Railhead (8 page)

He had arrived at a good moment. Later he would wonder if Raven had arranged that somehow, but probably it was just luck. Most of the imperial family and their guests were at the picnic, on one of those wooded mountaintops that rose from the fog-sea. Zen had a chance to see the central carriages of the Noon train empty, except for the Motorik staff and the silent cleaning machines, which didn’t count. Threnody’s voice echoed as she led him from one carriage to another: carriages walled with gold mosaic, with livewood bark, with horn. Carriages of glass, like rolling greenhouses, filled with moss and small trees, where pretty dragonflies darted and hovered.

None of these carriages looked much like any train Zen had seen before. They were no wider than a usual train—just twenty feet wall-to-wall—but they had been decorated by the best designers on the Network, and the best designers on the Network knew how to make a twenty-foot-wide carriage look much bigger. Only the rows of windows told you that you were not in a luxurious house, and even the windows were mostly curtained, or screened with blinds. Some of the carriages were open-plan, with chairs and tables dotted across an expanse of carpeted or livewood floor. In others, you walked along corridors, past the doors of smaller, private rooms. Floors of marble, ceilings of biotech tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, stairways spiraling to bedrooms and observation domes on upper decks.

Threnody led him up one of the stairways, to the cabin that was to be his. “It’s one of the smaller guest compartments, I’m afraid. I hope you like it. The bedroom is in there… Bathroom over here… Put the bags down, Nova, and report to the Motorik section, carriage fifty-nine.”

Nova did as she was told. As she walked away along the train, her voice came whispering into Zen’s head again.
“Keep your headset on. If you need me, all you have to do is whistle. You know how to do that, don’t you?”

Threnody waited while he unpacked a few of his things. Then they returned to the lounge carriages, the garden carriages. He tried to tell Threnody about his travels—he had prepared a whole store of anecdotes—but she preferred to talk about the family and the various friends and relatives who were traveling with them. “The Albayek-Noons from Seven Badger Mountain are on board—they’re always fun, though Ruichi is giving himself terrible airs now that he’s signed the engagement contract with the Foss boy. And Uncle Tibor was here, but he’s gone back to Grand Central…”

“So how many passengers altogether?” asked Zen.

“About nine hundred, at the moment, I think.”

That was good, he thought. With so many guests coming and going, who would worry about one extra? And they had so much stuff that they probably wouldn’t even notice when he helped himself to the Pyxis. Maybe he could grab a few things for himself while he was at it, fill his pockets with ornaments before he left, just in case Raven didn’t pay up…

“Which carriage is the art museum in?” he asked. (He already knew, because Raven had made him study 3-D maps of the whole train, but he didn’t want to
sound
like someone who had been studying 3-D maps of the whole train.)

“Oh, farther back somewhere,” said Threnody, not much interested in any work of art that she couldn’t actually wear.

“I’d like…” he said, and then—because it sounded more Noonish somehow—“I’d
love
to have a look at the collection while I’m here!”

Threnody wrinkled her nose. Even when wrinkled it looked better than most noses. She said, “It’s only old pots and holographs and stuff. I’ll show you round some time if you like.”

“No time like the present…” Zen started to say, but, just then, swift shadows came darting across the curtained windows. Expensive skycars were swooping over the viaduct, settling onto the platforms of Adeli Station like rare birds. The rest of the family had returned.

The train began to fill with them. They came aboard in groups, talking and laughing, grabbing flutes of spiced wine from Motorik waiters who appeared silently to meet them. Noon elders, splendid in their robes and turbans, discussing business and telling each other the latest scandals. Officers of the CoMa, the family’s
Corporate Marines
, strutting in their ornate uniforms. Provincial Stationmasters and their families, traveling on the Noon train as the Emperor’s guests, as awed as Zen by all this splendor. Young Noons in hunting gear, boisterous as puppies. Zen wondered what it must be like to be one of them and have nothing to worry about except potting expensive bioteched animals in the family reserves. It seemed to suit them. They seemed happier and better looking than any of the kids he knew in Cleave.

He moved through the suddenly busy carriages with Threnody, while she introduced him to this relative and that. This was her aunt, Lady Sufra Noon. This was her Uncle Gaeta, her cousin Neef. This was her half sister, Priya, proud and nervous as a high-bred racehorse, wearing a dress made of light, the straps of her biotech sandals twining up her brown legs like silver ivy. This proud little kid in his miniature CoMa uniform was her half brother, Prem. Oh, and here was their father, Mahalaxmi XXIII, Chief Executive of the Noon Family, Emperor of the Great Network, Master of the Thousand Gates, known to his adoring subjects as the Father of the Rails and to the less adoring ones as the Fat Controller.

A strangely unreal moment. The jowly and intelligent face, which had solemnly smiled at Zen from a thousand grubby banknotes, smiled solemnly now at him in real life, close enough that he could smell the imperial sweat beneath the expensive imperial perfume. Electric-blue hummingbirds no larger than Zen’s thumb hovered around the Emperor on blurred wings, settling sometimes to perch like ornaments on the epaulets of his tunic. They studied Zen so intently with their black eyes that he realized they were not birds at all, but camouflaged security drones. Surely they would see straight through his disguise? Surely Mahalaxmi would guess that this hand he was shaking belonged to a Thunder City urchin?

But no; he just nodded, welcoming Zen as he must have welcomed a hundred other distant relations that week. “How are things at Golden Junction, Tallis? You must tell me all about it,” he said, and moved on in his cloud of blue birds without waiting for a reply. Zen didn’t interest him, and Zen was glad of that. He wasn’t there to be interesting. He wanted to be just another face in the crowd.

But one of the guests was interested in him. This was a lad of Zen’s own age, tall and chunky, with a mane of hennaed hair, and the violet eyes that were fashionable that season. He didn’t like Zen at all. “Who’s your new friend, Threnody?” he asked, and squared up to Zen like he was getting ready for a fight while she explained. Zen wondered what he could have done to offend him. Had he met the real Tallis Noon before, as Threnody had? Had Tallis pulled his stupid hair when they were children? Zen could see how tempting that might be.

Then Nova, in his head, said,
“He’s Kobi Chen-Tulsi. The Chen-Tulsis run mining operations on a couple of Sundarban’s moons. Kobi is scheduled to be married to Threnody Noon next autumn.”

That explained the way Kobi was glaring at him, thought Zen. Threnody and this rich, pretty boy of hers had had an argument. That’s why she hadn’t joined the hunting party, and that’s why she had come to meet him at the station. She had just been using Zen to make Kobi jealous.

It seemed to be working.

“Golden Junction?” sneered Kobi. (Threnody had just told him where cousin Tallis came from, and he was making the most of it.) “I didn’t know the Noons still had assets way out there. There’s nothing there, is there?”

Zen just smiled like he wanted to be friends and said, “Not much. Not compared with this train. It’s amazing! Did the hunt go well? Threnody tells me you’re an excellent shot.”

Kobi looked puzzled for a moment. Angrily puzzled, as if he thought Zen might be mocking him. He was a simple creature, thought Zen. Just a big dog, snarling to defend his territory. But he had shown Zen one useful thing, at least. The Noons of Golden Junction were seen by this lot as hopeless hicks. Country cousins, clinging onto the outermost twigs of the family tree. Nobody on the Noon train would think it strange if Tallis seemed nervous amid all this splendor.

He moved aside to make sure that Threnody and Kobi had a chance to talk, and hopefully sort out whatever it was that they had fought about. Lifting the blind on the nearest window, he saw that the station had vanished. The train had started moving so gently that he had not even noticed it set off. Now it was snaking its way through mountains, above valleys of flickering fog.

“Are you all right?”
asked Nova, in his head.

“I’m fine,” he lied, knowing she was probably monitoring his heart rate and things and knew exactly how nervous he had been. “Security is pretty laid-back, considering he’s the Emperor and everything.”

“Don’t you believe it,”
said Nova.
“That gnat bite on your wrist?”

Zen hadn’t even noticed that he had been scratching it. “What about it?”

“That wasn’t a gnat. A micro-drone took a sample of your blood the moment we came aboard, so the train could check you had the Noon security tags written into your DNA.”

“And what if I hadn’t?”

“It would have—well, you did, so why worry about it? Just relax. Enjoy yourself. I’m enjoying myself. I love this train.”

Zen smiled. He loved it too. What railhead wouldn’t? Above the chatter of the Noons and their guests he caught a sound, a high double note, a duet that echoed from the mountainsides as the train went by. The
Wildfire
and the
Time of Gifts
were filling the fog-lit night with trainsong.

On the walls of a factory in Cleave’s industrial zone, a forest was growing. Trees spread their pale limbs across the old ceramic. Orchids glowed like small suns through the city’s drizzling rain.

Flex didn’t mind the drizzle. The paintsticks that she used were meant for decorating the hulls of trains. If their pigment could survive passing through a K-gate, it was not going to come to any harm in the thin rain of Cleave. She selected a bright blue from the bag at her feet and started sketching in a flight of butterflies, imagining the way their bright wings would wink with color in the crisscross shadows of the trees. The woman who ran this factory missed her home on far-off and jungly Jihana, and she had hired Flex to brighten the place up.

“I wish I could draw,” said Myka Starling, standing behind the artist in her rain cape and wide-brimmed, dripping hat, watching the forest take shape.

“You can,” said Flex. “Everybody can, really. Try! Help me. Draw a tree, over there…”

Myka shook her head. “My brain doesn’t work like yours, Flex. My hands don’t.”

Myka was the one who had recommended Flex for this job, and she had taken to coming every night after work to watch the mural taking shape. It was calming, unlike home, where Ma had been more mad and anxious than ever since Zen ran off.

So she stood watching, while the paintsticks hissed, and Flex fetched fresh ones from her pockets, red and gold, sapphire blue. A strange bird unfurled its wings across the wall, opened its long beak to sing; you could almost hear it. Myka was puzzled by her friend’s skills, and proud of her. She couldn’t even imagine what went on in Flex’s head, so different from her own. She was so entranced that it took her a few minutes to notice that she was no longer the only one watching.

A man stood in the shifting mist behind her. A small and wiry man, and an offworlder by the look of him, because he had no rain hat and the drizzle gathered on his bald head and ran down his face, down into the collar of his shabby blue coat.

Myka didn’t know who he was, but she knew he was trouble. She turned to face him, squaring her big shoulders. There was enough of her to make two of him, and he seemed to recognize the danger he was in. A big black gun appeared in his hand like a conjuring trick.

“Railforce,” he said. “Hello, Myka. How’s that brother of yours?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” said Myka, watching the gun.

Flex, turning from her forest, said, “Myka, he’s one of them. That night in the rail yards, when Zen disappeared, he’s one of the Bluebodies who came off the armored train that broke down in the tunnel.”

“Malik,” said the man, lowering the gun a little, looking at Flex. He was wearing some kind of military headset with small emerald lights on it that flickered. Flex, who didn’t like people looking at her, seemed to shrink inside her baggy clothes.

“You must be the one who got Zen onto the tracks that night,” said Malik. “You’re a good painter. I see your stuff everywhere.”

“Don’t say anything,” Myka warned her. Flex had secrets, a past that only Myka knew about, and Myka meant to keep it that way. She said to Malik, “Flex doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

Malik smiled. “Don’t worry. I don’t care about people painting on trains. I’m just trying to find your brother.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he’s in danger. He’s been keeping bad company.”

Myka snorted. “That sounds like Zen, all right.”

“You know where he is?”

“No.”

“You’ve had no messages from him?”

“No.”

“Did he ever mention somebody called Raven?”

“No.”

“Does he have any special skills?”

Myka shrugged. “Stealing things. Sleeping. Getting on my nerves. He’s all right. He’s not a bad kid. He likes riding the trains. He’s just a railhead, really.”

“Ever see him talking to a Moto? One that looks like a girl?”

“In a red coat? It came to our place the night he left, asking questions. Like you. That’s when Zen took off. He climbed out the window rather than talk to it. We don’t like Motos in Cleave.”

“Of course,” said Malik. “You had those riots, didn’t you? Smashed up all the wire dollies you could catch. I expect anyone who talked to a Moto round here would be in for a world of trouble with their coworkers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Myka, stepping toward him.

He raised the gun again, just a little, to remind her that he had it. He smiled half a smile. “Do you have any pictures of your brother?” he asked. “Can’t find his image in the Datasea.”

“Our ma always told us not to put anything about our-selves there. She said the Guardians or somebody would use it to trace us.”

“Wise advice, that,” said Malik. “Maybe I need to have a word with your ma.”

“You leave her alone. She can’t help you.”

“But you can.”

Myka scowled. After a moment the images started pinging from her headset to his: images of Zen, looking younger and happier than he had that night on Malik’s train. He nodded his thanks, and pinged back his contact address. “If you hear from him, you’ll send me word.”

He was turning away, fading back into the rain and the dying light.

“You won’t catch him, Bluebody!” shouted Myka. “He’s sharp, that brother of mine.”

Malik didn’t look at her, but his voice came back to her as he strode away. “You’d better hope I’m sharper, then. For his sake.”

*

Malik rode the next train out of Cleave. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but it didn’t seem to wise to stay, in case the local newsfeeds worked out he was the same old fool whose dead train had blocked the K-gate the other day. Anyway, traveling soothed him: the movement and the passing views. Like Zen Starling, he was just a railhead really.

He flicked again through the pictures Myka had given him. It was his first good look at Zen. The kid was too young to have been part of Raven’s crew for long. Probably just being used, the way Raven always used people, like pieces in a game. When Malik had talked to him he had been dirty, frightened, it had been dark. In the photos the boy was smiling and relaxed, or caught mid-movement, turning, speaking. He didn’t look much like his sister, Malik noticed. But he looked like
somebody
.

He blinked the file of photos shut and opened a window to the local data raft. The train was on Tusk by then; the logos and jingles of Tuskani newsfeeds filled his head. He swiped them aside until he found what he was looking for: a report from Grand Central, where Senator Tibor Noon, the Emperor’s twin brother, was making a speech. Tibor looked as sulky as ever about being born three minutes after Mahalaxmi and not inheriting the throne himself. His chubby face was still handsome, the strong features and good bone structure of the Noon family as distinctive as corporate branding…

“Oh Guardians!” said Malik suddenly. (The woman in the seat across from him smiled, thinking he must have just hit a hard level in an online game.)

He swung through the data raft, calling up other images: of Emperor Mahalaxmi himself, of his children and his ancestors. He compared them to his images of Zen Starling.

Then he shut down the headset, took it off, and sat there watching the worlds go by, and wondering.

What did Raven want with a boy who could pass for a Noon?