Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  The boy had gone.

  Within a few seconds, complete pandemonium had erupted around the stabbed waiter. Auger could see only the backs of do-gooders crowding around him. Another waiter yelled into the restaurant telephone, while a third jogged across the concourse to fetch help. The scene had already begun to attract the attention of onlookers outside, waiting for trains. Some kind of railway official—a remarkably similar-looking individual to the man Floyd had bribed that afternoon—began to stroll towards the door and, seeing the size of the commotion, broke into a wheezing, heavy-bellied lope. Someone blew three sharp blasts on a whistle.

  Auger stood up, gathering her things. Were the children still out there, waiting for her? There was no way of telling. What she did know was that she did not want to be here when—as seemed certain—the police arrived and began taking the names and addresses of witnesses. She could not afford to miss that Berlin train, and she certainly could not afford to fall into the machinery of the law. What if the station official at Cardinal Lemoine had decided to talk to his superiors after all?

  She wiped crumbs from her lips and judged her moment, excusing herself past the concerned onlookers crowding around the wounded man. She might as well have been made of smoke for all the attention anyone paid her. Pausing at the door, she looked left and right along the concourse, but there was no sign of the two children. All she could hope was that they had decided to leave the station before too many witnesses described a vicious little boy with a knife. As quickly as she could without attracting unwanted attention, Auger made her way to the departures board and double-checked the platform for the overnight train to Berlin. It was waiting now: a long chain of dark-green carriages, with a black steam engine simmering at the far end. Along the length of the train, the station staff were still preparing it: there were trolleys loaded with linen, food and drink, and men in uniforms were coming and going through the open doors, barking to each other in heavily accented French. A station official shook his head at Auger as she tried to step on to the platform, tapping his watch with a finger.

  “Please, monsieur,” Auger said. In the distance she heard the scraping whine of police sirens, nearing the railway station. “I need to be on that train.”

  It might have been the worst thing she could have said, if the man got it into his head that she was running from the authorities. “Mademoiselle,” he said apologetically, “Five more minutes, then you can board.”

  Auger dropped her bags and dug into what was left of her money. “Take this,” she said, offering him ten francs. “It’s a bribe.”

  The man pursed his lips, looking her over. The sirens sounded very near now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people still cramming around the entrance to the restaurant.

  “Twenty,” he said. “Then you can find your couchette.”

  “For twenty you can help me find it,” Auger replied archly.

  The man seemed to find this an acceptable compromise, pocketing the additional ten-franc note and leading her down the length of two carriages until he found one that corresponded to the number on her ticket. Inside, everything was clean, bright and narrow. The man found her compartment and pushed open the door. There was a key on the inside of the door, which he removed and gave to Auger.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The man inclined his head, then left her alone. There were two bunks in the sleeping compartment, but she had paid to have the entire cabin to herself. There was a neat aluminised basin and tap in one corner, plus a tiny cupboard and a small fold-down writing desk and stool. The walls were varnished wood with recessed electric lights. There was a communication cord and pull-down fabric blind, and a faded monochrome photograph of some cathedral she didn’t recognise.

  Auger slid the window down, letting in the noises of the station. Amidst the clatter of slamming doors, arriving and departing trains and announcements over the Tannoy, it was difficult to be sure, but she did not think she could hear the sirens now. Did that mean the police had passed the station by entirely, on some other errand? She looked at her watch again, willing the hands to slide around to departure time.

  From somewhere nearby, outside the train, she heard a heated exchange of voices. Slowly, Auger inched her head out of the window so that she could look back along the length of the train. There was the man she had bribed, gesticulating and arguing with a pair of uniformed policemen. Angrily, they pushed past the man and began strolling along the line of carriages. They were walking very slowly, stopping at each compartment window. One of the men had a ribbed-metal flashlight, which he was shining into each compartment, tapping on the glass at the same time. The station official trailed behind them, muttering under his breath.

  Auger forced herself to breathe again. Slowly, slowly, she moved her head back inside and slid the window up to its closed position. There was time to get out of the compartment, but what if another policeman was moving along the inside of the train, covering that line of escape?

  The voices of the two officers came closer. She heard them tapping on the glass two or three compartments down from hers. It was much louder now. There was barely time to move her things out of sight, and certainly no time to think of hiding herself. All she could do was act as naturally as possible. Auger dragged the blind down halfway and sat, waiting.

  There was a knock on the interior door. She held her breath, silently willing whoever it was to go away.

  The person knocked again. A low, urgent voice whispered, “Auger?”

  It was Floyd. It was Floyd and she really did not need this.

  Keeping her own voice low, she pressed her lips to the door. “Go away. I said I didn’t want to see you again.”

  “And I think we have unfinished business.”

  “In your imagination, perhaps.”

  “Let me in. There’s something I have to tell you. Something I think might make you change your mind.”

  “Nothing you could say or do, Wendell…” But she silenced herself. The officers outside were now very close to her compartment.

  “I kept something back,” Floyd said.

  “What do you mean?” she hissed.

  “From that box of papers. Figured it might be useful to have some bargaining strength.”

  “I got everything I needed from those papers already, Floyd.”

  “Is that why you’re on your way to Germany? Because you already have all the answers?”

  “Don’t overestimate yourself,” Auger said.

  “What happened back at the restaurant?”

  She saw no harm in telling him. “One of those child-things. It stabbed a waiter.”

  “The kid was looking for you?”

  What was the point of lying now? “Give yourself a pat on the back. Now quit while you’re ahead and leave me alone.”

  “The policemen outside think you might have had something to do with it. You fled the scene, after all. Innocent witnesses don’t do that. Ask Custine. He’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I’m sorry about Custine,” she said. “I’m sorry he got involved in all of this and I hope you can find a way to help him. But it isn’t my problem. Your entire little world isn’t my problem.”

  “You know what really hurts? The way you almost sound as if you mean that.”

  “I do mean it,” she said fiercely. “Now go away.”

  “Those policemen aren’t going to let you ride this train anywhere.”

  She heard the whistle and snort of a departing train. But it wasn’t the one she was sitting in. “I’ll deal with them.”

  “Like you dealt with me this afternoon? You weren’t going to use that gun, Verity. I could see it in your eyes.”

  “Then you’re an exceptionally poor judge of character. I would have used it, if necessary.”

  “But you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”

  There was a hard knock on the glass. A voice with a Parisian accent said sharply, “Open the window.”

  She slid the blind up and pull
ed on the leather strap that lowered the glass. “Do you want to see my ticket?”

  “Just your identification,” said one of the officers standing outside.

  “Here.” Auger slid the papers through the gap in the window. “Is something the matter? I wasn’t expecting to have my papers examined until later.”

  “Is there anyone else in that compartment with you?”

  “I think I’d have noticed.”

  “I heard you talking.”

  With a casualness that surprised her, Auger said, “I was reciting a list of the things I have to do in Berlin.”

  The man made an equivocal noise. “You’re on the train alone, before anyone else. Why were you in such a hurry to get aboard?”

  “Because I’m tired and I don’t want to have to squabble with anyone else over who has the ticket for this compartment.”

  The man reflected on this, before saying, “We’re looking for a child. Have you seen any unsupervised children hanging around?”

  Just then another voice distracted the man. It was Floyd, outside now. He spoke in soft, urgent French too fast for her to follow, what with all the background noise of the station, but she recognised “child” and a few other significant words. The other man responded with further questions, sceptical in tone at first, but with increasing urgency. He and Floyd exchanged a few more heated words and then she heard footsteps heading with some haste away from the carriage; a few seconds later, she heard the shrill, repeated warble of a police whistle.

  Moments passed, then Floyd knocked on the door to her compartment again. “Let me in. I just got those goons off your back.”

  “And you have my undying gratitude, but you still have to get off this train.”

  “Why are you so interested in Berlin? Why are you so interested in the Kaspar contract?”

  “The less you ask me, Floyd, the easier time of it we’ll both have.”

  “The contract is for something unpleasant, isn’t it? Something you want to stop happening.”

  “Why do you assume I’m not actually trying to help it happen?”

  “Because you have a nice face. Because the moment you walked into my office, I decided I liked you.”

  “Well, like I said: you’re not necessarily the best judge of character.”

  “I have a ticket for Berlin,” he said. “I also know a good hotel on the Kurfurstendamm.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient?”

  “You have nothing to lose by taking me along for the ride.”

  “And nothing to gain.”

  “Silver rain,” Floyd said.

  It was said in such an offhand way that at first she thought she had simply misheard him. That was the only logical explanation. He couldn’t possibly have said what she thought he had… could he?

  She dropped her voice even lower. “What?”

  “I said ‘silver rain.’ I was wondering if it meant anything to you.”

  She flicked her eyes to the ceiling and opened the door to the corridor. Floyd was standing there, hat in his hand, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes.

  “What you just said—” she began.

  “It means something to you, doesn’t it?” he persisted.

  “Shut the door behind you.”

  A whistle sounded and a moment later the train lurched as it began to crawl out of the station.

  Floyd took out the postcard he had kept back. He passed it to Auger and let her examine it. She switched on the reading light and held it up for closer inspection. The train rattled and bounced, gathering speed as it negotiated the maze of interconnecting tracks beyond the ends of the platforms.

  “It’s significant, isn’t it?” he prompted.

  The postcard was a message from Susan White to Caliskan. Clearly, it had never been sent. Equally clearly, it had something to do with Silver Rain. But Silver Rain was a weapon from the past, a thing of wonder and terror, like a biblical plague. Silver Rain was the worst thing that could happen to a world. More than that: it was quite possibly the last thing that would ever happen to a world.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The train slipped through monotonous moonlit lowlands, somewhere east of the German border. Every now and then, the lit oasis of a farmhouse or a cosy little hamlet slid by in the night, but for long stretches of time they passed through endless dark fields, as lifeless and unwelcoming as the space between stars. Occasionally Auger glimpsed a fox, frozen in midstep, or the swooping passage of an owl skimming low across a field on some solitary vigil. The animals were drained of colour by the moonlight, pale as ghosts. These little pockets of life—welcome as they were—served only to emphasise the vast lifelessness of the territory itself. Yet the rhythmic sound of the train’s wheels, the gentle rocking motion of the carriage, the distant, muted roar of the engine, the warmth of a good meal and a welcome drink inside her—all these things lulled Auger into a kind of ease, one that she knew was transient and not especially justifiable, but for which she was none the less grateful.

  “So tell me,” Floyd said, “how are we going to play the sleeping arrangements?”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “I can sleep on the seat I booked.” Floyd’s expenses hadn’t stretched to a couchette ticket.

  “You can use the lower bunk,” she said magnanimously, dabbing a napkin at the corner of her mouth. “It doesn’t mean we’re married. Or even particularly good friends.”

  “You sure know how to make a guy feel appreciated.”

  “I mean, Wendell, that this is purely business. Which doesn’t mean that I’m not glad to have you in the vicinity, in case they show up again.”

  “The children?”

  She nodded meekly. “I’m worried they’ll have followed us.”

  “Not on this train,” Floyd said. “They’d be too conspicuous, even more so than in the city.”

  “I hope you’re right. Anyway, it isn’t just the children.”

  They had just finished dining in the restaurant car in the company of a dozen other travellers, most of them better dressed. Almost all of the other diners had now retired to the adjoining bar car or their individual cabins, leaving Auger and Floyd nearly alone. A youngish German couple were arguing over wedding plans in one corner, while a pair of plump Belgian businessmen swapped tales of financial impropriety over fat cigars and cognac in another. Neither of these parties was the least bit interested in a low, intimate conversation between a couple of English-speaking foreigners.

  “What else, then?” Floyd asked.

  “What you said… what you showed me on that postcard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it dashes any hopes I might have had that I was actually imagining all this.”

  “You weren’t imagining those children.”

  “I know,” Auger said. She sipped at the remains of her drink, knowing that she was a bit drunk and not caring. Right now, a little fogginess of mind was exactly what the doctor ordered. “But the reference on that postcard to Silver Rain—well, it means that things are about ten times as bad as I thought they were.”

  “Maybe it would help if you told me what this Silver Rain is all about,” Floyd suggested.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “But it’s bad, isn’t it? When I dropped those two little words into your lap you looked as if someone had walked over your grave.”

  “I was hoping that my reaction hadn’t been so obvious.”

  “It was written in sky-high neon. Those two words were the last thing you wanted to hear.”

  “Or expected to hear,” she said.

  “Coming from my lips?”

  “From anyone’s lips. You shouldn’t have held back that postcard, Wendell. It was thoroughly dishonest.”

  “And you pretending to be Susan White’s sister—that’s what you call setting an appropriate example, is it?”

  “That’s different. It was a necessary deception.”

  “So was mine, Verity.”

  “T
hen I suppose we’re even. Can we leave it at that?”

  “Not until I know what those two little words mean.”

  “As I said, I can’t tell you.”

  “If I had to put money on it,” Floyd said, “I’d say it was the codename for a secret weapon. Question is: who’s on the trigger? The people behind you and White, or the people who killed White and Blanchard, and sent those children to stalk you?”

  “It isn’t our weapon,” she said fiercely. “Why do you think Susan White was murdered in the first place?”

  “So it’s their weapon, not yours?”

  “That’s enough, Wendell.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ”

  “Take it any way you like, it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  “Let me join the dots here,” Floyd said. “Susan White stumbles on to a conspiracy. The Kaspar contract in Berlin is part of it. So is Silver Rain, whatever that is. I guess all these things are connected somehow, although right now I don’t see how those metal spheres can be any part of a weapon.”

  “The spheres aren’t the weapon,” she said icily. “I don’t know what they are, except that they must be involved in all this somehow. And if I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting on this train being pestered by you.”

  “But you do know what Silver Rain is, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know exactly what it is. I saw what it can do with my own eyes only a few days ago.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Looking down on Mars, from a spaceship. Where else?”

  “Cute. How about the real answer?”

  “The real answer is that it’s a weapon. It can kill a lot of people in one go. More than you would want to believe possible.”

  “Thousands?”

  “Try again.”

  “Hundreds of thousands?”

  “Better.”

  “Millions?”

  “Warm. Start thinking entire planetary populations, and you’re getting close.”