car collectors’ society of the Milky Way!”
“YOUR VEHICLE IS NOT PARTICULARLY INTERESTING.”
“And I suppose we’re not particularly interesting, either,” I say. “Take us home, then!”
“WE RESPECT FREEDOM OF WILL OF SAPIENT BEINGS.”
“Oh, right.” I am so angry I could put my fist through one of those windows. “Glad we’ve got that clear.”
“YOU HAVE A CHOICE.”
“We do,” I drawl.
“YES. YOU CAN STAY ON THE TRAIN, OR YOU CAN GET OFF.”
Our stunned silence is broken by the sound of Caleb cackling.
CHAPTER 4
“So this is where we can get off, is it?”
“IF YOU LIKE, FLETCH. THIS IS JUST ONE PLANET.”
“Yeah, but this is where you’d recommend?”
Dizzy pauses. “I WOULD NOT LIKE TO STAY HERE MYSELF,” she opines. “BUT YOUR REQUIREMENTS ARE DIFFERENT FROM OURS.”
Any halfway decent explorer in my shoes, let alone a scientist, would pounce on this evidence of individual preference, and question Dizzy further about the gandy dancers’ ‘requirements,’ whatever they may be. I do not give a feck. We have been travelling on the Ghost Train for a week, and I never thought I’d say this, but I have had enough crisp sandwiches to last me a lifetime. All I want now is to get off this horrible train. I never was a halfway decent explorer, anyway. All I ever wanted was to find something valuable enough that I could sell it and buy my own planet. If I’d ever found the Big Red Button—this is exploration industry slang for theoretical A-tech WMDs—I’d probably have put it up for auction. I’m ashamed of that, but I can admit it now.
For now I am about to have my own planet.
As they say, good things come to those who wait.
Yes, I wish Merrielande was a bit closer to Earth.
26,700 lightyears is a little too far to nip home for the messages.
It’s in the fecking Norma arm!
Closer to the galactic core than to Earth!
Merrielande? Imogen’s choice. It seems to mean something to her. I would have chosen something more dignified, such as New Clare.
But all that aside, it looks like a good planet.
&n
bsp; We are in a flying saucer, de-orbiting from the local loop of the Railroad. My porthole frames Merrielande’s dayside. Clouds drift over the two largest continents, which are in the southern hemisphere, separated by a strait.
“See those cloud patterns?” I say to Imogen. “That’s a robust water cycle. And would you look at all those variegations in the greenery. This planet’s got your full range of ecosystems, ranging from savannah to steppe, and everything in between.” I catch myself thinking that surely, somewhere down there, must be a boggy coast where the waves crash in on shingle beaches, and the sun hangs around the horizon until eleven on summer evenings.
“It’s also got one big drawback,” Imogen says gloomily.
“Yeah?”
“It’s eight kiloparsecs from Earth.”
“Oh, I was forgetting about that,” I say. “Well, I know the ships are getting faster all the time. But rest your mind. We should have time to get nicely settled in before anyone makes it out this far.”
“Oh ucccchh!” She utters the sigh/snort that she resorts to when words fail her, and turns away from me, flicking through old magazines on the iPhone she got from the Wonder Wall.
We had fun with the Wonder Wall for a while. It does gadgets as well as food, clothes, kit, anything you can think of, really. Sam discovered through tireless experimentation that it will not do guns, Class A narcotics, or porn. The exception is that it will produce ammo for Caleb’s 1911. That got grandfathered in because he had it on him when he was abducted.
Imogen’s iPhone doesn’t get a signal, of course, and yet it contains a quirky range of content dating back a hundred years. She clings to it like a security blanket.
But the charm of ordering up gadgets wore off quickly, and in the end we all agreed to take the gandy dancers up on their offer to land us on Merrielande.
“It’s going to be fine,” I say to Imogen. “Anyway, think of the alternative: an endless cruise around the galaxy, without drugs or porn.”
“You’re disgusting,” she says. She doesn’t get my sarcasm at all. I have to remember to speak to her as if she were an American.
“Of course I’m not interested in drugs or porn. I’m a card-carrying romantic. My only vice is you.”
She shrugs.
I am sorry to report that a couple of days ago, under the influence of a fifth of Bushmills, I tried it on with her. That did not go well. It ended with her in a flood of tears, locking herself in the cruiser and telling me through the broken passenger-side window to fuck off because I don’t understand her.
I’ll say.
I stare around the flying saucer, wondering if she’s got her eye on one of the others. Finian is notorious for chasing everything in a skirt. It doesn’t even have to be female. And he and Imogen have been spending a lot of time together … But he’s seventy-six. It’s got to be that she sees him as a father figure.
That leaves Sam. He’s bouncing around in the cockpit in the middle of the flying saucer, distracting the gandy dancers. He is an immoral, uneducated master thief with a track record of killing people at the drop of a hat. At twenty-six, he’s a lot younger than Imogen and myself, but maybe that’s what attracts her …
I can’t picture her going for a violent criminal like him. Then again, that describes me, too. And Imogen herself.
Jesus, I never wanted to end up like this. And I hate the way my mind’s going around in jealous circles.
But it’s inevitable to an extent, isn’t it? There are four of us and only one is a woman. It’s not a good balance.
And if we stay on Merrielande, we will be three men and one woman until the end of our days.
Imogen’s right, of course: there is virtually no chance we’ll ever be found by some stray explorer. It’s not the sheer distance, as much as it is all the planets in between.
There are 40,000 habitable planets in the Milky Way …
All connected by the Interstellar Railroad …
Which does not come with a map.
And there’s no rhyme or reason to the Railroad’s layout. Within our local bubble, the Railroad hops from star to star in a more or less predictable hexacomb pattern. But further afield, it inexplicably doubles back and loops around and jumps over whole spiral arms. We’ve got to the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, but no one has yet managed to reach the Sagittarius Arm, which is much closer. Earth’s neighborhood and a few of the spurs off Arcadia have been mapped. Beyond that, we’re blundering around in the dark.
So if we stay on Merrielande, it will be a life sentence.
I look at Imogen and I look at the mountains of stuff piled in the middle of the flying saucer, all provided by the Wall, all the survival kit I’ve had my eye on for years, and I remind myself that this is what I’ve always wanted.
And then I look at Finian and Sam and I remember that for every bloody thing under the sun there is a catch.
But when we tumble out of the flying saucer onto the prairie of Merrielande’s largest continent, with the sweet scent of grass in our nostrils, and a thousand little birds whirr up into the sky, everyone laughs and smiles, because it’s just so bloody good to have our feet on solid ground again.
The flying saucer sits on its jackstands in the middle of a seemingly endless sea of grass. Clouds hurry across the sky like sheep scared by a car. A few hundred yards to the north, brush traces the line of a creek.
Sam goes to have a look at the creek, while I take our anti-grav sled to check out the rock formation to the east.
The gandy dancers deliberately put us down near this rock formation, saying it would provide us with shelter. It rears out of the prairie like a gigantic reddish wart. I think there are ones like this in Australia. Up close, it’s grooved with vertical rifts, and the sides of the rifts are pitted with cave mouths.
I land the sled at the bottom of a rift and scramble up to the lowest cave.
Yes, this will make a grand home until we get our houses built. In fact, maybe we won’t even need to build houses. I am a great believer in avoiding hard work when at all possible. The cave is dark and cool, not at all damp, and the only wildlife I encounter is some bat-analogs that fly past my head, squeaking.
I duck, panting. They reminded me for a second of the vampire butterflies on Suckass.
Not to worry. The gandy dancers say there are no dangerous animals on Merrielande, nothing bigger than a cow on this continent, anyway, and no A-tech. No alien empire ever colonized this planet. It’s all ours.
I sit in the cave mouth, enjoying the silence. Being alone takes an invisible weight off my shoulders. I’ve always been like this, ever since I was little. I can even breathe better when I’m alone.
I light a cigarette—the Wonder Wall had no objection to providing me with a pack of Marlboros; its ban on drugs is full of holes—and pop the tab on a Pepsi. Flat as it is, the occasion seems to call for it.
I drink my Pepsi and crunch through a package of crisps, musing about gardening rotas. Then it’s time to rejoin the others.
As I skim back across the prairie, I see people running around and shouting.
Ah Jesus, it never fecking ends. You could put this lot down on the beach in Waikiki and they’d find something to get in a paddy about.
But as I get closer, I see that there are more people running around than there should be.
In fact, there are fifteen or so of them.
And they’re making concerted rushes at the flying saucer.
And grabbing our stuff.
CHAPTER 5
There are strangers grabbing our survival gear!
Rage overcomes my common sense, such as it is. I let out a vengeful shout and accelerate to the anti-grav sled’s maximum speed of about 30 miles per hour. The raiders freeze when they see me coming … all except for a couple of big lads who whip out slingshots and start whirling the blessed things around their heads.
Even the slingshot warriors scatter when I charge in among them. I whip out my lightsaber and jab at them, using it like a c
attleprod. It’s a grand weapon, this. I call it a lightsaber because on the short setting, it looks like one of those Jedi efforts from Star Wars. The bright blue beam terrifies the raiders into a frenzy of howls.
There’s no need to hurt them, as they’re already running away. I wave the lightsaber around threateningly, and am rewarded by the sight of their buttocks bobbling up and down as they flee towards the river. This is not a pleasant sight. They are squat people with very large arses. I think the polite word is steatopygic. A better one would be hippo-arsed.
“YOU! Thieving! Cunts! Feck! OFF!”
I chase them a little way, jabbing my lightsaber at their big purple behinds, and then wheel back towards the flying saucer.
The raiders have left a trail of our kit all the way to the bluffs. Rising higher into the air, I see they’ve got boats down on the creek, curragh-type dinghies tied up under the bluffs. The most cowardly ones are scrambling into them already.
“That’s right! RUN AWAY!” I shout, waving my lightsaber.
It is somewhat consoling to know that I must look like an avenging god to them, swooping around in my airborne chariot.
I zoom back to the flying saucer.
Finian stands on the steps, shading his eyes. Imogen peeks out of the hatch above him.
“Where are Dizzy and Pew Pew?” I shout. “They said this planet was uninhabited!”
The Hippo-Arses have not gone away, after all! They’re reforming at the treeline on top of the bluffs.
“Are you just going to stand there while they take our stuff?”
“Sam tried to stop them,” Finian says. “He got his head broken for his trouble. A good slingshot hunter is as dangerous as a man with a gun.”
“And these fat-arses are good, are they?”
“Stay there and you’ll find out for yourself.”
I look around. The lads with the slingshots are rallying their people. One of them darts forward and shouts gobbledygook at the flying saucer. Now he’s whirling his sling around his head again.
I hop off the sled and onto the stairs below Finian.
The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Page 32
