Railhead

by Philip Reeve

  “Oh, little ones… Are you trying to avoid me?”

  “Hold tight!” said the Damask Rose, too late for Zen, who was not holding tight enough and went somersaulting over a seat back as she put on speed. But the Thought Fox was ready for her; it accelerated too, racing back toward the junction where the Damask Rose’s track rejoined the main line. They heard it give a high, fierce cry like a stooping hawk as it swung its weaponry toward them and let fly. Impacts buffeted the Damask Rose; sudden splashes of fire like saffron curtains flapped at the carriage windows.

  “Don’t worry,” she told her passengers. “Those popguns can’t pierce my shielding.”

  Hammer blows along the carriage sides: a random snare-drum stutter laid over the deep baseline of the Rose’s own guns, firing back. Trackside buildings came apart in sprays of thick juice. The sparks and spatter touched off memories: of pictures seen and threedies watched, racing wartrains battling it out on the smoke-veiled tracks, boarding parties leaping between the armored carriages, the kind of thing you watched unthinking in a game or a history vid and never expected to be part of yourself. Zen stared at the windows and had to keep reminding himself that they were not just screens. Out there in the speeding dark swayed gaudy streamers of tracer fire, rivers of violent light pouring between the Thought Fox and the Rose. Gun-light winked off something moving on the wasteland of empty rails that separated the two trains. A glimpse and then gone, and it took Zen a moment to process what he’d seen.

  “Maintenance spiders!” he shouted.

  They hit the carriage side and scrambled up it; a swift confusion of ceramic angles silhouetted for a moment through the window glass; a scrabbling on the roof. “Maintenance spiders!” he shouted again, remembering how, in Ukotec, the Thought Fox had sent its spiders out to slaughter everyone.

  “Rose, what’s happening?” shouted Nova, but the train did not reply. She was too busy to answer, thought Zen, too busy sending her own spiders out to do battle with the spiders the Fox had sent. The track curved past a bio-building walled with organic glass, and in the reflections he saw them scuttling and wrestling on the carriage roofs. The Fox’s spiders were concentrating their attack on the Rose’s weapons, and as he watched, one of the gun turrets tore free and came tumbling past his window, strewing sparks and sprays of oil.

  “My guns are offline,” said the Rose. “I have one missile left.”

  “It won’t get through the Fox’s armor,” Nova said.

  The two trains were close now. The Rose slowed. The Fox stood motionless at the junction where the tracks from the freight yards rejoined the mainline, a hunched black blade under the toxic sky. A quarter-mile beyond it yawned a tunnel mouth, leading to the K-gate, and Desdemor. But to reach it, the Damask Rose would have to pass within a few feet of the other train and its batteries of silent, waiting weapons.

  She drew to a halt, defeated.

  “What pretty paintings,” said the Thought Fox.

  It sounded like it meant it, but the Rose did not reply.

  “I did them,” said Flex.

  “And who are you?”

  “I am Flex,” said Flex. He came to stand beside Zen at the window, looking out curiously at the Thought Fox. “You’re a Zodiak, aren’t you?”

  “I am the last of the fighting C12s,” said the Thought Fox proudly. Still it did not fire. It seemed to be savoring the moment, enjoying the fear it could hear in the voices of its victims. It was not like a machine at all, thought Zen. It was as cruel as a human being.

  But Flex, who loved all trains despite their flaws, still seemed happy to chat to it. “I could paint you too,” he said, “if you like.”

  “What are you doing?” whispered Zen.

  “If fighting doesn’t work, we have to try talking to it,” Flex explained.

  “But it’s psychotic!”

  “It’s lonely,” said Flex.

  And the Thought Fox did seem to be considering Flex’s offer. “Some taggers tried to write their names on me once,” it said. “In Karaghand, a hundred years ago. I wore their skins for a while, as warnings to the rest.”

  “I don’t want to write my name on you,” said Flex. “Just pictures. Not too many. You are beautiful already.”

  “Do you think so?” asked the Thought Fox, and Zen almost laughed, wondering if there was any train Flex could not charm. “Tell me more,” it said.

  “I’d have to look at you properly,” said Flex.

  “Then come and look.”

  Flex glanced at Nova, and something passed between them, Moto to Moto, wordless. Then he picked up his bag of paints and went to the door on the far side of the carriage from the Thought Fox. It opened quickly for him, and the sharp fumes of the rotting buildings stung Zen’s eyes as Flex slipped out, scrambled between the carriages, and walked toward the black train.

  It really was beautiful, with a grim, spiny beauty that Flex had never seen before. An echo of old wars. The vapors of its engines wrapped around it, and two lamps shone red high on its black prow. The open covers of its weapons bays were wings.

  “You are not a fox,” he said. “You are a dragon.”

  “Ooh,” said the Thought Fox, as if it liked that idea.

  “I’ll give you scales, and eyes,” said Flex. “I’ll give you teeth. I’ll give you the best paint job a train ever had. But you must let my friends go. That’s fair, isn’t it? Just let the Damask Rose go by, and then I’ll paint you.”

  The Thought Fox thought. It huffed out another cloud of vapor and its lamps cast spiky shadows. Hull cameras looked down at the Motorik who stood in front of it, spreading his hands to show he meant no harm.

  “Nah,” said the Thought Fox.

  Flex saw fire burst from the flamethrowers on its prow. He flung up his hands to protect himself, but that did no good. He turned in the white-hot rush of the flames, stumbling, trying to find his way back to the Damask Rose, but his eyes had melted and the ceramic bones of his legs shattered in the heat with a sound like fresh twigs snapping. He crumpled across the rails. The Thought Fox rolled carefully forward, and crushed the last black scraps of him beneath its wheels.

  And aboard the Damask Rose, Zen’s shout of horror was drowned in thunder as the Fox’s weapons went to work again, pounding the red train, targeting the spots on her shielding that its spiders had weakened. Nova dragged Zen onto the carriage floor as their unbreakable diamondglass windows flew apart in impossible ice storms, whirling daggers freeze-framed in the sharp slanting light of the guns. The afterimage of Flex burning had seared itself onto Zen’s eyeballs. It glowed through his tears, a flame in the shape of a person. He and Nova clung together, trying to shield each other, crouching in the frail shelter of the tables while the guns thundered above them, and her voice in his head said, “It’s going to be all right, I think, as long as—”

  And then there was only light.

  43

  So bright, that light. So loud, that noise, that for a moment Zen didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Dead, he suspected. As dead as poor Flex. He was surprised that he could still feel the carriage floor under his knees and Nova in his arms. His ears whined and popped, and he found that he was listening to the thrum of the Damask Rose’s engines. He blinked away afterimages of the flash and looked around the shattered carriage. Daggers of shrapnel jutted from the seats. Thick scabs of repair foam clogged the windows. Through the scabs, he saw the dim and wavering outlines of tall buildings moving slowly past. Not the spoiled-fruit bio-buildings of the previous world, but slender towers, shining under a green sky.

  “The Rose was moving too fast to stop,” said Nova. “We came through the K-gate. This is Desdemor.”

  “What happened to the Thought Fox?”

  “Gone,” said the Damask Rose, voice slurring a little, like a punch-drunk boxer.

  “I got into its mind,” said Nova. “While it
was busy talking to Flex, I managed to find a way through its firewalls. I made it open its engine covers.”

  The Rose said, “I sent my last missile straight into its reactor core.”

  “But what about Flex?” said Zen. It had happened so suddenly, that dazzling belch of flames, the black train rushing forward. The blazing bundle it had crushed under its wheels couldn’t really have been Flex, could it? He still half hoped the Motorik had escaped.

  But Nova shook her head. “Flex is gone too. Motorik aren’t fireproof. Or train-proof.”

  “I tried to catch him,” said the Rose. “His mind broadcasted a backup copy of itself as he died. I should have been able to store it, so it could be downloaded into a new body. But my firewalls were up, and by the time I realized Flex was trying to reach me… I caught only a few strands of code. So corrupted, so faint. Poor Flex.”

  “Poor Flex,” said Zen. And then realized that their plans had died with him. The train was moving very slowly, curving past the beaches of Desdemor toward the center of the city where the tallest buildings stood, the Terminal Hotel rising above the golden curve of the station canopy.

  “We should go back. We need time to think. Without Flex…”

  Nova shook her head. “Raven already knows we’re here. His drones have been following us since we came through the K-gate.”

  Zen went to a window and peered out through the bottle-glass bubblings of the hasty repairs. They were close to the station now. A drone, twin to the one that had hunted him all those weeks ago in Ambersai, was keeping pace with the train. He imagined Raven watching him through its cameras. Remembered Raven’s parting words, in Cleave: “If you ever try coming after me…”

  The mouth of the station swallowed the Damask Rose. Dusty platforms and shafts of green-gold light, just like the first time. The Thought Fox’s elegant old carriages waiting engineless on the up line. And, just like the first time, Angels. Zen hadn’t noticed them out in the daylight, but here among the slanting shadows he saw that dozens of the strange light forms were blowing along beside the train like ghostly thistledown.

  “Psssssccchhhh,” said the Damask Rose, coming to a stop.

  There on the platform, tall among the fraying Angels, Raven was waiting for them.

  Zen stepped out into the familiar seaside smells of Desdemor, and Raven came toward him through the shadows and the light. “Zen,” he said, with no expression. “And Nova.”

  Nova came out of the train to stand at Zen’s side. “Zen came back for me,” she said, as if that explained it all. Perhaps it did. Raven’s eyes roved over the old red train, its scars and scorch marks, its scabbed and shattered windows. He raised an eyebrow at the battered gun turret it tried to swing toward him, then lowered it again when he saw that the gun was wrecked.

  “This is one of the trains from Cleave, isn’t it?” he said. “That was good thinking, Zen. But how did you get past the Thought Fox?”

  “The Thought Fox is dead,” said Zen.

  Raven was still coming closer. Zen pulled out the cheap little pistol he had bought on Sundarban. Raven stopped. “Why did you come, Zen?” he said. “I did tell you not to come looking for me. When I sent you away, I was trying to keep you safe.”

  “You don’t care about me!” said Zen. “You don’t care about anyone! You’re not even human!”

  “I was once,” said Raven. “And now, perhaps, I am again. I wish you had stayed on Summer’s Lease, Zen. We could have salvaged Nova together, once my work here is complete.”

  “You never cared about her either,” said Zen. He held the gun as steady as he could. “You just used us both. But you’re not going to use us anymore. That’s your last body, isn’t it? When that one goes, you’ll be dead for real, won’t you? So if you want to stay alive, you’ll do what I say.”

  He thought he sounded pretty convincing. Channeling tough guys from the threedies and the wilder kids he’d known in Cleave. Clenched jaw, hard eyes, the gun unwavering.

  Raven just gave a little sigh, the sort you’d make if you found your train was running late. “What do you want, Zen?”

  “The Pyxis,” said Zen. “It’s ours by rights. We stole it for you, before we knew what it was, and what it’s worth. Now we need it back.”

  Raven smiled. Such an honest, amused, twinkly eyed smile that it was hard to keep the gun trained on him; he looked more human than Zen had ever seen him. “But I need it myself, Zen. I need it here on Tristesse. I am going to use it to open a new K-gate.”

  “You can’t open a new gate,” said Zen. “The Guardians say it’s impossible.”

  “And Guardians always tell the truth,” said Raven.

  “Why would they lie?” asked Nova.

  “Because they don’t want us to open another K-gate. Because they think that the Network is big enough, and human beings have enough K-gates, and that we should be good and grateful, shuttling around on these rails they’ve laid for us. But I disagree. I think we need to travel farther. I think we need to extend the Network. And I’m sure your fellow passenger agrees…”

  His smile went past Zen to the train. In the doorway of the front carriage stood a Hive Monk, faceless, naked, swaying uncertainly on a skeleton cobbled together out of odd splinters of table wood and lengths of window trim blasted free by the Thought Fox’s guns. A dwarfish, wobbly, misshapen Hive Monk, barely humanoid without its robe and mask, but intelligent again.

  “I’m assuming it was the Monks who led you to this old train?” said Raven. “I should have guessed. They know the Network inside out, the dead stations and the living ones. They’ve been searching so long for their Insect Lines. You’d think by now that they’d have realized the Insect Lines aren’t on our Network. Not one of the nine hundred and sixty-four gates leads where they want to go. If they want to get there, we’ll have to open a new gate.”

  “Uncle Bugs isn’t listening to you,” said Zen. Actually, he wasn’t sure if this new Monk was Uncle Bugs. It was made up of insects from all three Hive Monks. Perhaps it counted as a completely new person. But he guessed it must have some of Uncle’s memories. “It was your drone that smashed him up, back in Cleave.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Raven lightly, still looking at the Hive Monk.

  The Hive Monk spoke, whispery and uncertain, while the insects that formed it scrambled over each other in excitement. “You know the way onto the Insect Lines?”

  Raven nodded.

  “He’s lying,” said Nova. “Raven tells lies upon lies. He tells lies about lies.”

  Raven looked hurt, as if it caused him actual pain that Nova didn’t trust him anymore. He smiled sadly and sweetly at the Hive Monk. “It sounds as if Nova has chosen her side,” he said. “Now you must. Are you going to help Zen, or me? Remember, I’m the man who knows the way to where you want to go.”

  Rushing, rustling sounds came from the Monk. The sounds of a million insects arguing among themselves.

  “Don’t listen to him, Uncle Bugs!” Zen shouted.

  “Zen needed you to get himself a train,” said Raven. “But he can’t give you anything in return. If you help me, I shall show you the way to where you want to go. I know how badly you’ve been longing to get there. Very soon, if Zen will let me, I shall open the new gate. A new bright gate! Help me, and I’ll take you through it with me.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” shouted Zen. “You don’t understand…”

  Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say. The Hive Monk never had understood human beings. It was tired of trying to understand them. All it had ever wanted was to see the Insect Lines, and now here was a human who claimed to know the way.

  With a sound like a small wave breaking, the Hive Monk stepped down from the train. It seemed to come apart as its foot hit the platform, its upper half exploding into a blur of wings, but somehow it kept moving, and it came at Zen. Bugs battered his f
ace as he turned, they clumped on his clothes, they clung to his hands when he tried to brush them away. Thick fingers made of bodies and legs clasped his wrists. He had dropped the gun.

  “Uncle Bugs!” he shouted, still hoping the swarm had some memory of the strange old shopkeeper who had been a friend of sorts to Zen.

  “That is not our name,” the bugs chirred, covering him as thickly as when they’d hidden him on Sundarban. “That is a human name; our name is…” and then only a long rustling, a crumpled-plastic-bag clattering of wings and mandibles, and mixed in with it a sort of chant that went, “The Insect Lines, the Insect Lines…”

  Nova ran to him, swiping at the storm of bugs as it wrapped around him, trying to scatter them, but Raven called her name and snapped his fingers and some small clever piece of code slipped from his headset into her brain and switched off her mind like a light. Zen barely noticed. The bugs were all over him now, pouring into his mouth, scuttling down his throat while he gagged and struggled, down on his knees, choking, bug-blind, bug-smothered. They were still whispering to him of the Insect Lines as they suffocated him.

  44

  Malik’s wartrain roared through the snows of Winterreise. Its drones flew above it, scanning the line ahead, while its crew prepared their weapons and checked their screens for traces of the Damask Rose. But the interface of Anais Six sat in the command carriage staring straight ahead and said, “They are not here. They came this way. They stopped here to repair and take on fuel. They took the spur that leads to Desdemor.”

  It must have a brain like a Moto, thought Malik, watching the flicker of its golden eyes. Inside that perfect blue head something like a computer was linking itself to this chilly planet’s data raft, to the dull minds of the station and the K-bahn signals, checking their histories, pulling up images of the red train. Humans could have hardware like that installed in their brains instead of wearing a headset if they wanted to, but nobody ever did, because it was too much hassle having brain surgery every time a fashionable new gadget was released. For an interface, that didn’t matter. It was disposable, a costume of flesh that Anais Six would wear for a single summer, or perhaps only a single night.