Modern Classics of Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois

  Jesse reached down to twirl the control of the injector valve. Water, preheated by its passage through an extension of the smokebox, swirled into the boiler. He allowed the engine to build up speed. Durnovaria vanished, lost in the gloom astern; the light was fading fast now. To right and left the land was featureless, dark; in front of him was the half-seen whirling of the crankshaft, the big thunder of the engine. The haulier grinned, still exhilarated by the physical act of driving. Flame light striking round the firebox doors showed the side, hard jaw, the deep-set eyes under brows that were level and thickly black. Just let old Serjeantson try and sneak in a last trip. The Margaret would take his Fowler, uphill or down; and Eli would churn with glee in his fresh-made grave …

  The Lady Margaret. A scene came unasked into Jesse’s mind. He saw himself as a boy, voice half broken. How long ago was that, eight seasons, ten? The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones. He remembered the morning the Margaret first arrived in the yard. She’d come snorting and plunging through Durnovaria, fresh from Burrell’s works in far-off Thetford, paintwork gleaming, whistle sounding, brasswork a-twinkle in the sun; a compound locomotive of ten NHP, all her details specified from flywheel decoration to static discharge chains. Spud pan, belly pan, water lifts; Eli had got what he wanted all right, one of the finest steamers in the West. He’d fetched her himself, making the awkward journey across many counties to Norfork; nobody else had been trusted to bring back the pride of the fleet. And she’d been his steamer ever since; if the old granite shell that had called itself Eli Strange ever loved anything on earth, it had been the huge Burrell.

  Jesse had been there to meet her, and his kid brother Tim and the others; James and Micah, dead now – God rest their souls – of the Plague that had taken them both that time in Bristol. He remembered how his father had swung off the footplate, looked up at the loco standing shaking like a live thing still and spewing steam. The firm’s name had been painted there already, the letters glowing along the canopy edge, but as yet the Burrell had no name of her own. “What be ’ee g’wine call ’en?” his mother had shouted, over the noise of her idling; and Eli had rumpled his hair, pucked his red face. “Danged if I knows.…” They had Thunderer already and Apocalypse, Oberon and Ballard Down and Western Strength; big-sounding names, right for the machines that carried them. “Danged if I knows,” said old Eli, grinning; and Jesse’s voice had spoken without his permission, faltering up in its adolescent yodel. “The Lady Margaret, sir … Lady Margaret.…”

  A bad thing that, speaking without being addressed. Eli had glared, shoved up his cap, scrubbed at his hair again and burst into a roar of laughter. “I like en … bugger me if I don’t like en.…” And the Lady Margaret she had become, over the protests of his drivers, even over old Dickon’s head. He claimed it “were downright luck” to call a loco after “some bloody ’oman.…” Jesse remembered his ears burning, he couldn’t tell whether with shame or pride. He’d unwished the name a thousand times, but it had stuck. Eli liked it; and nobody crossed old Strange, not in the days of his strength.

  So Eli was dead. There’d been no warning; just the coughing, the hands gripping the chair arms, the face that suddenly wasn’t his father’s face, staring. Quick dark spattering of blood, the lungs sighing and bubbling; and a clay-colored old man lying abed, one lamp burning, the priest in attendance, Jesse’s mother watching empty-faced. Father Thomas had been cold, disapproving of the old sinner; the wind had soughed round the house vicious with frost while the priest’s lips absolved and mechanically blessed … but that hadn’t been death. A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth. Eli had been a part of Jesse’s life, as much part as his bedroom under the eaves of the old house. Death disrupted the processes of memory, jangled old chords that were maybe best left alone. It took so little imagination for Jesse to see his father still, the craggy face, weathered hands, haulier’s greasy buckled cap pulled low over his eyes. The knotted muffler, ends anchored round the braces, the greatcoat, old thick working corduroys. It was here he missed him, in the clanking and the darkness, with the hot smell of oil, smoke blowing back from the tall stack to burn his eyes. This was how he’d known it would be. Maybe this was what he’d wanted.

  Time to feed the brute. Jesse took a quick look at the road stretching out straight in front of him. The steamer would hold her course, the worm steering couldn’t kick back. He opened the firebox doors, grabbed the shovel. He stoked the fire quickly and efficiently, keeping it dished for maximum heat. Swung the doors shut, straightened up again. The steady thunder of the loco was part of him already, in his bloodstream. Heat struck up from the metal of the footplate, working through his boots; the warmth from the firebox blew back, breathed against his face. Time later for the frost to reach him, nibbling at his bones.

  Jesse had been born in the old house on the outskirts of Durnovaria soon after his father started up in business there with a couple of plowing engines, a thresher, and an Aveling and Porter tractor. The third of four brothers, he’d never seriously expected to own the fortunes of Strange and Sons. But God’s ways were as inscrutable as the hills; two Strange boys had gone black-faced to Abraham’s bosom, now Eli himself.… Jesse thought back to long summers spent at home, summers when the engine sheds were boiling hot and reeking of smoke and oil. He’d spend his days there, watching the trains come in and leave, helping unload on the warehouse steps, climbing over the endless stacks of crates and bales. There too were scents; richness of dried fruits in their boxes, apricots and figs and raisins; sweetness of fresh pine and deal, fragrance of cedarwood, thick headiness of twist tobacco cured in rum. Champagne and Oporto for the luxury trade, cognac, French lace; tangerines and pineapples, rubber and saltpetre, jute and hemp.…

  Sometimes he’d cadge rides on the locos, down to Poole or Bourne Mouth, across to Bridport, Wey Mouth; or west down to Isca, Lindinis. He went to Londinium once, and northeast again to Camulodunum. The Burrells and Claytons and Fodens ate miles; it was good to sit on the trail load of one of those old trains, the engine looking half a mile away, hooting and jetting steam. Jesse would pant on ahead to pay the toll keepers, stay behind to help them close the gates with their long white and red striped bars. He remembered the rumbling of the many wheels, the thick rising of dust from the rutted trackways. The dust lay on the verges and hedges, making the roads look like white scars crossing the land. Odd nights he’d spend away from home, squatting in some corner of a tavern bar while his father caroused. Sometimes Eli would turn morose, and cuff Jesse upstairs to bed; at others he’d get expansive and sit and spin tall tales about when he himself was a boy, when the locos had shafts in front of their boilers and horses between them to steer. Jesse had been a brakeboy at eight, a steersman at ten for some of the shorter runs. It had been a wrench when he’d been sent away to school.

  He wondered what had been in Eli’s mind. “Get some bliddy eddycation” was all the old man had said. “That’s what counts, lad.…” Jesse remembered how he’d felt; how he’d wandered in the orchards behind the house, seeing the cherry plums hanging thick on the old trees that were craggy and leaning, just right to climb. The apples, Bramleys and Lanes and Haley’s Orange; Commodore pears hanging like rough-skinned bombs against walls mellow with September sunlight. Always before, Jesse had helped bring in the crop; but not this year, not any more. His brothers had learned to write and read and figure in the little village school, and that was all; but Jesse had gone to Sherborne, and stayed on to college in the old university town. He’d worked hard at his languages and sciences, and done well; only there had been something wrong. It had taken him years to realize his hands were missing the touch of oiled steel, his nostrils needed the scent of steam. He’d packed up and come home and started work like any other haulier; and Eli had said not a word. No praise, no condemnation. Jesse shook his head. Deep down he’d always known with
out any possibility of doubt just what he was going to do. At heart, he was a haulier; like Tim, like Dickon, like old Eli. That was all; and it would have to be enough.

  The Margaret topped a rise and rumbled onto a down-slope. Jesse glanced at the long gauge glass by his knee and instinct more than vision made him open the injectors, valve water into the boiler. The loco had a long chassis; that meant caution descending hills. Too little water in her barrel and the forward tilt would uncover the firebox crown, melt the fusable plug there. All the steamers carried spares, but fitting one was a job to avoid. It meant drawing the fire, a crawl into a baking-hot firebox, an eternity of wrestling overhead in darkness. Jesse had burned his quota of plugs in his time, like any other tyro; it had taught him to keep his firebox covered. Too high a level on the other hand meant water reaching the steam outlets, descending from the stack in a scalding cloud. He’d had that happen too.

  He spun the valve and the hissing of the injectors stopped. The Margaret lumbered at the slope, increasing her speed. Jesse pulled back on the reversing lever, screwed the brakes on to check the train; heard the altered beat as the loco felt the rising gradient, and gave her back her steam. Light or dark, he knew every foot of the road; a good driver had to.

  A solitary gleam ahead of him told him he was nearing Wool. The Margaret shrieked a warning to the village, rumbled through between the shuttered cottages. A straight run now, across the heath to Poole. An hour to the town gates, say another half to get down to the quay. If the traffic holdups weren’t too bad.… Jesse chafed his hands, worked his shoulders inside his coat. The cold was getting to him now, he could feel it settling in his joints.

  He looked out to either side of the road. It was full night, and the Great Heath was pitch black. Far off he saw or thought he saw the glimmer of a will-o’-the wisp, haunting some stinking bog. A chilling wind moaned in from the emptiness. Jesse listened to the steady pounding of the Burrell and as often before the image of a ship came to him. The Lady Margaret, a speck of light and warmth, forged through the waste like some vessel crossing a vast and inimical ocean.

  This was the twentieth century, the age of reason; but the heath was still the home of superstitious fears. The haunt of wolves and witches, were-things and Fairies; and the routiers.… Jesse curled his lip. “Norman bastards” Dickon had called them. It was as accurate a description as any. True, they claimed Norman descent; but in this Catholic England of more than a thousand years after the Conquest, bloodlines of Norman, Saxon, and original Celt were hopelessly mixed. What distinctions existed were more or less arbitrary, reintroduced in accordance with the racial theories of Gisevius the Great a couple of centuries ago. Most people had at least a smattering of the five tongues of the land: the Norman French of the ruling classes, Latin of the Church, Modern English of commerce and trade, the outdated Middle English and Celtic of the churls. There were other languages of course: Gaelic, Cornish, and Welsh, all fostered by the Church, kept alive centuries after their use had worn thin. But it was good to chop a land piecemeal, set up barriers of language as well as class. “Divide and rule” had long been the policy, unofficially at least, of Rome.

  The routiers themselves were surrounded by a mass of legend. There had always been gangs of footpads in the Southwest, probably always would be; they smuggled, they stole, they looted the road trains. Usually, but not invariably, they stopped short at murder. Some years the hauliers suffered worse than others; Jesse could remember the Lady Margaret limping home one black night with her steersman dead from a crossbow quarrel, half her train ablaze and old Eli swearing death and destruction. Troops from as far off as Sorviodunum had combed the heath for days, but it had been useless. The gang had dispersed; gone to their homes if Eli’s theories had been correct, turned back into honest God-fearing citizens. There’d been nothing on the heath to find; the rumoured strongholds of the outlaws just didn’t exist.

  Jesse stoked again, shivering inside his coat. The Margaret carried no guns; you didn’t fight the routiers if they came, not if you wanted to stay alive. At least not by conventional methods; Eli had had his own ideas on the matter though he hadn’t lived long enough to see them carried out. Jesse set his mouth. If they came, they came; but all they’d get from the firm of Strange they’d be welcome to keep. The business hadn’t been built on softness; in this England, haulage wasn’t a soft trade.

  A mile or so ahead a brook, a tributary of the Frome, crossed the road. On this run the hauliers usually stopped there to replenish their tanks. There were no waterholes on the heath, the cost of making them would be prohibitive. Water standing in earth hollows would turn brackish and foul, unsafe for the boilers: the splashes would have to be concrete lined, and a job like that would set somebody back half a year’s profits. Cement manufacture was controlled rigidly by Rome, its price prohibitive. The embargo was deliberate of course; the stuff was far too handy for the erection of quick strong-points. Over the years there had been enough revolts in the country to teach caution even to the Popes.

  Jesse, watching ahead, saw the sheen of water or ice. His hand went to the reversing lever and the train brakes. The Margaret stopped on the crown of a little bridge. Its parapets bore solemn warnings about “ponderous carriages” but few of the hauliers paid much attention to them after dark at least. He swung down and unstrapped the heavy armored hose from the side of the boiler, slung its end over the bridge. Ice broke with a clatter. The water lifts hissed noisily, steam pouring from their vents. A few minutes and the job was done. The Margaret would have made Poole and beyond without trouble; but no haulier worth his salt ever felt truly secure with his tanks less than brimming full. Specially after dark, with the ever-present chance of attack. The steamer was ready now if needs be for a long, hard flight.

  Jesse recoiled the hose and took the running lamps out of the tender. Four of them, one for each side of the boiler, two for the front axle. He hung them in place, turning the valves over the carbide, lifting the front glasses to sniff for acetylene. The lamps threw clear white fans of light ahead and to each side, making the frost crystals on the road surface sparkle. Jesse moved off again. The cold was bitter; he guessed several degrees of frost already, and the worst of the night was still to come. This was the part of the journey where you started to think of the cold as a personal enemy. It caught at your throat, drove glassy claws into your back; it was a thing to be fought, continuously, with the body and brain. Cold could stun a man, freeze him on the footplate till his fire burned low and he lost steam and hadn’t the sense to stoke. It had happened before; more than one haulier had lost his life like that out on the road. It would happen again.

  The Lady Margaret bellowed steadily; the wind moaned in across the heath.

  On the landward side, the houses and cottages of Poole huddled behind a massive rampart and ditch. Along the fortifications, cressets burned; their light was visible for miles across the waste ground. The Margaret raised the line of twinkling sparks, closed with them slowly. In sight of the West Gate Jesse spun the brake wheel and swore. Stretching out from the walls, dimly visible in torchlight, was a confusion of traffic; Burrows, Avelings, Claytons, Fowlers, each loco with a massive train. Officials scurried about; steam plumed into the air; the many engines made a muted thundering. The Lady Margaret slowed, jetting white clouds like exhaled breath, edged into the turmoil alongside a ten horse Fowler liveried in the colors of the Merchant Adventurers.

  Jesse was fifty yards from the gates, and the jam looked like taking an hour or better to sort out. The air was full of din; the noise of the engines; shouts from the steersmen and drivers, the bawling of town marshalls and traffic wardens. Bands of Pope’s Angels wound between the massive wheels, chanting carols and holding up their cups for offerings. Jesse hailed a harassed-looking peeler. The Serjeant grounded his halberd, looked back at the Lady Margaret’s load and grinned.

  “Bishop Blaize’s benison again, friend?”

  Jesse grunted an affirmative; alongside, the Fowler
let fly by a deafening series of hoots.

  “Belay that,” roared the policeman. “What’ve ye got up there, that needs so much hurry?”

  The driver, a little sparrow of a man muffled in scarf and greatcoat, spat a cigarette butt overboard. “Shellfish for ’Is ’Oliness,” he quipped. “They’re burning Rome tonight.…” The story of Pope Orlando dining on oysters while his mercenaries sacked Florence had already passed into legend.

  “Any more of that,” shouted the Serjeant furiously, “and you’ll find the gates shut in your face. You’ll lie on the heath all night, and the routiers can have their pick of you. Now roll that pile of junk, roll it I say.…”

  A gap had opened ahead; the Fowler thundered contemptuously and moved into it. Jesse followed. An age of shunting and hooting and he was finally past the bottleneck, guiding his train down the long main street of Poole.

  Strange and Sons maintained a bonded store on the quay, not far from the old customs house. The Margaret threaded her way to it, inching between piles of merchandise that had overflowed from loading bays. The docks were busy for so late in the season; Jesse passed a Scottish collier, a big German freighter, a Frenchman; a Newworlder, an ex-slaver by her raking lines, a handsome Swedish clipper still defiantly under sail; and an old Dutch tramp, the Groningen, that he knew to be still equipped with the antiquated and curious mercury boilers. He swung his train eventually into the company warehouse, nearly an hour overdue.

  The return load had already been made up; Jesse ditched the down-waggons thankfully, handed over the manifest to the firm’s agent and backed onto the new haul. He saw again to the securing of the trail load, built steam, and headed out. The cold was deep inside him now, the windows of the waterfront pubs tempting with their promise of warmth, drink, and hot food; but tonight the Margaret wouldn’t lie in Poole. It was nearly eight of the clock by the time she reached the ramparts, and the press of traffic was gone. The gates were opened by a surly-faced Serjeant; Jesse guided his train through to the open road. The moon was high now, riding a clear sky, and the cold was intense.