Manuel ran to the Locomotive and clambered up the steps. The cab was quiet, the gauges still. The fireman still gazed out of the window, his back to Manuel. When the boy tapped him on the shoulder, he didn’t move, but Manuel jerked his hand away, fingers tingling with a strange, psychic shock — not heat, not cold, but some sensation unlike any he’d ever felt before. He couldn’t bring himself to touch the fireman again; neither could he speak to him. The hooded creature’s very presence aroused a superstitious dread, the sight of his back was a hideous menace. Manuel swallowed, shivered and looked for water. He found a tap set into the tender, ran a trickle of brown, lukewarm water into a dirty cup and quickly left.
The woman was gone. The sand was smooth, as though she’d never been there.
The Girl stood nearby, with Zozula and Mentor.
“Where did she go?”
“I …” The Girl gulped. “I wished her away, Manuel. I couldn’t watch you upsetting yourself. I’d wish all the others away, too, but I can’t spare the psy.”
“But she was dying!”
Zozula took Manuel’s arm. “She wasn’t real, son. None of them are. Neither is the crash real. It’s all staged, all circumstantial evidence to reinforce people’s belief in the Skytrain. Soon they’ll start putting it all together again, and we’ll be on our way.” Indeed, breakdown cranes had already arrived and were swinging the carriages back into position.
“There’s a track … rails — look!”
“Why not?” Zozula smiled. “It doesn’t take much imagination. Look around you, Manuel. This place is an empty stage with a minimum of props. Just sand, track and Train. And a few bodies to occupy people’s attention.”
“It’s cruel. Why do they have to use death to convince us?”
“Maybe it’s the one thing everyone believes in.”
Farther away, Silver was directing a crane, his crutch planted firmly in the sand, waving imperiously with his free hand and uttering a string of nautical oaths. Overhead, a boom swung ponderously and hooks were guided into position, engaging with projections on the upturned carriages. A railroad engineer might have objected to the methods used, but they were convincing enough for the passengers, who gathered around Silver, offering suggestions and encouragement.
Away on the horizon, the rim of sand became blurred.
Manuel saw the little brown girl standing nearby and joined her. She gave him a quick glance from doe eyes and said, “Isn’t it just awful? But it’ll be all right soon, you just see. Look, they’ve got our carriage back on the rails already.”
“So what’s going to happen about all the dead people?”
And Bambi said, “I don’t see any dead people.”
Manuel thought: Maybe it’s me. Maybe this scene is designed to give everyone what he needs to see — and for some reason I need to see cruelty. But haven’t I seen enough, Belinda?
Silver went hurrying toward the Locomotive, swinging along energetically, leaving no trail in the sand. “All aboard, shipmates! Look lively, now!”
“But …” Manuel looked around in bewilderment. Bambi was already climbing into the carriage. The cranes were gone. The sand was taking on the texture of mist. The Train, tidy and straight, stretched into the distance.
And descending the slopes from the horizon, moving diagonally toward the Train, came a vast multitude. Thousands upon thousands of people, clad alike in drab clothing, converging silently upon the Train. The sight of them, unhurried and relentless in their advance, sent a shiver down Manuel’s spine and looking around, he saw Silver leaning from the cab, watching them, too. Silver saw him and motioned him urgently to get on board. Manuel paused, uncertain, wondering who all these people could be, and almost curious enough to find out …
*
The phenomenon known as the Lost Army of the Greataway has been observed many times. It was first documented around 92,700C during the short years of the Outer Think before the war with the Red Planet. In the words of Psycaptain Go: “We had paused for revitalization — not more than five Earth minutes, I should say. We hung in a convenient Pocket and joined hands. Pride and Speedy were tired, although I could probably have gone on. Perhaps we relaxed the Sac [Invisible Spaceship]; I’m not sure. Anyway, suddenly, there they were, looking in. Hundreds of them, humans in the middle of Nothingness, just hanging there with limbs loose like dangling puppets. I must have clenched up with shock, because the Sac began to turn opaque and the faces faded. Since we were revitalizing, it was not convenient to ask the others if they’d seen what I’d seen. But Pride and I are empathetic, to a degree, and I sensed some surprise there. The situation was extremely dangerous because I’d lost concentration and, as I say, the others were tired. We had a drogue and a great responsibility, and here was I, unable to get these faces out of my mynde! The faces were expressionless only on the surface — because, behind that blankness, I sensed an unvoiced Need, almost, I think, a Question. In some unimaginable way, all those suspended people wanted in. We couldn’t take anyone, of course; to break the Sac, even in a Pocket, would have been fatal. So I tried to shut my mynde to them — one face in particular, that of a child of about five physical, occupied a portion of my mynde for months afterward, impairing my efficiency — and in due course I was able to Think again, if sporadically. Who were those people? Were they memories of all the faces I’d ever seen, dredged from my mynde by some quirk of the Greataway? I don’t think so, because Speedy remembered seeing the child, too. Were they the faces of the human dead? Such a notion is overly superstitious and also unlikely. The human dead over the ages are numberless, but there was a feeling of finiteness about the number of the people I’d glimpsed. And I saw no alien dead. So it remains a mystery, I’m afraid, and likely to remain so. Current theory precludes any rupture of the Sac.”
So said Psycaptain Go, a long time ago.
Knowing nothing of this, Manuel decided to board the Train. It is probably fortunate that he did.
DEPARTURE OF THE PIRATES
Silver sat on his folding seat, leg outstretched, regarding his passengers benevolently. “We met a deadly test, shipmates, and we showed our true colors.” There was a roar of acclamation from his audience—and none were more enthusiastic than the Pirates, who set up a cry of yo-ho-ho! as they milled around at the rear of the carriage. Manuel noticed that Mentor had changed his seat. Now he sat several rows behind them, quite close to the Pirates. These rowdies were now stamping and yelling, and the rest of the passengers began to take up the cry.
“Splice the mainbrace!” shouted Silver suddenly. “Up spirits, me lads!”
“How lovely,” said Bambi.
Silver produced a large bottle of dark rum; others were handing around foaming bottles of champagne. Zozula and the Girl refused their bottles, passing them on. Mentor drank. Manuel held his for a second, looking longingly at the cool, bubbling liquid spilling down the neck, then handed it to Blondie Tranter, on receiving a sharp glance from Zozula. Silver drank ostentatiously, throat working, then jerked the bottle from his lips with a sucking noise and began to sing.
“Broach me a bottle of Old Jamaica.”
And the passengers joined in, “Heave-ho! and down she goes!”
“Drink with the Devil and meet your Maker!”
And the response roared back, “Heave-ho! and down she goes!” And on the ho! Silver slammed his crutch against the wall, raised his bottle and drank again. Somewhere in there Sir Charles could be heard saying “… finest body of men it’s ever been my pleasure to …,” while beside Manuel, Blondie Tranter gulped down her champagne, a fair quantity bubbling down her chin and over her breasts, like a mountain stream over smooth boulders. Manuel laughed. The fun was infectious, and it seemed to him that Zozula and the Girl were spoilsports, sitting there disapproving like old Chine himself. He grinned at Blondie and she grinned back, and just for a second he was far away, remembering his childhood and Horse Day celebrations, the people of Pu’este all drinking kuta, laughing with one anothe
r, dancing in strange costumes that were obscurely frightening — just as these strange passengers were — but all the more fun for being scary.
It ended suddenly with a roar of rage, the way those Horse Day celebrations used to end, all too often.
Silver lurched to his feet and swung down the aisle, an expression of terrifying malignancy on his face, all clowning finished. He hurled his bottle and it shattered against the rear door that had slammed shut an instant before. “Avast there, ye mutinous whelps!” he shouted.
The door slid open again before Silver reached it, and Mentor staggered through as if pushed. He fell into Silver’s arms and they tottered as though trying to fit some crazy dance step together, then crashed to the floor. Silver was up immediately, levering himself on his crutch. He threw himself at the door, tugging at the handle.
“Well, will you just look at that,” said Blondie Tranter in tones of amazement.
She was staring out the window. Manuel followed her gaze and saw, among the stars, a mechanical device encapsulated in a golden corona so that it shone brightly against the dark backdrop of the Greataway. It was receding fast, but before it became just one more speck among the stars he was able to make out the angular shape of a railroad handcar, a flat platform on wheels and attached to it a long bar with handles at the extremities, pivoted on a central fulcrum. Pirates grasped these handles, three at each end, working them frantically up and down, propelling themselves and their bizarre carriage into nothingness. As they went they changed color, the golden glow deepened to green, then blue. Finally, a tiny purple spot, they winked out.
Silver turned back from the door, a jovial smile fixed on his face. He dragged Mentor to his feet and dusted him off with brutal blows. Still smiling, he said quietly through his teeth, “We had a deal, me lad. As I recall, ye were to report any goings-on, and in return I’d steer ye clear o’ stormy weather. Well, ye shirked yer duty, lad, and now a bunch o’ lily-livered whelps have deserted the ship. And deserters they may be, but they had a power of psy, ye may lay to it! They believed, lad. They believed.”
“I’m … I’m sorry.”
“And sorrier yet will be.” Silver thrust his huge face close. “Because ye’re no use to man or ship, lad. Ye’re useless dunnage. I’ve a mind to be rid o’ ye. ‘Tis time ye met the stoker on this here craft.”
Mentor swallowed involuntarily; what had the Tranter woman said? He introduces them to the fireman … “Listen,” he said urgently. “I’ll —”
But Silver had whirled around and was stumping forward. About to disappear into the Locomotive, he suddenly paused and swung round to face the passengers, the smile intensified.
“Shipmates! The song!” Pounding with his crutch, he led the passengers into the chorus:
We’re all aboard for the trackless night.
(Close your eyes ayd believe! Believe!)
Wheels a-clanking and the firebox bright …
The lusty song faltered and faded out. Someone gave a small scream. Silver’s voice petered out too, in bewilderment and anger. Then he followed the direction of everyone’s gaze. He turned round.
Standing beside him, in the passage between the carriage and the Locomotive, was the fireman. Silver backed away with a groan of pure terror. The black-cowled figure advanced two measured steps, then stopped, scanning the passengers silently from under a cowl that held all the emptiness of Space.
Silver bolted past him toward the cab of the Locomotive.
Zozula regarded the fireman for a moment, but quickly averted his eyes as a deep cold seemed to flow down his spine and a wild fear grew within him that threatened to burst from his lips. He swallowed heavily and turned away, fighting the urge to jump to his feet and run. After a while he became aware of Mentor crying weakly, and embarrassment temporarily took the place of fear.
“He’s a coward,” he told Manuel, “a damned coward. I can’t believe he’s a clone of mine.”
“He’s never had to take care of himself. You must be fair to him, Zozula. You’ve had hundreds of years of responsibility, in charge of the Dome, giving orders. So of course you’ve grown up differently.”
“Nonsense!” Trying to forget the faceless fireman, Zozula threw himself into the argument. “Mentor comes of excellent genetic stock. He must have suffered a mutation. It’s not apparent on the surface but it’s there inside him — a weakness. A rot. Look, the Girl’s gone over to comfort him. She’s mothering him, for God’s sake.”
But Manuel wasn’t listening. He, too, was watching the Girl, and surprised by the sudden expression of terror on her face, wondered what she was looking at. It wasn’t the fireman. It was something else, something outside the window.
Then he saw it too.
THE FIRST BATTLE WITH THE BALE WOLVES
Suddenly, the Girl felt cold. The stars no longer flittered past the windows; instead, a pale mist swirled around the carriage. The Train slowed in its headlong flight through Space.
The Girl remembered seeing an eye. She didn’t see an eye. She never saw it. What happened was that a recollection of having seen an eye appeared in her memory. The eye was red and fierce, with a pinpoint black pupil.
The Girl screamed. Simultaneously Manuel started. Zozula gasped, then said, “It wasn’t there.”
As if in answer, a voice suddenly shouted, “AH, HAH!”, and a figure bounded through the wall of the carriage and landed nimbly in the aisle, bouncing lightly on its feet, crouching, darting fiery glances around at the passengers.
The Girl had never seen a more fearsome creature in her life. It was man-sized and hairily naked, with bowed, sinewy legs and a squat torso with massive shoulders, giving the initial impression of a hirsute, muscular toad. It was its face, however, that filled her with dread and nausea — because that face was almost human, yet inhuman to an unimaginable degree, a brutish travesty of Humanity. She found she was still screaming. Everybody was. The creature was a toad, an alligator, a cobra, everything she loathed. It was a Bale Wolf.
Yet the other passengers saw different Bale Wolves …
They were jumping to their feet, running, colliding with one another and the carriage fixtures, beating off assailants that only they could see.
“She’s going to blow!”
Silver stood in the doorway, face working. Then he saw the confusion and his gaze slid this way and that, finally fixing on a spot in midair, near a window.
“Ah, no …” he murmured, eyes wide, backing away. “No, no … No you don’t. NO YOU DON’T!!” And he was screaming too, whirling his crutch like a propeller, his gaze fixed on a dreadful invisible thing.
The Girl’s Bale Wolf was sidling toward her.
Its face … low-browed, cunning little eyes bloodshot, thick nose almost a snout. And somehow most terrifying of all, the mouth … Wide and fringed with hair, like a muzzle, forward-projecting, agape and gleaming with pointed, yellowing teeth.
She was trapped in her seat, pinned there by her own fear as the beast scuttled down the aisle, then swung itself, monkeylike, over the intervening seats. The Girl’s fingers closed on something hard. A weapon.
The Bale Wolf crouched on the next seat, bobbing on its haunches, stinking. Then suddenly it ducked its head.
Ages later the Girl brought her hand up and with all her strength swung the fire extinguisher.
The Bale Wolf didn’t even blink. The extinguisher flew out of the Girl’s hand and passed straight through its head. For an instant, the beast had slipped into the Ifalong.
Then it was on her, claws scrabbling at her clothing, baring her flesh while its mouth passed briefly over her face, pausing at her lips before dropping to her throat, worrying, tearing …
*
“She’s going to blow!”
The Girl froze for an instant, seeing in the Bale Wolf the sum total of every nightmare she had ever had. Then she jumped to her feet. Manuel was there, fighting with something she couldn’t see … Then she saw it, shadowy and revolting, clawing at his th
roat for a second before sidling into some dimension where it avoided Manuel’s desperate kick.
She ran for the toilet at the rear of the carriage, pushing past the struggling passengers. A Bale Wolf materialized before her, slashing at her groin in passing, before turning its attention to its original prey, Sir Charles. It winked out. Sir Charles’s eyes widened as silently he fought the monster that he alone could see, and the clothes began to fall from him in shreds.
“You, most of all.” The voice was a snarl among the screaming, and she couldn’t tell where it came from. She reached the toilet, flung the door open and fell inside.
But the Bale Wolf was in there with her.
It jigged up and down on the washbasin, watching her trying to unlock the door again. Her fingers were like putty. It slashed at her breast and its claws ripped the flesh cleanly down the rib. She doubled up, vomiting. Instantly it was on her back, biting at her neck while its legs wrapped around her waist and its bony fingers dug into her shoulders until, losing her footing on the blood-slippery floor, she fell …
*
“She’s going to blow!”
Then Silver, taking in the situation, flung his crutch like a javelin. As it passed through the torso of a Bale Wolf, the creature uttered a screech of triumph and disappeared. Blood suddenly gouted from Silver’s throat.
The Girl stared in bewilderment and horror. Everybody seemed to be thrashing about. What was happening? Manuel looked right through her, and she flinched as he aimed a punch just above her right shoulder. She passed Zozula as she edged to the rear door. The old man seemed to have gone crazy, wind milling his arms, yelling.
A voice spoke in her ear. “You, most of all, Girl. You, with your soft fatness, all cozy there in your womb of safety. You, so gentle and pretty and inventive and good, with no fears, never knowing danger or anger or pain …”
“I know those things,” said the Girl, reaching the door and jerking it open.
Gods of the Greataway Page 20
