“I’m not coming with you—”
“Don’t be childish. Get dressed.”
Zen went to the closet where his clothes hung. The ones he had worn to Sundarban were there, torn and scorched from the battles they had been through, but so were those he had worn on the Noon train. He put them on, wondering why Raven would have bothered to bring them back here. As if he really had been half hoping that Zen would return.
Standing on one leg to pull a boot on, he asked, “That viaduct? The one that goes south? Is that where the new gate is?”
“There’s an island there,” said Raven.
Zen followed him to the elevators. Down in the lobby, some of the hotel’s Motorik staff were waiting. They still wore the uniforms of chamber maids and bellboys, but their manner had changed: they seemed more alert than before, and they carried guns.
“Raven!” whispered an urgent, rustling voice. Zen flinched; he cringed; he couldn’t help himself. The Hive Monk collapsed off one of the stalls of the bar like a lonely drunk and came shamble-shuffling across the lobby, holding out its seething arms. “You are bound for the bright gates?”
Raven smiled a distant smile, like a man accosted by an embarrassing relative.
“Take us with you!” rustled the Hive Monk. “You promised! Take us to the Insect Lines!”
“Mmm. I think not,” said Raven. He glanced at the watching Motorik and said, “Insectocutors…”
Two former waiters pulled out devices that unfolded like parasols and pulsed with a lilac light. The Hive Monk wavered. It rustled like a reed bed. “To the bright gate!” it wheedled, and “Please! Take us with you!” But the light had been designed to lure Monk bugs, and the devices made a lovely buzzing sound as well, and filled the air with tantalizing pheromones. “No!” said the Monk, and “You promised us… !” With a soft rushing sound as a million interlocked legs uncoupled, it came apart, and the insects that had made it buzzed and scuttled toward the insectocutors and died there, crackling on meshes of electric fire.
Zen watched in pity and disgust while they popped and fizzed and burnt and tried to stop themselves from answering the call of the light and failed. He knew he should feel some sort of fellowship with them; Raven had used them and lied to them, just like he had used and lied to Zen. But the memory of the bugs in his mouth and airways was still fresh, and it was all he could do not to gag as he watched them scrabble and flutter at the insectocutors and pile up in crisp heaps beneath them.
Raven put a hand on his shoulder. “You may well experience a slight phobic reaction to insects for a while, after what you went through earlier.” He smiled kindly, as if that hadn’t been his fault. The sharp smell of roasted insects filled the lobby, and the sprinklers were starting to go off. Raven guided Zen outside, into clearer air and the sleepy green light beneath the station canopy.
More Motorik were waiting there: chefs and receptionists, boot-polish camouflage smeared across their faces, assault rifles idly trained on Nova, who stood between them with her head bowed. At the sound of footsteps she looked up. She gave a wavery smile when she saw Zen.
He smiled back, a real, helpless smile that made him feel better for the first time since he woke. What was it about Nova that made him feel as if everything was all right? Even when it very clearly wasn’t; even when armed Motorik were escorting them both onto the platform where the Damask Rose was waiting.
“You see?” said Raven. “I could have left Nova shut down, but I want you both to be there when the new gate opens. It should be quite a sight. You won’t want to miss it. Something to tell your grandchildren about. But I shall need to borrow your train, as you have broken mine. You’ll have to help me talk to it. It doesn’t like me.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Zen.
“Train,” said Raven, turning to the Damask Rose, “there is an artificial island about twelve miles south of here.”
“Not in my database,” said the Damask Rose primly.
“It is on a new spur,” said Raven. “Opened since the Dog Star Line was closed.”
“Pssscchhh,” said the Damask Rose, and kept its doors shut tight.
Raven sighed. “I’ll put this another way. Let us aboard, or I’ll shoot Nova, and then Zen, and then I’ll kill your mind, hot-wire your engine, and drive you south anyway.”
The militarized Motorik raised their guns. The clatter of safety catches being released echoed under the station canopy like applause.
“I thought you wanted us to see the new gate?” said Nova.
Raven shrugged. “We can’t always have what we want.”
“Zen?” asked the Damask Rose.
Zen walked over to the train and laid his hand on her warm hull, reassuring her that it would be all right. “Do as he asks,” he said. Most of the battle damage had healed, and a pair of battered maintenance spiders were busy retouching Flex’s paintings. No—not just retouching. Sections of the loco that Flex had never had time to decorate were now being covered with figures. Zen watched one of the spiders sketch in a smiling Motorik, soaring across a wheel-housing on wide white wings.
“Where did you learn to draw, train?” he asked.
“It just came to me,” said the Damask Rose. And he knew then that something had been salvaged after all: somewhere in the loco’s big, strange brain, Flex’s imagination was safe.
Obeying Raven’s instructions, the train reversed out of the station and left its battered carriages on a siding. Then it coupled itself to the old state cars from the Thought Fox,and returned to collect Zen, Nova, Raven, and half a dozen of the Motorik. It carried them back through the silent city to a set of points that switched it onto the new spur. Then south, gathering speed as it left the coast of Desdemor and went rushing out along that white viaduct that Zen had noticed the day that he and Nova played the ray game.
Rays had made their lairs under the viaduct’s arches. Disturbed by the train passing overhead, the big creatures emerged to flap slowly alongside at window height. They swiveled their turreted eyes to squint in at the passengers, then lost interest and veered away to attack a shoal of leaping fish. The Damask Rose ran on. The clatter of the wheels, the tracks, the same steady rhythms that Zen had been hearing all his life, but different now, lonely sounding, out here in the wide wastes of Tristesse’s ocean.
“There is an island ahead,” admitted the Damask Rose.
Zen looked out of the windows, but the viaduct ran straight as a ruled line across the sea, so whatever they were coming to lay out of sight beyond the locomotive. He did not see it until the train stopped and the carriage doors opened. Then he and Nova stepped out after Raven. The viaduct was wet with sea spray, and slippery, and there was no handrail. Zen skidded, clutching at Raven to stop himself from falling.
“Steady,” said Raven. “It would be a pity to drown just when things are getting interesting.”
Careful to keep his footing, Zen turned toward the front of the train, and there was the island, waiting.
A broad island, entirely black, except where white beaches had formed along its sharply angled sides, made from the shells of countless crabs. Around its edges stood the machines that had built it, motionless now, their long arms folded.
Between them, in the island’s center, another machine was busy. It was immense, and its shape was hard to grasp. Part cathedral, part caterpillar. A lot of biotech in there. Spines and wheels and grublike legs. Chitinous armor. Strange structures at the sternward end had piped out two shining rails, which joined seamlessly to the rails of the viaduct. Vapor plumed from vents along its sides. Up at the front, huge stag-beetle horns dipped and twitched, constructing a high archway.
“It took me twenty years to build,” said Raven. “The parts were stolen from laboratories and factories and biotech building sites all across the Network.”
“I never knew,” said Nova, wondering. “I never gu
essed, all those things I helped you steal… Why did I never ask what they were for? Why did I never come to see what was happening here?”
“Because I programmed you not to,” said Raven. “I didn’t want you to know all my secrets. The Guardians call these devices Worms, but even they know of them only from guesswork and a few fossil remains. The original Worms did their work long before Guardians were invented.”
Zen wondered how deep in the Datasea Raven had had to dive to find the plans for making such a thing. It was infinitely strange, and infinitely old, and it did not belong in any of the worlds he knew. He hung back at first, wary of leaving the comforting shelter of the Damask Rose. But Nova set off along the viaduct after Raven, and when Zen followed them he saw that there were more of the hotel Motorik on the island, standing around the Worm, looking like toys against the insane mass of it.
Carlota came to greet Raven as he stepped onto the island. “Sir,” she said, with a smart salute instead of her usual kindly smile. She was carrying one of the hotel’s ray guns. Zen, who had forgotten about the rays until then, looked quickly at the sky. All he saw were a few of Raven’s drones patrolling.
“This platform has a magnetic field, like the ones high buildings use to scare birds away,” said Raven. “That will discourage the rays. And if any do get through, Carlota and her people will protect us.” To Carlota he said, “How are things going?”
“The structure is almost complete, sir,” she replied, leading her visitors along the Worm’s side to a place where they could watch the archway taking shape. Squinting through the vapors from the gills of the strange machine, Zen tried to make out what was happening, but so many mechanical claws and pincers and tentacle-hosepipe things were busy there that he couldn’t say for sure. The Worm seemed to be shaping the arch the way children on the beach made little towers by dribbling wet sand between their fingers. The stuff dried quickly, taking on a look that was both bony and metallic.
Zen had glimpsed something like that before: the arch that spanned the rails on Burj-al-Badr.
“It’s making a K-gate,” he said.
Raven laughed. “The Worm is a K-gate, Zen. It’s hard to explain, but the Worm and the arch, the arch and the Worm, they’re all part of the same machine. The Marapur sphere holds the programs that allow it to open a passage through K-space, but it has to make the archway ready first.” He fitted an expensive-looking headset over his ear and pressed the terminal against his temple. “Since you tell me we shall soon be having Railforce visitors, I’m going to see if we can speed up the process…”
He closed his eyes. Zen looked up at the Worm, trying to see if whatever signal Raven was transmitting was having an effect. Nothing seemed to change; the huge arms just kept patiently sculpting the archway.
“Mr. Raven, sir…” said Carlota suddenly, and some note of worry in her voice made Zen glance at her. She was holding her big gun ready. Behind her he saw other Motorik hurrying across the island with guns that were bigger still: rocket launchers and heavy blasters.
Nova was staring at the sky, where the sound of the circling drones was fading, as if they had all chosen the same moment to speed away toward the north.
“Zen,” said Nova, “there is an imperial wartrain approaching.”
47
The Railforce train let out an electromagnetic belch as it slammed into Desdemor, knocking out the drones that Raven had left to watch the K-gate. They fell on either side of the track as it sped past. In the cabin, the interface of Anais Six opened its golden eyes and said, “There is no connection to the Datasea on this world. It has been disabled…”
It looked as surprised as if it had just stepped off a cliff. On every world they had passed it had opened a link to the version of itself in the local data raft, updating them, gathering information. Here on Tristesse there was nothing: no data raft, no Guardians. It looked at its blue hands. It was not used to being confined in a single body.
Malik was pleased by its discomfort. It was good for the train’s crew to see that it did not know everything.
He was careful to show no sign of doubt himself as the train screeched into Desdemor. The Motorik whom Raven had left to guard the hotel opened fire from beyond the ticket barriers, but they could not pierce its armored hide. Flights of hound missiles hunted them through the slanting shadows and destroyed them all, quite quickly.
As the echoes of the skirmish faded, Malik stepped out onto the platform. Ahead of him, armored troopers moved through the station. Behind him, cautious as a heron, the Anais Six interface unfolded itself from the doorway of the train.
“Raven is not here,” it said.
“Let’s make sure,” he told it. He sent drones and troopers hurrying across the station, into the hotel.
“He is not here,” said the interface flatly. “We have to find him. We must stop him before…”
“Before what?” asked Malik. “What is he doing that you’re so—” (He wanted to say “frightened of,” but he stopped himself. A godlike data entity could not be frightened, could it?)
The interface said, “He is planning to destroy the Network. He has come into possession of technology that will destabilize the K-gates.”
“What do you mean, ‘destroy the Network’?” asked Malik. “You mean all of it? The End of Civilization as We Know It, like something in a cheap threedie? Why would Raven want that?”
“Because I made him a god, and now he is only a man again. This will be his revenge.” The interface crouched down beside one of the defeated Motorik, a chef who had swapped his egg whisk for a rocket launcher. It studied the spilled blue soup of his brain, and its eyes flickered as it gathered faint signals from the dying circuitry.
“Raven left fifty-six minutes ago. He went south. More armed Motorik are with him, also Zen Starling and the Motorik Nova.”
Malik left a squad behind to secure the hotel, and the wartrain roared on, its reflection sliding across the mirrored curtain walls of empty hotels. The gathering speed seemed to excite the interface. It stood up, prowling up and down the cabin with its antlers scraping against the roof. “Give me control of your weapons systems,” it said, and took it without waiting for Malik’s permission. Combat drones popped from hatches on the hull and sped ahead and above as the train raced out onto the viaduct. The green sea widened on either side, and rays came hooting, barbed tails lashing at the windows. One of the drones opened fire, filling the air for a moment with shreds of ripped ray, till Malik said, “Those beasties aren’t our problem, Guardian. Best save our munitions for whatever’s waiting at the end of the line.”
“Captain Malik!” called one of the junior officers. The screens that walled the command carriage were filling with red warning symbols.
“There are drones ahead,” said the interface. “They form a defensive shield around an island at the track’s end. They are an obsolete model; I will defeat them easily.”
“They’re Raven’s,” said Malik. “Don’t underestimate them.” To his crew he shouted, “Check the firewalls! Scan for viruses!”
And they were in a battle. Malik looked at the window and saw the sky around his speeding train fill suddenly with chrysanthemums. They were yellow and red and ginger, and every blossom was the blast of a missile, and the gentle sea was painted with hot reflections and then speckled with white splashes as the wreckage of shattered drones showered down.
48
“Multiple contacts!” shouted one of Raven’s Motorik, still dressed as a chambermaid, but carrying a heavy machine gun.
Raven still stood with his eyes closed.
“Take them down,” said Carlota calmly.
Zen looked north, where sharp dark shapes screamed over the waves as if delighted to bring such noise and violence to this quiet place. Something big and burning arrived, sliding down the sky on a trail of black smoke to smash into sparks and pieces against the
side of the Worm. Just behind it came another, this one still maneuvering. Tracer bullets sprayed from it, looking as harmless as fat fireflies until they tore the Motorik chambermaid to pieces and came cracking across the island’s surface just inches from where Zen stood watching, too scared to move. Nova grabbed him and pulled him down. He lay beside her, listening to bullets thunking against wormshell, then the heavy bark of Carlota’s ray gun as she knelt and tracked the Railforce drone and fired. The drone hit the far side of the island, bounced, bounced, and vanished over the edge like a burning wheel.
Zen raised his head. Dead Motorik were strewn all around him, some in pieces, some of the pieces still moving. Raven stood unscathed, talking to his drones.
“Stay down, please, Mr. Starling,” said Carlota.
Because something terrible was coming down the track from Desdemor: a blazing wartrain, dragon-armor shining through wreaths of flame as the last of Raven’s drones poured their fire upon it. They should not have been able to harm a train—the shielding that protected trains from the energies of K-space was more than sufficient to stop their missiles—but Raven was directing the drones himself now, and he knew about the weaknesses of shielding. He looked for a hatch in the train’s hull and hammered it hard. Lost three drones in the process, but it didn’t matter because he got what he wanted: the hatch blown open, cover flapping. Then his last drone—a small one, moving faster than the Railforce machines that swerved to cut it off—swung in low and dropped a single charge inside before the scrambling maintenance spiders slammed the cover shut.
And a moment after that the fuel that drove the wartrain’s reactors decided that it didn’t like being cooped up in containment cylinders anymore, and burst out to join the fun, shrugging off big, spinning chunks of semi-molten locomotive.
*
All Malik knew of this was the sudden dying of all the screens, the sudden turning of the air outside into fire. And an abrupt weightlessness, first the ceiling slamming into him, then a seat, then the floor, slashes of light and shadow, fans of white water crashing past the windows as the wartrain cartwheeled over the viaduct’s edge into the sea.