Railhead (24 page)

He was climbing quickly, through the shadows and the strange light of the living walls. At the top of the stairway was a small chamber. The floor might have been ivory. There was a small, round hollow in its center.

Zen took out the Pyxis. The touch of it made his hand tingle. He knew that the sphere inside would fit perfectly into that hollow, and that that was what it had been made to do. He had the dizzy feeling that everything in his life had been rushing him toward this place, this moment.

“Give it to me,” commanded the interface, coming to the top of the stairs. It stooped to enter the chamber, stood upright again when it was inside, towering above Zen. Behind it he could see Nova and Malik, out on the stairs, their faces lit by the pulsing light of the walls.

He gripped the Pyxis tight. He looked up into the golden eyes of the interface. He said, “Raven told me it would change the Network, not destroy it.”

“Raven lied,” said the interface. It came toward him, holding out its hand for the Pyxis. It circled him, putting itself between him and the hollow in the floor where the sphere wanted to go. “The Network cannot be extended. Opening a new K-gate will cause an energy feedback that will burn this world to a cinder and kill us all. The effect will spread across the Network, destabilizing all the existing gates, releasing a cascade of KH energy, destroying everything. That is what Raven wanted.”

Zen looked into its face. It was so hard to believe that it was lying, that face that had been designed for humans to worship. You were meant to kneel before a face as strange and wise as that. You were meant to bow down and kiss those blue feet. And yet there was something in him, some spiky street-thief pride that didn’t want to bow down to anyone.

“You’re just afraid,” he said. “It’s like Raven said. You’re afraid of things changing.”

“Malik,” said the interface, losing patience. “Kill him.”

“No need,” said Malik. He raised his gun but he didn’t point it at Zen. He pointed it at Nova: right at her head, like a man who knew how to kill Motorik.

The interface looked confused. “What good will that do?”

“Zen risked everything for this Moto,” said Malik. “Went back for her when he could have got clean away. They love each other.”

And Zen, who had been shying away from the L word ever since Sundarban, telling himself he wasn’t sure what he felt for Nova, knew that it was true. The Railforce man knew him better than he knew himself. He had loved Nova ever since he walked with her to the sea, that first day in Desdemor. And by some billion-to-one chance, she loved him back. It was a relief to them both to hear someone else say it. That made it real, somehow. Much more real and much more precious than some age-old alien K-gate-opening machine.

“Take it,” he said. He pressed the Pyxis into the hand of the interface and watched the blue fingers fold over it. “Let Nova go.”

“Thank you, Zen Starling,” said the interface. It considered him for a moment. “Now,” it said, “kill him, Malik.”

Malik scowled. “He’s just a kid.”

“He’s
Raven’s
kid. Kill him.”

“Zen!” shouted Nova. She snatched at Malik’s gun. Malik drove his elbow into her chest, knocking her backward down the stairs. Zen took his chance and ran toward the doorway. There was no real plan in his head. Why make plans, when all his plans went wrong? He just had some wild hope that he might get past Malik and grab Nova and run out of the Worm and back to the
Damask Rose
. But Anais caught him. It reached out one long blue arm and grabbed him by the neck. It slammed him against the wall and worked its long blue fingers around his throat and squeezed. For something so frail-looking, so ornamental, it had surprising strength.

“Kill the Moto too, Malik,” the interface said, clenching its perfect teeth with the effort of choking Zen.

He heard Malik’s gun go off, stunningly loud in that small space. Three shots, one after the other, very quick. He saw three holes appear: two in the chest of the interface, one in the middle of its blue forehead. There was an expression of astonishment in its golden eyes, and then no expression at all. It let go of Zen and fell sideways and moved its feet for a moment restlessly and was still.

Zen sank down beside it, gasping, rubbing his bruised throat, staring at Malik.

“It was lying,” Malik said. He put away his gun and came into the chamber. “I knew Raven. You don’t hunt a man all across the Network and kill him that many times without getting to know how he thinks. Raven wanted to live. That’s why he ran so far, fought so hard, hid so long. Destroy the Network, and himself with it? That’s not Raven’s style. If he planned to get this gate working, he must have been pretty certain he’d be able to escape through it.”

The Pyxis had fallen from the interface’s hand. Zen picked it up. It opened for him. The sphere inside was shining. The complicated lines that covered it glowed with white rushing light, as if it were a tiny dark planet lying there on his palm and the lines were the lighted streets of its cities. Answering lights woke on the floor and walls, bright veins leading toward the hollow where the sphere needed to be.

Zen looked at Malik, wondering if the Railforce man was going to stop him. But Malik just looked down at the dead interface and said, “They hired me to kill Raven. Never said anything about K-gates, or stopping this machine from doing whatever it’s been built to do.”

Nova said, “Even if Raven wasn’t lying, the new gate will change everything.”

“Maybe everything needs to change,” said Zen.

She came to him. She touched his cheek, and kissed him very softly on the mouth, the way she had learned from movies. Her lips were as cool and smooth as vinyl, salty with the taste of the sea.

“That’s how I feel, Zen Starling,” she said. “
That
won’t change.”

Zen took a deep breath. When he stretched out his arm toward the hollow in the floor, the sphere seemed to sense that it was nearly home. The hollow drew it like a magnet. He held it close. He was still not sure what he would do. At the last moment he stopped himself, filled with sudden doubts. Just because you have a chance to change everything, it doesn’t mean you should.

The sphere made his decision for him. It jumped from his fingers into the hollow. There was a faint crisp sound. A connection being made. Things falling into place.

Zen winced, and waited for the world to end.

It didn’t.

Just those crisp noises spreading beneath the floor, then silence.

What have I done?
he wondered. And then,
Have I done anything?

The Worm sighed. It writhed. Deep whooshing noises started happening behind the chamber walls.

Malik said, “It doesn’t need us anymore.”

Carlota came up the stairs. “I talked to your train,” she said. “It says the rays are gone.”

“Nothing moving out there to attract them,” said Nova.

The Worm felt different. There was a sense of energy building, of things gathering toward some climax. It was the way you felt when your train was approaching a K-gate.

They went down together to the hatch, which opened to let them out. Zen looked back before he stepped outside. The stairway was folding itself away, engulfing Raven’s body.

He jumped down after the others onto the ceramic surface of the island. The Worm was stirring again, its arms sketching weird shapes in the air. Nervously checking the sky for rays, they made their way past it to where the
Damask Rose
still waited on the rails. She opened her doors for them, and as they came aboard she said, “I am going to pull back a little way. Something very strange is happening.”

She reversed slowly back along the viaduct for a few miles, until she reached the place where the wreckage of the Railforce train blocked the tracks. They could barely see what was happening on the island from there, but the
Damask Rose
could. She hung a holoscreen in the air in front of her passengers, and filled it with the view from a camera on her nose.

The Worm was in motion. It had raised itself up off the ground on its strange, conical legs and was starting to lumber slowly forward, nosing through the archway it had built. Around those spines on its back there played a light that was not light, and colors that had no names. As it went, it left a trail behind it: two long lines of shining stuff, very even, very straight.

“It’s laying rails,” said Nova. “Extending the line…”

A flash of that nameless color came from somewhere at the front of the Worm, casting no glow upon the wet ceramic, lighting no reflections in the waves. From beneath the arch there came answering flashes of something that looked like light, but wasn’t, not exactly. Twists of brightness danced across the ceramic island, taking on the spindly shapes of Station Angels, waving their shining limbs and beckoning. The Worm’s stag-beetle horns seemed to grasp the light, to stretch the edges of it. The spines on its back swayed forward like grass in a gale, snagging filaments of the light and drawing them backward to cloak the Worm’s whole body. Even through the diamondglass windows of the
Damask Rose
they could hear the noise it made, that sky-filling roar.

“I am detecting KH energy,” said the
Damask Rose
. “But that machine is not traveling fast enough to pass through a K-gate…”

The Worm seemed ignorant of this. It hunched itself into the whorl of light. Energy arced between its spines. It raised its head, stood proud for a moment, thrust forward, and was gone. Where it had been, the rings of Hammurabi were reflected in the sea-wet ceramic, and the Station Angels danced, and the new rails shone dull silver, leading into that weird curtain of energy beneath the arch.

“It is a K-gate,” said Nova
.

“Where does it lead to?” asked Malik.

“Beyond all maps,” said the
Damask Rose
.

“To the far side of the galaxy,” said Zen.

“Is anything going to come through it, do you think?” asked Nova.

“The Guardians will want it quarantined, in case,” said Malik. “Railforce will be sending more trains. They’ll shut it if they can, or destroy the line or something. So if you’re going through, you’d best go quick.”

“Go through?” said Zen. “I’m not going through there! There might be no way back.”

“Never was a way back for you, Zen,” said Malik. “If you stay here, you’ll have to explain yourself to the Noons. And then you’ll have to explain yourself to the Guardians. What they’ll all do to you, I couldn’t say. But you won’t be going home again. You passed the point of no return the day you first stepped onto Raven’s train. There’s no place for you this side of that new gate. The other side—who knows? You can start again.”

“And you’d just let me go?” asked Zen.

Malik gave a slow shrug. “My mission is over. You’re not my business, Zen Starling. And I don’t think you ever meant much harm.”

The
Damask Rose
had caught the scent of that new gate, or the vibration or the harmony or whatever it was that K-gates gave off and trains adored. They could feel it trembling, straining to keep its brakes on and its wheels in this world.

Nova stood close to Zen. She said, “I’m going too.”

Malik nodded.

“You could come with us,” she said. “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what’s beyond that gate?”

Malik grinned. “I’m old, Moto. The only journey I’m going to take is the one that gets me to where there’s something to eat, and a real bed to sleep in. I’m going to start walking.”

“But the rays…” said Zen.

Carlota patted her gun. “I can accompany you back to the Terminal Hotel, sir.”

Nova said, “They don’t attack if you stay still.”

The
Damask Rose
opened her doors. Carlota stepped out onto the viaduct, looking curiously toward the K-gate. Malik hesitated for a moment before he went out after her. He glanced back at Zen.

“I used to think Raven didn’t care about anyone,” he said, “but I was wrong. I think he cared about you, Zen. I don’t know why. Maybe he found something in you that reminded him of himself, when he was young. All I know is, I’ve seen him die a lot, and that was the first time it felt like watching a human being go.”

Then he went outside to where Carlota was waiting. A last look, a wave, and they were headed northward, picking their way past splinters of the Railforce train.

*

In the carriage, Nova and Zen sat down together. The
Damask Rose
revved her engines.

A stray Monk bug bumbled against the lamps. Zen rested his head on Nova’s shoulder. She was shivering with excitement, just like a human being would. Just like he was. Outside the window, Hammurabi filled the sky.

“I’ll miss this place,” said Nova.

“There will be better places,” said Zen.

“What will you miss?” she asked.

He looked at her. He was going to miss Cleave, and Desdemor, and Summer’s Lease, and the Ambersai Bazar. He was going to miss Myka. He was going to miss Raven. He was going to miss his mother. He was going to miss the boy he’d been, the dreams he’d had. He was going to miss
everything
. But he guessed that was how everybody always felt. Everyone was losing things, leaving things behind, clinging to old memories as they rushed into the future. Everyone was a passenger on a runaway train. It was true that Zen would be going farther than most. But at least he didn’t have to go alone.

“I won’t miss anything,” he said.

Then the
Damask Rose
began to move, faster and faster, down the old rails, onto the new, and Zen took Nova’s hand as the light of Raven’s gate broke over them, and they turned to the windows and raised up their faces in the glory of far stars and alien skies and suns no human eyes had seen, until the rush and strangeness of their journey washed them clean of all the things they’d done and every role they had been made to play and they were just themselves: lovers, heroes, railheads, riding their old red train toward new lives amid the untold shining stations of the Angels.

And the
Damask Rose
raised up her siren voice, and sang.