Railhead (9 page)

Next day, the Noon train called at Burj-al-Badr and Tu’Va. There were speeches by the Emperor, and declarations of loyalty from local senators and Stationmasters, some of whom joined the train for the rest of the journey to Sundarban.

On Burj-al-Badr, that desert world, the K-gates were not buried deep in tunnels, but stood naked in the open air. From one of the Noon train’s observation domes, Zen saw the ancient archway, which spanned the tracks ahead, like the fossilized wishbone of some immense, metallic bird. A curtain of energy rippled like heat haze under the curve of it, and into this haze the locos and forward carriages were vanishing. The passengers at the front of the train were already looking out at Tu’Va, hundreds of light years away…

On Tu’Va there was an outing to see the Slow River Falls, where a famous cataract of liquid glass dropped over towering cliffs. Zen stayed on the train, hoping to find Threnody and remind her of her promise to show him the collection. Only after the flyers had left for Slow River did he find out that Threnody had gone with them.

He mooched up and down the train anyway, while it wound its way through the Tu’Va uplands toward the rendezvous point where the sightseers would rejoin it. He found the carriage where the collection was housed, but it was locked, and Nova did not think it would be wise to draw attention to himself by asking for it to be opened. He went on down the train instead, and wound up staring at the fish in an aquarium carriage and making small talk with a few of the other passengers (“Very fine trilobites. My auntie breeds pterodactyls at home on Golden Junction. Oh, me? I’m just riding the rails…”).

*

That evening, when the flyers had returned and the train was powering its way toward the next K-gate, a Motorik in Noon livery brought an invitation to Zen’s door. He was invited to dinner in the main dining car.

“What’s this?” he asked Nova, when the Moto had gone. “Isn’t that where the Emperor eats? Why do they want me there?”

Nova, speaking through his headset, said,
“It’s a very grand dining car. Half the family dines there. I expect your new friend Threnody put you on the guest list. She fancies you.”

“No she doesn’t.”

“Zen and Threnody, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”

“She’s just using me to make Kobi jealous.”

“Well, I bet she fancies you too. I would, if I were human.”

Would she?Of course not; she was teasing—still, for a moment, he felt oddly pleased.

He made himself think about Threnody instead. He hadn’t seen her all that day, and was starting to fear that she had forgotten her promise about showing him the collection. Dinner might be daunting, but it would give him a chance to mention it again without looking too eager.

Only when he reached the main dining car, he found that he was not to be seated next to Threnody. She was up at the head of the long, long table, with Kobi and the Emperor and her sister, Priya. She didn’t even glance at Zen when he took his seat at the unfashionable end, among cousins by marriage and provincial officials. His neighbor was an elderly woman: gray dress, gray hair, and a faint, watchful smile that made Zen wary. He looked at the carriage walls instead of her. They were windowless, and in their depths hung branching, abstract shapes like frozen lightning.

“They are called Lichtenburg Figures,” the lady explained. “Made by firing streams of high energy particles through acetate.”

“I know,” Zen lied, remembering that he was supposed to know things like that. “I’ve just never seen any so
big
before.”

“One gets so used to being surrounded by these beautiful things,” she said. “It’s good to have guests; they help us to see them again.”

She took a turn looking at the walls, while Zen looked at her. She had a lean, lined face. Her eyes were not completely gray. There were flecks of gold in them, and they were as watchful as a hawk’s.

“You are the young man from Golden Junction, aren’t you?” she said.

Zen nodded, and tried to recall her name. Nova came to his rescue, whispering through his headset.
“She is Lady Sufra Noon, sister of the Emperor.”
He remembered her now. She had been in the aquarium that afternoon; she had not been one of the people he talked to, but he had noticed her standing a little apart, listening in.

For a moment he felt completely certain that she had overheard him make some mistake. He was sure that she knew he was an imposter and had invited him to the Emperor’s table in order to expose him.

“My dear…” she put her thin brown hand on Zen’s wrist, “you are the image of my little brother Tarsim, when he was young.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but it turned out that he didn’t need to: she just carried on talking.

“He rode the rails with our Corporate Marines, during the
Spiral Line Rebellion
. He died at the Battle of Galaghast.”

Zen started to realize that he was safe. She was just a kind old lady. She had probably seen him looking lonely there in the aquarium and decided he would like to listen to her stories about the family. He made sympathetic noises, as if he cared about her long-dead brother, and looked down at the plate that a Motorik servant had just placed in front of him. It was made from some old-fashioned form of ceramic and he wasn’t sure if the stuff on it was food or decoration. He copied Lady Sufra as she chose a delicate pair of silver tongs from the array of implements beside her plate and started eating.

Lady Sufra smiled. “It was a long time ago. And it is not such a tragedy to die young. At the time I thought it was, but now I understand that the real tragedy is growing old. My brother gave his life for a noble cause. If the Spiral Line Rebels had won, they would have put one of the Prell family on the throne. The last thing the Network needs is one of those degenerate Prells as Emperor.”

Zen’s plate was whisked away. In its place, the Motorik set a seashell filled with pale, clear liquid. Some sort of soup? Zen selected a shallow spoon.

“Of course,” said Lady Sufra, “I know that on some of the branch line worlds there is discontent. The
Human Unity
movement is gathering strength. People talk about getting rid of Emperors altogether. About defying the Guardians.”

“I don’t know much about politics,” said Zen.

Sufra Noon watched him with her gold-dappled eyes. “But you must have some opinion, Tallis Noon. I hope you are not afraid to voice it? What is the feeling on Golden Junction?”

Zen hadn’t rehearsed an answer to that.

“I think ordinary people don’t much care who rules them,” he said, improvising, giving her Zen Starling’s opinion in Tallis Noon’s voice. “Whether it’s a Noon or a Prell or some Human Unity president, it won’t make any difference in the streets of Cleave or the Ambersai Bazar. People just want to be left alone.”

Lady Sufra looked into his eyes for a moment. Zen started to fear that he’d offended her. Then she laughed. “That is a most refreshing observation,” she said. “Everyone else at this table would have told the old lady what they thought she wanted to hear. The Noons of Golden Junction must be a tougher breed. By the way, what do you think of the soup?”

Zen looked down at the shell. He had almost emptied it. “It doesn’t taste of much.”

She leaned closer, whispering, “That’s because it is a finger bowl, Tallis. You are meant to wash your fingers in it before the next course arrives.”

He blushed, horrified at his mistake, but she just smiled. It seemed she had taken a liking to him. “So tell me,” she said, “what is it that you do, out there on Golden Junction?”

“I have been studying,” he said. “Art.”

“Ah! And have you seen our collection yet?”

“Not yet. But it’s one of the reasons why I came here.”

“Then I shall show you round myself. Tomorrow.”

*

“Well,”
said Nova, her voice whispering in his head as Zen lay on his bed that night, lulled by the rhythm of the Noon train’s wheels.
“You made a big impression on Lady Sufra. Smooth work.”

“I remind her of her dead brother. That’s all.”

“Well, her
live
brother is the Emperor of the Network,”
said Nova
, “and she’ll show you the collection herself. So that’s useful.”

Zen lay in the dark and listened to the thrum of the engines, the steady beat of the wheels. The Noon train had passed through several K-gates, and he was not sure which world he was on. Part of him wanted to be up in the observation galleries, watching new sights go by. But he was tired after his performance, and he needed to rest, to keep his wits sharp for tomorrow. So he lay in the dark, and the headset gripped his scalp with a gentle pressure. After the strangeness of that long day it felt good to lie there alone and listen to Nova’s familiar voice. He was glad he had a friend aboard, someone to whom he didn’t have to lie. Maybe that was why Raven had sent her, he thought, to keep him sane.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Right at the back somewhere, between the mobile garages and the luggage vans,”
she said. She sent pictures to his headset. The meek silhouettes of other Motorik stood motionless in half light all around her. She said,
“The Noon Motorik are useless, even worse than that lot at the Terminal Hotel. No conversation at all. They like doing as they’re told, and powering themselves down when they come off duty.”

“So you’re all on your own back there?” asked Zen, feeling sorry for her.

“I’m all right. I’ve been listening to the locos talking. The
Wildfire
and the
Time of Gifts
. They’re wonderful! They’re so old and so… They tease each other, and sing, and talk about old times, other worlds they’ve seen. I don’t think they know I’m listening. It’s sweet. People say they’re twins, but they aren’t. They’re lovers. They come from different engine shops. They met on the Network. And they love each other so much
…
”

How can machines be in love?
wondered Zen, but he was too embarrassed to ask. He said, “You should think yourself lucky you don’t have to talk to the Motos. If I have to make polite conversation with many more of these Noons, I’m going to trip up. One of them will have met the real Tallis, or know something about him that I don’t…”

“You’re doing fine,”
said Nova.
“I’m proud of you. Really.”

Zen smiled. He knew that she was smiling too, back there among the sleeping Motorik. It felt intimate, this talk that they were having. As if she were lying there next to him. Which was a nice thought, he suddenly found. A memory of her came into his mind, laughing in the green-gold light of Desdemor while a wind from the Sea of Sadness blew her hair across her face. Yes, it was a very nice thought. He followed it a little way and then stopped, ashamed.

“Are you all right?”

“I need to get some sleep.”

“Well, good night, Zen Starling,”
she said, just before he took off the headset.

He paused. “My name is Tallis Noon.”

“Just testing.”

“Good night, Nova.”

“Good night.”

He slept late next morning. It didn’t matter. The Noons slept later still. Only Threnody seemed to be awake when he made his way along swaying corridors to the breakfast car. She was sitting alone at a table by a window. Her hair was still wet from a swim or a shower, and calligraphy scrolled down her screen-fabric dress, the words of some song or poem he’d never heard. He felt her watching him as he moved along the buffet, lifting this dish cover and that, wondering what Tallis Noon would eat for breakfast.

“Good morning,” she called, when he turned her way. “Are you going to join me?”

“What would Kobi think about that?”

“It’s nothing to do with Kobi who I choose to have breakfast with. He’s asleep anyway. He drank too much at dinner.”

Zen went and sat down at her table. Outside the window, an airless, black-and-white landscape was passing, dotted here and there with far-off lighted domes that looked like snow globes, each with a little city inside.

“Are you enjoying our train?” asked Threnody.

“Very much,” said Zen. She had completely forgotten promising to show him the collection, he realized. Still, that didn’t matter now. He asked, “How were the Slow River Falls yesterday?”

“Slow. Like a waterfall made of molasses, but more boring.” She ate a mouthful of her breakfast, then said suddenly, “I expect you’re wondering what I see in Kobi?”

Zen shrugged.

“He’s an oaf. And he calls me Thren.” She laughed, and impersonated Kobi’s braying voice: “Thren! Thren!” Shook her head, looked at Zen under her blue fringe. “You must be wondering why I’d get engaged to him.”

“None of my business,” said Zen.

“Yes it is. You’re a Noon, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Well, you must care about the future of our family, then. In another few thousand years all our industrial worlds may be mined out, and since the Guardians can’t make any more K-gates, the only way to get to new worlds will be through space. Kobi’s family have been spacers for generations, mining asteroids and minor planets in the Sundarban system. An alliance with them will be very good for our family. And very good for me. I shall become the head of a whole new family branch, the Chen-Tulsi-Noons. We shall have our own seat in the senate.”

“Sounds good,” said Zen, though he didn’t think it sounded worth marrying Kobi for. He’d always thought rich people were able to do whatever they liked, but Threnody was a lot like him in some ways, playing a role so she could get what she wanted. Only somewhere in her there was a remnant of the girl she’d been, who still daydreamed, now and then, of letting her family mind its own business and taking off along exotic branch lines with a raggle-taggle railhead like her cousin Tallis.

When he stood up to leave the carriage, he saw that Kobi had already arrived, and was glowering at him across the buffet. He waved, and dodged quickly past him to the exit, halfway to the next carriage before Kobi reached Threnody’s table and said too loudly, “What was that Golden Junction monkey doing here, Thren?”

*

In the carriage that housed the Noon collection, the air was cool and still. As Zen stepped into the first big compartment, the walls lit up with fields of luminous color that shifted slowly up and down the spectrum. Lady Sufra was waiting there for him. Her eyes shone with amusement as he made his bow.

“So, Tallis. What do you think of our Karanaths?”

Nova whispered in his headset.
“Quinta Karanath, a light-painter from the Orion Dynasty…”

“They’re wonderful,” he said, blinking round at the light-blobs while he parroted the words Nova fed him. “They’re early works, aren’t they? She must have—”

“He!”

“He must have created these when he was still influenced by the hard-light abstractionists…”

Sufra Noon seemed pleased. Zen sensed that he had passed a test. She said, “I’ve always loved these early pieces best. The use of color is so very daring.”

Zen looked at the pictures. He started to say something, thought better of it, then said it anyway. “At the freight yards on Cleave there are these taggers who run out across the tracks to spray their designs on the trains. That’s what I call daring.”

“I was forgetting what an original thinker you are, Tallis.”

“The trains wear the best tags with pride, and carry them off through the K-gates to be seen on other worlds. There’s one tagger called Flex. The locos love her stuff.”

“Flex? What an extraordinary name.” He had amused her again. “I shall be sure to look out for her work, next time I am at the station.”

Zen wondered what Flex would paint on the
Wildfire
and the
Time of Gifts
if she was given the chance. Ivy and climbing roses, he imagined. Make the old locos look even older, give them the coats of moss and ferns that they ought to be clad in, if passage through the K-gates did not burn such things away. He smiled. How Flex would love this train…

Lady Sufra was beckoning him through into another compartment, where the holoportraits of a hundred long-dead Noons turned to watch them. “Is there anything in particular that you wished to see?”

“I think there are some pots—”

“Ceramics,”
whispered Nova.

“I mean ceramics.”

“Oh yes, my great grandmother, the Lady Rishi, was a keen collector. Most of the objects here were hers. Vases from Chiba, and some little animal sculptures called Wade’s Whimsies, which are said to have come from Old Earth.”

“Isn’t there something called the Pyxis?” asked Zen.

One of Lady Sufra’s eyebrows rose and curled. “So you have heard of
that
ugly old thing? They gave you a most extensive education, out there on Golden Junction.”

They went left and right through a narrow maze walled with shelves of Chiban vases until they came to a compartment devoted to family history. There were medals and ceremonial weapons, a battle suit. Holographs hung in the air like faded flags: scenes from history, famous stations. Zen barely noticed them, because in one corner of the room a cone of light shone down from somewhere in the ceiling, illuminating a low plinth. On the plinth stood the Pyxis, looking even smaller and less impressive than it had in Raven’s images.

His hand had reached for it before he knew what he was doing. His fingers hit a curved surface. What he had taken for a cone of light was actually a cone of diamondglass.

“Oh, we can’t let people touch it!” said Lady Sufra. “It’s a family heirloom.”

Zen couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting to touch the Pyxis. It didn’t look as valuable or as pretty as the rest of the collection. It was almost defiantly dull.

“What is it, exactly?” he asked.

“No one is certain,” said Lady Sufra. “The name means ‘box,’ but it doesn’t open; it’s solid. Art from some forgotten era, I suppose. My great grandmother obviously thought that it was important: she left strict instructions that it should never be removed from the train. Perhaps it comes all the way from Old Earth, like the Whimsies, though they are much more interesting—let me show you…”

She set a hand against the small of Zen’s back, starting to steer him toward another exhibit, but as he turned away from the Pyxis, he caught sight of one of the holograms. It was a historical view, like a glimpse through a window into some summery world where flags were fluttering and feather-trees cast their shadows over people dressed in the fashions of centuries ago, gathered beside a huge golden train. Uniforms and feathered hats; camera drones splashed with the decals of forgotten media outlets. Among the crowds moved strange un-human figures, which might have been avatars of the Guardians or just actors dressed up. And there, watching it all with a glass in one hand and an expression of faint mockery that Zen knew well, was someone he recognized.

The same gray eyes, the same thin smile.

Raven.

He looked at the caption, a block of glowing letters to the left of the picture. “The Opening of the New Platforms at Marapur, Raildate 33-6-2702.” Nearly three centuries ago.

So that couldn’t be Raven, it was just someone who looked like Raven…

But not just a bit like Raven.
Exactly
like him. Zen enlarged that section of the image. Everything about that gaunt face was just as he remembered it, right down to the half-contemptuous half smile, eyes narrowed against the day, as if uncomfortable in sunlight.

“A big moment for our family,” said Lady Sufra, turning back to see what Zen was looking at. “Look, there is Lady Rishi herself, standing beside the interface of Shiguri.”

“It’s a reconstruction?” he asked.

“Oh no. All the holos here are direct historical records, made at the time. It looks as though they had a nice day for it, doesn’t it?”

Zen’s mind did complicated little dances, trying to find other explanations and stumbling always over the obvious one—that Raven had survived somehow, un-aging, for centuries.

“Who—?” he started to say, but Lady Sufra had already seen what he was staring at.

“That is Dhravid Raven. He was a curious character. An artist, an industrialist. I remember seeing him at the imperial palace on Grand Central, when I was a little girl.”

“But he must have been very old by then?”

“No, he looked exactly as he does in that holo. He was not human, you see. Oh, his
body
was human enough, but
he
was something else, something more.”

“A Guardian?”

“More than a human, but less than a Guardian. His mind existed in the Datasea, but he downloaded copies of himself into these cloned bodies, just as the Guardians used to. Of course, Guardians wore many different bodies, but Raven always looked the same. Easier, I suppose—like only wearing black.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was destroyed,” said Lady Sufra. “About twenty years ago. He offended the Guardians in some way, so they deleted him. My father, Ambit the Fourteenth, was Emperor at the time, and the Guardians made him send troops to scour the Network for Raven’s clones and kill them all. Good riddance, I thought. He was a bad piece of work by all accounts. Now come, there are some family portraits on the upper deck that I am sure will interest you…”

He followed her up the stairs at the end of the carriage, but the portraits didn’t interest him. Nor did the Whimsies, or the netsuke, or the 4-D collages. He had to look at each of them and pretend to be interested and make the intelligent-sounding comments Nova told him to, and all the time the only things that he could think of were Raven and the Pyxis.