by P. G. Bell
“Wolfhaven!” Neoma had no hope of hiding her surprise this time. “But, my lord, that’s one of the richest Impossible Places in the Union. And the chancellor is a state official! I should have been informed.”
“The appointment has been in the diary for a while now,” said the old man. “Perhaps you overlooked it in all the recent fuss.”
Captain Neoma clenched her fists. She was certain she had seen no mention of a visit. “She looked upset, sir.”
“Merely overcome with emotion, no doubt,” the old man said. “She came here to pledge her support for the research project and was so deeply and personally moved by the extent of our work that she has agreed to extend us some considerable financial assistance. The coffers of Wolfhaven are open to us.” He smiled. “Now, I believe you have a report from one of my observers. I was expecting something sooner or later. Which of them is it from?”
So he’s given orders to more than one of them, Captain Neoma thought as she handed him the folded paper. “From Maya, sir.”
The old man’s face fell. “Oh dear. The Obsidian Tower. That’s unfortunate.” He opened the paper and shifted his glasses up his nose.
Captain Neoma covered her growing uncertainty by standing even further to attention. “Is something wrong, sir?”
“Almost certainly,” he murmured, scanning through the notes. “How interesting. A snow globe. The Impossible Postal Express. And a girl, a human girl at that. Well, I never.” He folded the paper closed again and returned his attention to Captain Neoma. “I’ll give you the good news first, Captain. It seems we may finally have caught up with your little mistake.”
If she stood any straighter, Captain Neoma thought her head might just pop right off her neck. “At the Obsidian Tower?”
“That’s the bad news,” the old man said. “It seems the Lady Crepuscula has taken something of an interest in the matter.”
Captain Neoma’s shock quickly turned to horror. “But why?” she said. “What could she possibly want with an observer?”
“That is a very good question, and I’m willing to bet the answer won’t be pleasant. She must have something very specific in mind.”
“Let me take a couple of squads out, sir,” said Neoma, rising to the balls of her feet in anticipation of a fight. “I’ll bring him back myself.”
“I’m afraid you’re too late. He’s aboard the Impossible Postal Express bound for regions unknown. Crepuscula has mobilized her forces in pursuit.”
“Then we have to find him first.”
“Agreed,” said the old man. “But we won’t do that by tearing off into the sunset, guns blazing. According to young Maya’s report, the Express has already reentered the tunnel system.” He pursed his lips in thought. “If memory serves, that particular tunnel leads to seven possible destinations, and we can’t take any action until we know which one they’re heading for. Luckily for us, neither can Crepuscula.”
He settled back into his chair, and Captain Neoma realized he had brought the conversation to a close.
“But we can’t just sit here and do nothing!” she exclaimed.
“Of course not,” he replied. “We’ll do what we do best: watch and learn. One of our own is in danger, Captain. We don’t know why he absconded or what Crepuscula stands to gain from him, and when we see an opportunity to act, I promise we will take it. Until then, he is in the care of this human girl. We shall simply have to trust her to stay ahead of Crepuscula until we can reach them.”
That didn’t sound like a very promising prospect to Captain Neoma, but she knew there was nothing more she could do for now. “I’ll have the observers check the destinations of the tunnel, sir,” she said. “Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you, Captain. Notify me the moment you have anything.”
Neoma saluted and left the office, positively itching with impatience. She wanted to be out there knocking heads together and getting answers, not stuck in here waiting for news. Crepuscula was on the warpath, and somebody had to be there to stop her. And I’d really like it to be me, she thought.
Her mind turned briefly to the chancellor of Wolfhaven. Despite what His Lordship had said, the chancellor hadn’t looked like a woman who had just donated to a worthy cause; she had looked angry. Neoma recalled their brief encounter, trying to recapture the look in the woman’s eyes. Had there been fear in there as well? It was hard to tell—the chancellor was as much wolf as woman. Skinwalkers could be hard to read.
All she knew for certain was that something strange was going on, and all the answers were aboard the Impossible Postal Express. Its crew had better hope that she caught up with them before Crepuscula did.
9
SUN, SEA, AND EXPLOSIVE BANANAS
Sunlight burst into the cab like an explosion as the Impossible Postal Express rocketed out of the tunnel and into fresh, salt-scented air. The chill of the darkness was swept away, and a damp heat replaced it. Blinking away the glare, Suzy hurried to the window.
The eerie starlit desert had been replaced by water—gentle turquoise waves peaked and troughed all around them, broken here and there by tiny islands of sugar-white sand. Gulls sailed alongside them, gliding on the warm breeze, their wings hardly twitching.
“Wow!” said Suzy, turning to Stonker and Ursel in amazement. “It’s beautiful.”
“The Topaz Narrows,” said Stonker, adjusting a few instruments. “A hundred leagues of the richest ocean this side of Landsdown Harbor. Not bad for fishing, when a chap’s got the time.”
Suzy pulled herself up on the lip of the window and looked down. “But that’s impos—” she started. Then she realized it didn’t really matter whether it was impossible or not—it was happening. Without waiting for permission from Stonker, she rushed to the door.
Keeping tight hold of the handrail, she leaned as far out as she dared and looked down. There was no land beneath the train. Instead, the rails stretched across the surface of the water, apparently unsupported. The waves slopped over them and withdrew, and the train threw up an arc of spray whenever it cut through one. Tiny droplets were already settling on her face and the fabric of her bathrobe. She stuck out her tongue and tasted the salt and laughed for the sheer joy of it.
“I say there!” Stonker appeared in the open doorway. “You’re letting a draft in, young lady.”
“Sorry,” she called. “I just didn’t want to miss this.”
The troll’s mustache twitched in a reluctant smile. “I suppose I can’t blame you. First time out and all that. And you can’t beat the view from the Belle.”
Suzy frowned. “From the what?”
“Why, this old girl, of course,” said Stonker, giving the locomotive’s flank an affectionate pat. Suzy hadn’t noticed it before, but his hand rested against a bronze nameplate fixed to the boiler. It read BELLE DE LOIN.
“A train can’t go anywhere without a locomotive to pull it,” said Stonker, beaming. “And the Express wouldn’t get much mail delivered without the Belle to take her places.” He joined Suzy at the railing and looked out across the waters.
“It’s a different sky,” she said, squinting into the sun. “A different world, a different … everything.” Her mind was itching with questions, and she turned to Stonker, looking for answers. “We were only in the tunnel for a few minutes. How did it get us so far?”
“Because the Impossible Places aren’t all lined up neatly together, except at the Meridian,” he said. “Most of them are scattered all over the place.”
“‘Threaded all throughout reality,’” she remembered. “What’s the Meridian?”
“A long story,” he said, waving the question away. “Now, because they’re so spread out, there’s a lot of empty space between them. Not the sort with stars and planets in it, but negative space where nothing really exists. It’s just void: cold, dark, and endless. People used to cross it in ships in the old days, but it’s a dangerous journey, and it takes an age. That’s why some clever people once p
ut their heads together and invented the tunnels.”
“You mean they’re wormholes!” she said. “Linking one part of space with another.”
“They’re shortcuts between the Impossible Places, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “They skip most of the negative space, and a lot of them intersect with one another, so they connect to lots of different Places at the same time. It’s why most people get about by rail nowadays.” He pointed out across the water, and she saw the glimmer of several other tracks winding between the distant islands.
“But this is fantastic,” she said as the lightning flash of understanding hit her. “It means everything about Einstein’s theory of relativity is true! Space isn’t flat, it’s curved, and you can cut straight from one part of the curve to another! That’s … wow.” The enormity of it left her speechless.
“It’s not really curved, so much as lumpy,” said Stonker. “But I take your point.” He drew himself up short and pushed his chest out. “But we’re not here for the view. If you’re going to be a member of this crew, you’d better get to the H. E. C. pretty sharpish.”
“What’s the H. E. C.?”
“That rusty old bucket between the Belle and the sorting car. The Postmaster needs you safely inside it before we can make our delivery. So come along. Chop-chop!”
“But how do I get there?”
“Over the tender,” he said, ushering her back into the cab with a sweep of his arm.
“What? You can’t be serious.”
“Fear not, it’s hard to slip on the bananas.”
“What bananas?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Just be sure not to eat any.”
Ursel had opened the back door of the cab, giving Suzy a clear view of the tender behind them. A series of shallow handholds was set into the ironwork.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because you’ll explode,” said Stonker, giving her a pat on the back. “Now, up you go.”
Suzy took a moment to dry her hands on her bathrobe before nervously trying her weight on the first few handholds. She had trouble squeezing her slippers into the spaces but was otherwise able to pull herself up quite easily. After just a few seconds, she had reached the lip of the tender. Sure enough, a hill of bananas rose above her. She had been expecting coal. “Where do I go from here?”
“Straight over the top,” said Stonker. “There’s another ladder on the other side. Climb down that and cross the footplate to the H. E. C. You’ll see a door ahead of you. You can’t miss it.”
“Right.” Suzy took a few steadying breaths. “Wish me luck.”
“I don’t believe in the stuff,” said Stonker. “But I will say, try not to fall off.”
“Thanks,” Suzy said. “I think.” And with one final breath, she hauled herself up and over.
Walking on whole bunches of bananas was a strange sensation, she soon learned. On the one hand, they really did provide good traction, as Stonker had promised. Their thick skins were easy to get a purchase on, and her slippers, though wet, didn’t slip at all. On the other hand, the bunches kept shifting beneath her weight, and she was forced to work her way forward in an awkward half crouch, helping herself up the pile with her hands. To her alarm, the bananas fizzed when they made contact with her skin, and crackles of blue energy danced between them and her fingertips. It didn’t hurt, but it did set her scalp tingling.
“Trains that run on bananas instead of coal,” she said to herself. “How does that work?”
“That’s easy,” came a small voice from her pocket. “They’re fusion bananas.”
Suzy looked down in surprise. She had been so focused on the climb that she had almost forgotten about the snow globe. “What are fusion bananas?” she said.
“They’re a fuel source,” said the frog. “A bit old-fashioned, though. People don’t use them much nowadays because they’re so unstable.”
Suzy froze as more energy crackled around her fingers. “How unstable, exactly?”
The frog seemed to mull this over for a few seconds. “They really only start to go critical once their peels are opened.”
The sparks subsided, and Suzy let out a breath. “Stonker sent us up here, so it can’t be too dangerous. Right?”
“Right,” said the frog. “But you know what troll health and safety rules are like.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” said the frog.
“Thank you so much,” she said through gritted teeth. “You know, you still haven’t told me who you are.”
“Do you really want me to explain right now?”
“Yes, I do.” When, after a few seconds, the frog had not replied, she paused her climb and addressed the bulge in her pocket directly. “I’m still waiting.”
“All right. Fine. I’m Frederick.”
“Frederick who?”
“Prince Frederick,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Of the Western Fenlands. Who did you think?”
Suzy snatched the snow globe out of her pocket and stared at the frog in amazement. “You’re a prince?”
“Obviously,” he said. “And just because I’m not old enough to be king yet doesn’t mean you can talk to me like I’m some commoner.”
Suzy laughed. “I’m so terribly sorry … Your Majesty?”
“It’s Your Royal Highness, actually, but it’s a start. And what’s your name? Or should I just call you postie?”
“I’m Suzy Smith,” she said. “From Earth. So why are you a frog? And what does Lady Crepuscula want with you?”
“Do you really want to talk about it here?” he said. Suzy looked around at the pile of bananas and the sea streaking past.
“All right,” she said grudgingly. “But as soon as we get the chance, I want the whole story. Okay?”
“Fine,” said Frederick, although he didn’t sound happy about it.
She slipped him back into her pocket and turned her attention to getting safely over the mound of bananas. When she was ready, she sprang, wanting to get over quickly, but the wind hit her from behind, lifting her bathrobe and filling it like a sail. She tipped forward in an uncontrolled somersault, and rolled down the opposite bank of the pile with a cry of surprise.
“Help!” shouted Frederick, but there was nothing she could do. The world was a pinwheel of blue sky and yellow bananas, swapping ends around her in a dizzying cycle until she landed on her backside, with her hair in her face and her feet braced against the rear edge of the tender.
“Are you all right?” she gasped.
“I think so,” said Frederick. “I can’t see through all this glitter.”
Suzy pulled her hair out of her eyes. The bananas were behind her, the strange metal tube of the H. E. C. was in front of her, and as she watched, a connecting door in its front opened and Wilmot poked his head out.
“Right on time,” he said. “Come in.”
* * *
Suzy scrambled down the ladder to the footplate. It was just a short hop across the gap between the tender and the H. E. C., but Wilmot extended a hand to help her anyway.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, closing the door behind her.
“Fine, I think.” She looked around. If the H. E. C. looked a bit like an old tanker from the outside, the inside looked more like the belly of some mechanical whale, braced by wrought-iron ribs. Two large circular hatches were set into the ceiling, with another, larger one in a side wall. The far end of the carriage was taken up with machinery that looked like it might have come from a Victorian mill—flywheels and pistons and dials and springs were all pressed together in a combination that might have been a pump, or maybe some sort of generator. A swivel chair and a complex control panel were mounted in front of it.
The area of the carriage where she and Wilmot stood was full of clothing racks, from which hung what looked like suits of armor. Closer inspection revealed that some of them were just that—dented steel plate, rusty chain mail, a
nd heavy visors, clearly designed with the long ears and nose of a troll in mind.
Other suits were more unusual, however. There was what looked like a space suit, made of padded silver fabric, complete with heavy boots and a reflective domed helmet. Suzy wasn’t encouraged to see a number of strips of tape covering what appeared to be burn marks in several places on the suit.
“Welcome to the H. E. C.,” said Wilmot. “The Hazardous Environment Carriage. We wouldn’t be able to make half our deliveries without it.”
The carriage juddered around them, and Suzy had to brace herself against a sudden deceleration. Stonker must finally be applying the brakes.
“You’re sending me into a hazardous environment?” she said.
“Normally you’d have to complete your training before we’d let you try something like this,” said Wilmot, “but you did such a good job with the Lady Crepuscula I think we’ll let you off. What do you say?”
Suzy looked out the nearest porthole as the Express finally came to a wheezing halt. The Narrows looked calm and inviting. She was about to answer, when the whole carriage gave another sharp jolt and she felt the floor drop beneath her. In a panic, she saw the waves rise past the portholes, the churning foam swallowing them inch by inch until the sky was lost to sight.
“We’re sinking!” she exclaimed.
“Actually, we’re diving,” said Wilmot. “It’s like sinking, but on purpose.” He crossed to the nearest rack and lifted one of the suits down. “You’ll be needing this.”
“A diving suit?”
He nodded. “It might be a little tight on you, but it’s top of the range. At least, it was when they made it.”
Suzy took it from him and looked it over. It was similar to the space suit, but instead of silver fabric, it looked like it had been stitched together from old tents. It had thick rubber gloves sewn onto the sleeves and heavy metal boots sewn onto the legs. The helmet was a dented sphere of bronze, with two large glass eyeholes and a long flexible canvas sock on the front for a troll nose. One end of a thick red hose was attached to a nozzle in the top of the helmet.
