07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (34 page)

Shamish was still lethargic, but forced himself to alertness. "I protest! That car is clearly for hauling animals! Are you suggesting that we are animals to be treated as cargo?"

The little officer was ready for him. "No. I am
suggesting
that, first and foremost, you will not be able to fit in any seats in the passenger car, and we are not in a position to modify it for your onetime requirements, which are, you might recall, a courtesy we extended to your government although we had no profit in doing so save exhibiting our goodwill. Also, your short notice means that all of the passenger seats are taken by our people, who travel only when their duties require it. Your consulate said nothing about reimbursing us for a special train and extra crew. This is the best we can do. Take it, or leave it and we will take you back to the Eastern Lift and you can return to where you came from. And I would suggest you do not take much time in deciding this or arguing any further, since the train will leave in"—he looked at the big digital clock which displayed figures that looked more like animal scratching—"two minutes and twenty seconds regardless."

Shamish knew they had him. "Very well, we will board, but your government will get a strong protest when I return!"

"You've already made it and are so recorded," the officer noted, gesturing at one of the ubiquitous cameras.

With that, the Pyron vice-consul walked into the freight car, and she and O'Leary had no choice but to follow.

Guards came up, slid the door shut, and they heard an ominous
clunk
as it closed completely. After a moment two small emergency lights went on, one on each end of the car, allowing minimal sight for her and just enough light for them, but also showing that there were no windows or peepholes. A small compressor whined someplace overhead, and they could feel some air circulation, so they wouldn't suffocate, but otherwise they were as much in prison as if in a fortified jail.

Some sort of livestock had been transported in the car; it smelled gamey, although it had been as cleaned out as these sort of cars ever were. There was also a soft flooring covered with artificial grass, which gave Jaysu something of a foothold.

O'Leary went to the door and checked it. There was a panel with a series of lights set into the door, a master emergency open switch, but without the code it was impossible to use.

The two small lights blinked, as did the panel, and they started to move. It was so sudden that Jaysu barely had time to dig into the artificial turf and grab onto a reinforcing rod running along the length of the car for stability. The two Pyrons were bowled over by the motion, but landed softly, in serpentine fashion.

The train wasted no time at all once under way. They could feel the acceleration, and, if anything, it increased as it must have cleared the freight yards in the city.

It took her a while to compensate for it, and she didn't think the two others ever would.

O'Leary flared his hood menacingly in frustration and anger at the treatment, but he got control back quickly. He was an old pro, and losing your temper when you had no way at all to change a situation profited nobody.

Instead the large serpentine head looked around, as if surveying every square millimeter of their prison. "At least we're not alone as we travel," he commented sourly.

The other two turned to see what he was looking at, and sure enough, there was a thin, pipelike camera next to the light at the far end. Almost as one they looked to the nearer end and the other light and, sure enough, there was another. Together, they had to cover the entire car.

"I wonder if the passengers are looking at the freaks on screens?" O'Leary mused.

"I doubt it," Shamish responded. "It's probably the men in the hidden security office in the engine. They wouldn't trust ordinary folks."

"What kind of insanity rules this place?" Jaysu almost wailed. "I mean, I think I have to pass some water. Where do I do it in this thing, and without being watched and recorded?"

"I'm afraid you don't have any privacy," Shamish replied. "And as for the where of it, I'd say the far corner of the car is about as much of a toilet as we're going to get. Cheer up. If they are taking us where we want to go, it will only be a few hours, maybe less at the speed this thing is moving. And somebody, most likely one or more of
them,
is going to have to clean up any mess."

It was impossible to tell how much time was passing as they rolled along, but if they were going almost anywhere within the hex, they certainly were not about to spend a long time cooped up, not at the evident speed the train was making.

"You don't have a watch?" O'Leary asked Shamish, a bit surprised.

"I did, but the security agent at the Zadar docks took it. You mean
you
don't have one?"

"I carried one of those self-winding things that supposedly works anywhere, but I lost it someplace weeks ago. Doesn't much matter, unless we stop, of course."

Jaysu looked over at them. "You think they might just leave us here? After all we've come through?"

"Well, probably not," Shamish admitted. "I mean, my consulate knows I'm making this trip, and I'm expected back within a certain period. Still, they can trump up anything they want around here and stall for ages. They know as well as anybody that nobody's going to declare war over one missing vice-consul. No, this is the risk we decided we had to take to cross Alkazar. We're in their hands, and nobody else can help us or reach us. Still, I'm not too worried. They could have taken us or polished us off in a lot of places, and they are well-known for not showing foreigners who have to come up here any more of their dear inner homeland than they possibly can. You can see why just from the glimpse we had of it. They've raped it. Little grows there now, they are unlikely to have sufficient food stock to feed that kind of population, and they have to import almost anything in that area. In the end, they need us and the goodwill and trade we provide more than we need them. It's just closer to buy the raw materials from them than elsewhere, but if we don't ship them everything from fodder for their feed animals to often the animals themselves, well, it wouldn't take long."

She had been in this now long enough to begin thinking on a wider scale. "But does that not make them vulnerable to pressure far beyond what it should? You would not have to make war on such a place; a simple blockade would do it, would it not?"

"Easier said than done, a blockade," Shamish told her. "Still, it wouldn't take a lot of disruption of trade to cause real rumbles here, it's true. It's another reason why I think we're going where we want to go. Chalidang can shake them, but Pyron is much, much closer. They were leaning more toward the Chalidang Alliance, until Ochoa anyway, because they're kind of soulmates of those squid. Winning that battle has tipped things back our way. My sense is that they're playing a balancing game, ready to tip to whoever seems likely to win. If they take us through, then they do something for them, and when a winner emerges, they pop up and say they were with you all along."

She shook her head in wonder. "All this cynicism, dishonesty, double dealing. And for what? To preserve what we saw of places like
this?
It makes no sense!"

"That's right," O'Leary agreed. "It makes no sense. It doesn't make any greater sense in the rest of the galaxy, or maybe in the rest of the universe, for that matter. It's the way things work. It's why folks like you have respect and the jobs you do, really. People are always looking for sense, and religion provides both sense and a feeling of comfort."

"But you do not believe in the divine." She said it as a statement, not a question.

"I have seen too much. Like I said down below, I believe in evil, in the opposite of your 'divine,' so to speak. I've seen it everywhere. I've not seen much of the good side, though."

"You must have had a sad upbringing yourself," she said.

He sighed. "My parents were both god-fearing sorts, but even though I was raised in my father's faith, they were quite different in their religious backgrounds. So different, in fact, that they were killed by the followers of one side for intermarrying and seeming to be happy and successful in spite of it. They were ordered to take sides. But they were
both
sides, you see, and they had settled their own religious war in the best of ways. So they were killed."

"How horrible! How old were you when this happened?"

"Old enough to track down the ringleaders and dispatch them the way they had my parents. And then I left my home and never returned, cursing it forever, and I finished my schooling on a world that had few of my kind there, and then I became a cop. It was only after that that I really saw what true evil could be. Spare me the prayers and the sermons—I had enough of nuns and priests in my youth. If there's salvation, I'm too old for it. But there might still be a measure of justice. In a sense, I've pursued some very evil people all the way to this world. Two of us have, in fact, the other far more twisted inside than me. But if we can get them, we'll get them."

Shocked at what he said, she did not continue the conversation, yet she couldn't help but reflect how little difference there was, deep down, between the policeman and the coldblooded criminals he hunted, almost as if you could have found him on the other side with just one slight added twist of fate. Was it, perhaps, the same for his quarry? Was the evil he fought as fanatic? Was he, in effect, hunting his darker self?

It was too weighty a question for these circumstances, but precisely the kind of moral questions she found most fascinating in study and meditation.

"We're slowing down," Shamish commented, and the other two immediately felt this as well.

"A scheduled stop, perhaps?" O'Leary wondered. "Or have we arrived at our destination, whatever that is?"

"It better be the freight yards at Borol," Shamish replied. "If it isn't, then we are betrayed."

The train glided to a smooth stop, barely jerking the car at all.

"Magnetic levitation train," Shamish told them. "No friction. When you stop, you just turn off the power and the thing's a brick."

The car was solid enough that outside sounds didn't penetrate, so they had no way of knowing just who or what might be out there. It made them all nervous, and Jaysu closed her eyes and tried to project her senses outside and around the car now that it was stopped.

"Lots of people running about, apparently all Alkazarians," she said. "No—wait. Not all. There are—
others
out there. At least three, maybe more. They are in back of us, concerned with another car."

She suddenly had both their absolute attention.

"You can sense that?" O'Leary asked, amazed.

"I can
see
it, but the vision is very different," she responded. "I cannot, for example, tell you anything physically about them, only that they are not natives and they are quite agitated, in some great hurry. They are, I believe, offloading some very large crates from one of the boxcars."

"At least they can get the door unlocked," Shamish mumbled.

"They're done with their heavy lifting. There are five of them, or so it seems. The natives are ignoring them completely. Now they are talking among themselves. I cannot hear at this distance, nor would the translations come through anyway, so I have no idea what they are saying, only that it seems they are splitting into two groups. Three of them are going off with whatever goods they unloaded. Two more are— I believe they are headed this way! They are cold, businesslike but cold, and a bit nervous. One stops a native, says something, perhaps passes something to it, and the natives are now all walking away from us. I do not like this."

O'Leary looked over at Shamish. "I think our Alkazarians just took sides." He looked around. "Any chance of smashing those lights out?"

"Maybe, but what good does that do us? They control the exit, remember, and these little bastards refused to let us have any weapons."

"You wish the lights to be out?" she asked them.

"Well, it would help when they open that door to have it dark in here. Dark and quiet," O'Leary told her. "That way they can't be positive we're here, not without taking a chance."

She looked up at the far light and it went out. Her head whipped around, birdlike, and the other light went out.

"Well I'll be . . ." Har Shamish breathed.

"You are full of surprises, aren't you?" O'Leary added.

Even to myself, she thought, surprised. Until that moment she had no idea she could do that, either.

"Can you break the bomb if they toss one in here?" Shamish asked her. "And maybe their weapons as well?"

"I will not permit their weapons to fire. Beyond that I can do nothing. I can act only in defense."

"That should be enough," hissed Genghis O'Leary. "To the side with the door. Make sure you can't be seen by the light from outside when they open it!"

There was a series of rapid clicks across from them, which helped her orient where the door was and move as instructed.

It was just in time. The door opened and slid back, and light flooded into the center of the car, but revealed nothing.

The pair outside stood there waiting a few moments, as if unsure what to do. Then one said, through a translator, "All right. Very clever, very impressive. Now you will either come out or we will close the door and scramble the combination. We can have this car put on a siding for the next six months if need be."

Liars, she thought, but didn't say it. Even without her empathic senses, sheer logic said they were issuing empty threats. If they could have done that, they would have, and not subjected themselves to any risk or potential international incident. It would just be an "unfortunate accident." That also implied that not all the Alkazarians here were corrupt, only a few officials.

They waited a short while longer, then one of them said, "Okay, close it back up."

At that point Jaysu decided this wasn't a game worth playing. Thankful for the light from outside, she walked over and actually framed her form in the car doorway.