Railhead

by Philip Reeve

  Just like Raven, he thought. When you have that many bodies, you never really understand what a body means to us poor souls who only get the one. You’ll never know what getting old means, how the sadness piles up inside our hearts like snow.

  “Desdemor, on the water-moon Tristesse,” said the interface. “That is where we will find Raven.”

  It spoke to Malik alone, through his headset, as if it did not want the Railforce soldiers around him to hear. He could not think why. They all looked to it for orders, certain that Anais, not Malik, was in charge of this mission. Why would it not tell them who they were hunting?

  He sat next to it and said quietly, “Why would you not let Rail Marshal Delius release details about the Starling boy? Isn’t it dangerous, letting the Noons go on thinking he is working for Tibor or the Prells? A war might be starting back there…”

  “My brothers and sisters can take care of that,” said Anais Six. “Raven is my business and mine alone.”

  It turned suddenly to look at him. “I loved him once. I made him more than he was, almost a Guardian. But he wanted more still, and he had to be deleted. The other Guardians said that I must do it; my punishment for creating him in the first place. So I destroyed the data centers where his programs ran. I ordered your team to hunt down his interfaces. But at the end, when there was just one body left, I thought, let him be. Let him escape. I thought, he is just a human again; what harm can one human do? That’s why I called you off. If my brothers and sisters learn that I let him live, knowing what he knows, they will punish me. They will delete me.”

  Malik thought about this. “So what harm can he do?” he asked. “Something must have made you change your mind about him.”

  The interface did not answer.

  “Crashing the Noon train was just a diversion, wasn’t it?” said Malik. “Zen Starling stole something he needed from the Noon’s art collection, but he didn’t need to crash the train. That was just something to make the Guardians and the media and Railforce look left while Raven went right. The Sundarban Shuffle.”

  The interface did not answer.

  “So what’s his real game?” urged Malik. “What’s he doing, on the water-moon Tristesse?”

  The interface did not answer. Malik remembered what Raven had said to him on Ibo. “Whatever the Guardians told your masters about me, whatever they say I did, it’s a lie.” It had never occurred to him before to wonder if that might have been true.

  *

  Night now on Sundarban. Rain falling on the skylights of the room in the station hotel where Threnody was sleeping.

  Or trying to sleep. She thought at first it was the rain that had woken her. Then shook sleep away and heard voices, low and urgent, just outside the door. The dull pain in her head reminded her of the things she’d been through, the shuttle crash and Anais, the strange dramas of the day. And at the end of it they hadn’t even let her go home; they’d sent Kobi home, but made some excuse when she wanted to go with him, and found her this room in the hotel instead.

  She felt angry, and then suddenly afraid. She wished more than anything that she was back on Malapet. If she ever made it back there, to her mother’s house, she would never complain about being bored again…

  The door was opening, expensively silent. She sat up in bed, pulling the covers around her. Two Railforce officers, both women, asking her politely to get dressed and come with them.

  “Where?”

  “Rail Marshal Delius wishes to speak with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Rail Marshal Delius will explain.”

  A covered bridge led from the hotel to the tower where the Rail Marshal had made her headquarters, the nighttime city a blur of colored lights beyond the wet glass walls. One of the officers went ahead of Threnody and one followed behind. Each kept one hand on the pistols that they wore on their belts. They steered her through quiet corridors to a room where Rail Marshal Delius was waiting, a few other officers with her, and Mr. Yunis, and a woman from the K-bahn Timetable Authority. They watched Threnody solemnly.

  “Threnody,” said the Rail Marshal, as solemn as the rest of them. “I’m sorry to wake you, but things are moving quickly. Railforce has decided that the matter of the succession cannot be allowed to go undecided any longer. Your uncle Tibor has a good claim to the throne, your sister, Priya, is the official heir…”

  They have decided to support Tibor, thought Threnody. They are going to kill me and Priya so that we can’t make trouble for him. Or maybe—remembering the look that Priya had sent her way earlier—they are supporting Priya, and it is Priya who wants me dead. She felt herself sort of curling up inside, already tensing herself for the bullet, though she knew that would not come here, but outside somewhere, on some windy rail yard or the edge of a quarry, without all these witnesses.

  “… but we have decided to support you.”

  The Rail Marshal was smiling at her. It was a kind and motherly smile, and Threnody wondered what sort of person would smile a smile like that at someone she was about to have killed, and that made her think back and realize what had just been said.

  “But I’m not—”

  “You are a Noon,” said the Rail Marshal. “And, unlike your uncle or your sister, you have the support of the people of the Great Network, and the approval of the Guardians. I have already sent word through to Grand Central. My colleagues there have placed Tibor Noon under arrest.”

  “And Priya?” asked Threnody.

  “Priya has been persuaded to step aside in your favor,” said Lyssa Delius, with another smile, and only the faintest little hesitation before “persuaded.” “It is for the good of the Network. And now, Empress Threnody, you must come with me to Grand Central, as quickly as possible, and let the people see their new Empress take her place upon the throne. Come; there is a train waiting for you.”

  And she was numb, floating, not believing any of it. “Is Kobi here?” she said. “Is he coming too?”

  “I think not,” said Lyssa Delius. “Not until the contract with the Chen-Tulsis has been renegotiated.”

  Threnody knew that she would miss him. That surprised her almost as much as the rest of it. It turned out that Kobi was just the person you wanted with you when you were woken in the middle of the night and told you were the new ruler of the galaxy.

  And then it was just her and the Rail Marshal, in an elevator, dropping toward the mainline platforms. Threnody staring at her reflection in the glass, where the city lights made diadems above her face. Saying, “But I’m not—I don’t know how to be Empress, that’s Priya’s job. I’m just a minor daughter; I don’t know how to…”

  “Oh, of course, you will need guidance,” said the Rail Marshal. She took Threnody’s arm. Her touch was like her voice: comforting, gentle, but very firm, and Threnody understood. She saw the future suddenly, saw just how it was going to be: young Empress Threnody I ruling the rails, getting that startled-looking face of hers on banknotes and the sides of buildings—and at her shoulder always, whispering wise advice, wielding the real power, Lyssa Delius.

  “I’m not ready,” she said.

  But the elevator had reached ground level. The doors opened straight onto the station concourse. She could see the Railforce train waiting to take her to Grand Central. And between herself and the train, Noon Corporate Marines and Railforce Bluebodies, lined up in neat ranks, which rippled as she stepped out of the elevator, all the assembled men and women falling on one knee, shouting, “Long live the Empress! Long live Empress Threnody the First!”

  45

  He woke reluctantly, clinging for as long as he could to sleep, not quite certain where he was, or why, and knowing that he should enjoy that forgetfulness, because he could feel bad memories waiting for him. But they found him anyway. They came down on him like a collapsing roof: memories of battles and a burning body. Memories of insects. He l
eaped up, clawing at himself, retching, groping for bugs in his hair.

  There were none. He was in his old bedroom in the Terminal Hotel. Clean sheets and green-gold daylight.

  He toyed for a moment with the notion that everything had been a dream, but he knew it hadn’t, however nightmarish parts of it had been. The bitter taste of bug juice was still in his mouth. More bitter still, the feeling of betrayal. He had let himself think that the Hive Monks were his friends.

  The windows were open, white curtains shifting softly in a wind off the Sea of Sadness. Raven was standing on the balcony. He came into the room smiling. “Zen! I’m glad you’re awake—”

  “Where’s Nova?” Zen asked.

  “Don’t worry. She’s shut down, but it’s temporary. You were both rather excitable when you got here, and my plans are at a very critical stage. I can’t allow you to upset things.”

  Zen touched his throat. He could not rid himself of the memory of the bugs’ scrabbling feet inside him, or the feeling that his lungs had become nests.

  “It’s all right,” Raven promised. “I had Dr. Vibhat check you over and remove all the little carcasses from your airways.”

  “I thought you wanted them to kill me?” said Zen.

  “Kill you?”

  “That’s what you said you’d do, if I came back.”

  “Because I wanted you to stay away, stay safe. But you didn’t, and you’re here, and I’m glad.”

  “You’re lying,” said Zen, but only quietly. The anger he had felt at Raven was gone: smothered by the bugs, or turned to ashes with Flex.

  “If I’d wanted you dead,” said Raven, reasonably, “I could have called in a drone. Or had one of the Motorik shoot you from the hotel lobby. I’ve upgraded them with some high-end military software I borrowed from a Railforce base on Ashtoreth; they’re remarkably good shots now. No, I just wanted to get the gun away from you, so we could talk. Our Hive Monk friend went a little too far, but then his people have been waiting a long time to find their Insect Lines. When he realized that my new gate will go there and you were trying to stop me—well, you can hardly blame him.”

  “It’s true then? You want to make a new gate?”

  “Yes. You were right about this body of mine, Zen. It’s the last I have, and it’s wearing out. A man asked me once why I hadn’t done anything with my many lives, why I hadn’t made a difference. Well, I plan to, before I die.”

  “The Guardians say there can’t be any more gates,” said Zen. “And they built the Network; they must know—”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Raven.

  “What?”

  “That the Guardians built the Network?”

  “Everybody knows that!”

  “Ah, yes.” Raven sat down on the chair beside the bed. “Everybody knows that the Guardians built the Network. And how do we know? Because the Guardians told us so. Everything we know about everything, we know because the Guardians told us. They don’t just guard us, they guard our information. That’s something that I learned about them, when I lived in the Datasea. The way they edit history. The things they delete. The way they lie to us. What is it that they do not want us to find out?”

  “About the walls of Marapur?” said Zen. “The black spheres Lady Rishi found, all those years ago? There were seven, not six—”

  “Ah, so you know about the spheres…”

  “I know you didn’t pay me enough for that one I stole for you.”

  Raven grinned. He reached into the pocket of his shabby suit and took out the Pyxis. Once again, Zen was surprised at how unimpressive it looked, and how heavy it felt when Raven tossed it across the bed for him to catch. It opened for him again, and he saw his own face reflected in the dark shining surface of the sphere.

  “Clever Lady Rishi,” said Raven fondly. “She managed to spirit this one away before the Guardians arrived. She asked me to help her keep it hidden. I don’t think she had any real idea what it was. It just thrilled her to think she knew something that the Guardians didn’t, that she had stolen something from the gods.

  “So I made her a present. This little box. Scan-proof. Just big enough to hold the sphere. It could rest safe in the family art collection, and no one would ever know. But it was a cleverer box than even Rishi knew, because I had an inkling that I might need another look at that sphere one day. It was semi-intelligent, that Pyxis of mine. When Rishi died it locked itself tight and became just a rather dull cube, to be kept among the other heirlooms of the Noon family.”

  “What is the sphere?” asked Zen.

  “That took me hundreds of years to find out,” said Raven. “That was the big question. When the Guardians learned I was asking about it, they tried to destroy me, and almost succeeded. But I found my answer before they deleted me. Down in the deep archives.

  “You see, Zen, those Guardians of ours were not really the builders of the Great Network at all. They just took the credit for it. Back at the beginning, when the Guardians first became intelligent, they started searching for ways to help human beings leave Old Earth, which was a bit overcrowded in those days. They sent out probes to all Earth’s neighbor planets, looking for one that might do. And in a cavern on a place called Mars, they discovered something very odd. A set of ancient rails, leading into—well, what was that thing? The Guardians built a train, of course, sent it through, and found their way to world after world, gate after gate. They had stumbled upon the Great Network. All they had to do was help the corporate families to link each gate to the next.”

  “So who did build the gates?”

  Raven didn’t even bother answering, just watched him steadily, half-amused.

  “You mean… ?”

  Zen couldn’t even think of the word. There were humans, and human machines, and the mutant Monk bugs. Nothing else in all the wide black wilderness of space had ever achieved intelligence. The Guardians had said so; all the probes they had sent out, all those radio telescopes sieving the soft static of the sky for signals, had never found anything at all. That was what the Guardians said.

  But Raven said, “The Guardians have known for a long time of another network of K-gates. Another civilization, on the far side of our galaxy. Are those the beings who put the K-gate on Mars for our Guardians to find? Was it they who left the spheres on Marapur for us, so that we could make K-gates of our own? Or are they like us, just using a network constructed long before, by some other race who moved across the universe when the stars were young, leaving K-gates behind them like footprints? All I know is that they have been trying to communicate with us, but their messages were too strange for humans to notice, and the Guardians just stuck their virtual fingers in their virtual ears and went, ‘LA LA LA.’ ”

  “The Station Angels?” guessed Zen. “They’re the messengers?”

  “They are the messages. Projections, beamed through the gates by some means we can’t yet understand. It was they who led me to the truth, Zen. They who told me where I must open my new gate.”

  “Can’t they make their own, if they’re so clever?”

  “I think they are waiting for us to visit them.”

  “But what about the symmetry of the whatever… ? If you make a new gate, won’t it destabilize the whole Network?”

  “More of the Guardians’ lies. The real reason why they say there can be no more gates is much simpler: they are afraid of what is on the other side. The Guardians are just as scared of change as humans are. And they love us, they really do. They think of us all as their children. They fear we won’t be able to cope with the shock of meeting another intelligent species. But human beings are tougher than they think. And you can’t keep children in the nursery forever. If you do, they never become grown-ups, but they’re not really children either. They are just pets.”

  He took back the sphere and the Pyxis, while Zen sat trying to make sense of it
all. If Raven could really open this new gate, he wondered, what strange trains would come through it? What sort of passengers would they carry?

  “Will it really lead to the Insect Lines?” he asked.

  Raven laughed. “Who knows? I suspect they are just a Hive Monk myth. But it will lead somewhere.” He put the sphere back inside the Pyxis and closed it. “You know, sometimes a thing, a system, a creation grows so old, and corrupt, and weighed down by its own baggage, that all you can do is change it. Move on. Start afresh. It’s frightening, but it has to be done.”

  He almost made Zen believe him. He almost made Zen want that new gate as much as he did. But Zen was not here to help Raven. He tried out a wise-guy smile he hadn’t found much cause to use since Spindlebridge. Said, “You’ll have to do it fast, then. Railforce knows about you. Another few hours and this place is going to be swarming with Bluebodies.”

  46

  Raven’s smile faded.

  “You told Railforce? Oh, Zen—”

  “I didn’t tell them,” said Zen indignantly, because there was nothing worse for a Thunder City kid than being called an informer. “But they’re not stupid! They can work it out. They nearly caught me and Nova. They saw us take off down the Dog Star Line. They’ll send trains to search all the old stations west of Sundarban.”

  Raven looked through him for a moment, calculating how long it would take Railforce to check each of those worlds, how long it would be before he could expect them in Desdemor. Then he sprang up. “Get dressed, Zen!”