explanation for being kept alive.
The fleet might pay for the return of a warrior, though Xoxarle’s family were officially barred from doing so, and anyway
were not rich. He
could not decide whether he wanted to live, and perhaps redeem the shame of being caught and paid for by
future exploits, or to do all he could
either to escape or to die. Action appealed to him most; it was the warriors’ creed.
When in doubt, do.
The old human got up from the pallet and walked around. He came close enough to Xoxarle to be able to inspect the wires, but
gave them
only a perfunctory glance. Xoxarle looked at the laser gun the human carried. His great hands, tied together behind
his back, opened and
closed slowly, without him thinking about it.
Wubslin came to the control deck in the nose of the train. He took his helmet off and put it on the console. He made sure
it wasn’t touching any
controls, just covering a few small unlit panels. He stood in the middle of the deck, looking round
with wide, fascinated eyes.
The train hummed under his feet. Dials and meters, screens and panels indicated the train’s readiness. He cast his eyes over
the controls,
set in front of two huge seats which faced over the front console toward the armored glass which formed part
of the train’s steeply sloping nose.
The tunnel in front was dark, only a few small lights burning on its side walls.
Fifty meters in front, a complex assembly of points led the tracks into two tunnels. One route went dead ahead, where Wubslin
could see the
rear of the train in front; the other tunnel curved, avoiding the repair and maintenance cavern and giving a
through route to the next station.
Wubslin touched the glass, stretching his arm out over the control console to feel the cold, smooth surface. He grinned to
himself. Glass: not
a viewscreen. He preferred that. The designers had had holographic screens and superconductors and magnetic
levitation—they had used all
of them in the transit tubes—but for their main work they had not been ashamed to stick to the
apparently cruder but more damage-tolerant
technology. So the train had armored glass, and it ran on metal tracks. Wubslin
rubbed his hands together slowly and gazed round the many
instruments and controls.
“Nice," he breathed. He wondered if he could work out which controls opened the locked doors in the reactor car.
Quayanorl reached the control deck.
It was undamaged. From floor level, the deck was metal seat stems, overhanging control panels and bright ceiling lights. He
hauled himself
over the floor, racked with pain, muttering to himself, trying to remember why he had come all this way.
He rested his face on the cold floor of the deck. The train hummed at him, vibrating beneath his face. It was still alive;
it was damaged and
like him it would never get any better, but it was still alive. He had intended to do something, he knew
that, but it was all slipping away from him
now. He wanted to cry with the frustration of it all, but it was as though he
had no energy left even for tears.
What was it.
he asked himself (while the train hummed).
I was… I was… what.
Unaha-Closp looked through the reactor car. Much of it was inaccessible at first, but the drone found a way into it eventually,
through a cable
run.
It wandered about the long carriage, noting how the system worked; the dropped absorber baffles preventing the pile from heating
up, the
wasted uranium shielding designed to protect the fragile humanoids’ bodies, the heat-exchange pipes which took the
reactor’s heat to the
batteries of small boilers where steam turned generators to produce the power which turned the train’s
wheels. All very crude, Unaha-Closp
thought. Complicated and crude at the same time. So much to go wrong, even with all their
safety systems.
At least, if it and the humans did have to move around in these archaic nuclear-steam-electric locomotives, they would be
using the power
from the main system. The drone found itself agreeing with the Changer; the Idirans must have been mad to
try to get all this ancient junk
working.
“They
slept
in those things." Yalson looked at the suspended nets. Horza, Balveda and she stood at the end door of a large cavern which
had
been a dormitory for the long-dead people who had worked in the Command System. Balveda tested one of the nets. They were
like open
hammocks, strung between sets of poles which hung from the ceiling. Perhaps a hundred of them filled the room, like
fishing nets hung out to
dry.
“They must have found them comfortable, I guess," Horza said. He looked round. There was nowhere the Mind could have hidden.
“Let’s
go," he said. “Balveda, come on."
Balveda left one of the net-beds swinging gently, and wondered if there were any working baths or showers in the place.
He reached up to the console. He pulled with all his strength and got his head onto the seat. He used his neck muscles as
well as his aching,
feeble arm to lever himself up. He pushed round and swiveled his torso. He gasped as one of his legs caught
on the underside of the seat and
he almost fell back. At last, though, he was in the seat.
He looked out over the massed controls, through the armored glass and into the broad tunnel beyond the train’s sloped nose;
lights edged
the black walls; steel rails snaked glittering into the distance.
Quayanorl gazed into that still and silent space and experienced a small, grim feeling of victory; he had just remembered
why he’d crawled
there.
“Is that it." Yalson said. They were in the control room, where the station complex’s own functions were monitored. Horza
had turned on a few
screens, checking figures, and now sat at a console, using the station’s remote-control cameras to take
a final look at the corridors and rooms,
the tunnels and shafts and caverns. Balveda was perched on another huge seat, swinging
her legs, looking like a child in an adult’s chair.
“That’s it," Horza said. “The station checks out; unless it’s on one of the trains, the Mind isn’t here." He switched to cameras
in the other
stations, flicking through in ascending order. He paused at station five, looking down from the cavern roof at
the bodies of the four medjel and
the wreckage of the Mind’s crude gun carrier, then tried the roof camera in station six….
They haven’t found me yet. I can’t hear them properly. All I can hear is their tiny footsteps. I know they’re here, but I
can’t tell what they’re
doing. Am I fooling them. I detected a mass sensor, but its signal vanished. There is another. They
have it here with them but it can’t be
working properly; maybe fooled as I hoped, the train saving me. How ironic.
They may have captured an Idiran. I heard another rhythm in their step. All walking, or some with AG. How did they get in
here. Could
they be the Changers from the surface.
I would give half my memory capacity for another remote drone. I’m hidden but I’m trapped. I can’t see and I can’t hear properly.
All I can
do is feel. I hate it. I wish I knew what is going on.