Killswitch, page 8
I felt a surge of excitement, or maybe fear. Now was the dangerous part. We were going to take the Ghost Train.
A couple of Civics stepped in beside us as Rin led me to an unobtrusive door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” There was a click as we approached. The door opened and we found ourselves in a room lined with lockers and furnished with a battered lunch table and some ancient vending machines. Clearly this was the employee break room. Rin unhesitatingly led us to one row of lockers near the rear. She tapped something and the whole thing slid aside, like in an old Immersion mystery. We entered what appeared to be some sort of service tunnel. It was lit by a single dim bulb. The air was warm and smelled of dampness and something metallic. A steel staircase headed down into gloom. We trooped down. I clung to the handrail so as not to take a tumble.
We continued down three more flights of stairs that became progressively grimier. These were lit by cheap, industrial strip lights. At last, we reached level ground. I gaped in surprise.
We were in a subterranean train station, really just a concrete apron fronting a single track that stretched into darkness in either direction. The ceiling curved above us and was lit by glowing eternalamps that cast a sort of weak daylight.
The Ghost Train was here. I gaped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a genuine Narwhal! The long, tapered spiral shape hovered above the track. I felt rather than heard the pulsing of energy in the rails. The train cast a pale glow, like that given off by some deep-sea fish.
“Wow,” I said.
Narwhals were the fastest trains ever invented. Their twisted spiral shape both split the air, reducing friction, and charged the train, producing ions that were part of its propulsion system. The grooves in the spirals had a faint, glowing purple tinge that made my eyes hurt. I’d read that in the old days, some people had gotten seriously sick on these trains, either from the enormous speed or the disorienting gravitational effects of its propulsion system. I hoped I wasn’t one of them.
“Where did you get this?” I said, my jaw dropping. “And how do you manage to power it without Unity knowing?”
Rin looked smug. “We’ve got a guardian angel,” she said. “Let’s board.”
We climbed aboard, my body tingling slightly as we passed the propulsion energy field, then the door shield crackled shut. A metal door slid over it. The single compartment was round and high. A half-dozen airplane seats were bolted to the floor. Behind the seats was a large bare space that I assumed was for cargo because there were tie-downs and anchor points on the floor, ceiling and walls. The walls seemed to be made of some sort of bronze-colored mesh. Behind it was the outside skin of the train, which was a bluish-pink. The color was uncomfortably fleshy, like living tissue.
My companions didn’t seem to notice.
“Have a seat,” Rin said, dropping into one herself.
The seats were old and worn but comfortable. There was no harness or seatbelt. I didn’t see any button for a stasis field, either.
“Where’s the restraint system?” I asked.
“Don’t need one,” Rin said. “These things are smooth. You’ll feel the acceleration but once we’re at speed there’s no sense of motion. However, I should warn you, you might feel a little queasy. Some people do.”
“I’ve heard of people being sick,” I said. “Of course, nobody I know has actually ridden one.”
“They actually solved that problem,” she said. “They got sick because the rotating energy fields affected them. But then they came up with motion-cancelling Immersions.”
“Which we don’t have,” Trino chimed in. “Because we can’t Immerse. That might give us away. Some people use pills. But we don’t have any.” He gave me an almost malicious grin.
Then the train started. A pulsing beat of sound erupted, whining up quickly into supersonic. Beyond the mesh, the walls and ceiling began to move. The outside skin of the Narwhal was rotating. Within moments, the walls and ceiling were spinning so quickly that they became nothing more than a semi-solid purplish blur. It made my eyes hurt. Probably, I thought, the train once had some sort of paneling to hide the movement, but that was long gone. I closed my eyes, which helped, but that left me free to concentrate on something else; the train’s propulsion system gave off a sort of throbbing pressure that felt like ghostly fingers drumming on my chest and stomach. It became more rapid as we sped up until it felt like someone was playing boogie-woogie piano on my torso. Worse, my teeth vibrated.
I repressed a groan. Long ago, this train probably had a military function. Maybe that explained its lack of amenities.
After a while, the tapping moved from my stomach into my temples.
“How long is this trip?” I asked.
“About ninety minutes,” Rin replied. “We’ll be there before you know it.” She opened a pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out what looked like a food bar. It was bilious green. She broke it in half and offered some to me.
“Fish paste?” she asked.
I turned away to hide my expression.
THE TRAIN DECELERATED smoothly as we reached Albuquerque and I felt relief as the pulsing in my head vanished. I stood up a little shakily and took a couple of deep breaths. Rin and Trino also stood.
“Here we are,” Rin said. “Home sweet home.”
I followed them through the door. It was colder than the Sacramento station. A man wearing a smudged jumpsuit was waiting at the platform. He greeted us and then reached out a hand.
“The mask, please,” he said.
I pulled off the mask. The thin material clung silkily to my skin for an instant, then I was holding the disembodied face in my hands. I handed it over.
“Thanks,” he said, quickly donned it, shook my hand and climbed aboard the train.
I turned to see Rin looking at me. She gave me an impish grin.
“I’d forgotten what you looked like under there,” she said. “Not bad.”
“You too,” I blurted, then instantly regretted it. “I mean, considering.”
“Considering what?” Her grin vanished.
“I mean, um, the long trip, you know... and... everything?” I stammered, wishing I could screw myself into the platform.
But Rin had already turned away. I could have kicked myself, if my foot didn’t already hurt from the rock in my boot. I looked over at Trino. He’d seen the exchange. He had a curious expression on his face. For a moment, I felt like I was under a microscope. Trino caught my glance and his expression swiftly changed. He gave me a warm smile. He stepped over and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Aren’t you glad she’s on our side?” he said. He nodded at Rin’s back. “She’ll catch up. Come on, let’s get some chow in you. You probably want to clean up and change clothes, too.” He gave my rumpled jumpsuit a sardonic glance. “Then we’ll take a little walk. Get some desert dust under your boots.”
“We’re going somewhere else?” I asked.
“No, it’s a figure of speech. What I mean is, I can show you around our little community here.” He turned serious. “Show you what a Free City is like. Oh, and you can take that rock out of your shoe.”
We climbed a series of stairs and entered a tunnel that slanted upward. At the end of it was a set of ancient double doors with long metal bars across their centers. I recalled that these were safety devices that allowed people to push open the doors. I’d read that they were called panic bars. They’d been created after some devastating fire where people had found themselves locked inside a theater. I reflected that every advancement in human history— technological, legal, philosophical— was sparked by a catastrophe. Every step of our progress had a price someone had paid in blood.
The doors opened onto a long, vaulted corridor made of glass. Through the glass, I saw a dusty concrete city with tired bushes and scraps of empty, weed-grown fields. We stepped onto a wide moving walkway. On either side of us, inside the corridor, ran carefully tended landscaping: an idealized desert. The clean, groomed sand was dotted with a variety of plants. There were barrel cactuses, saguaros with their spiny green arms raised to the sky, shaggy Joshua trees and spiky yuccas, all clipped and arranged with an almost Japanese garden precision. Mechanical lizards in jewel tones darted through the vegetation. At the end of the walkway hung a large glowing sign that announced: ENTERING FREE ZONE. LIMITED IMMERSION. Beyond it, the pathway forked. The sign over the left branch read: CITY CENTER. A sign to the right said: FREEJACK.
We took the left branch.
“Are we going to town?” I asked.
“Sure,” Trino said. “Why not?”
“Well, isn’t that a little risky? I mean, we’re an underground group, right?” I was really more worried about my own safety. I was, after all, Public Enemy Number One.
“Free Zone,” Trino said dismissively. “The Unity designated this whole city as a non-surveillance point. Every continent has one. I could walk around with a T-shirt reading: ‘Realism Forever!’ on it and nothing would happen to me.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I said. “You could plot anything here. It seems like a security hole for the system.”
“Hah,” Trino said, with an edge of bitterness. “Just the opposite. They put us in a sandbox. Contain us. That’s why FreeJack is here. Same reasoning. Containment. We can do what we want here. But take a few steps outside—” he pointed out the windows “—and the surveillance shields disappear. They’ll scan every breath you take. They’ll count every molecule you inhale. And you’d best believe that they track our every movement coming and going from this place.” Trino smiled. “Luckily, we have our little secrets, like the Narwhal.”
I found it a little hard to believe that Unity wasn’t watching us, but I had to take Trino’s word for it. After all, the group had gone through a lot of effort to get me here in secret. They might not be the masterminds they thought they were, but they weren’t stupid enough to parade their hard-won prize in front of the world. For now, I had to believe I was safe— at least from the general public, if not from the Realists.
As if reading my thoughts, Trino nodded and said, “Don’t worry. You’re a hero here.”
CHAPTER NINE
We entered the main station, which looked like all the other stations I’d seen in the past few days but larger. Trino walked me briskly to the main doors leading outside. We pushed through and I found myself gaping. Beyond the station entrance was a large plaza full of noise and color. There were trees and small paved roads, like a park. On the other side of the plaza was an immense area crowded with people, striped tents topped with fluttering pennants and rows of colorful stalls. The people wore all sorts of costumes, as if they had stepped out of a hundred historical Immersions. Some were dancing to crackly audio or even to real musicians. Above the area floated dozens of immense balloons from which hung gondolas full of people. Many balloons were in the form of sea creatures: whales, dolphins, even a jellyfish with huge tendrils hanging down and stirring in the breeze. I smelled frying fish, the bittersweet tang of grilled martonia fungus and—
I took a deep breath. “Is that caramel corn?” I asked.
Trino took my elbow and tried to lead me to the right, away from the plaza. “We have to move along,” he said. “There are people you have to meet.”
I shook him off. “Wait,” I said. “What is all that?” I pointed to the area beyond the plaza.
Trino looked annoyed.
“That’s the Circo Eterno,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Permanent circus,” he said. “Draws in the tourists.”
I looked at him. “Tourists?”
“Of course,” he said. “We all have to make a living, and without Immersion it’s harder to make ends meet.”
“I’d like to see it.”
For a moment, Trino looked as if he might drag me away by main force. But then he seemed to recover himself. He smiled and shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s play tourist.”
We walked down the station steps and strolled through the plaza to the Circo Eterno. It felt like plunging into an alien sea. We strolled down a midway packed with people. The ground was covered with sawdust and patchy, foot-worn durograss. Bunting was strung between food and game stalls. We passed kiddy rides, including a large rotating device filled with painted, artificial horses with rolling eyes and bared teeth. Shrieking children sat astride them, holding onto brass poles. Music poured from an old-fashioned calliope, or at least, a modern sound system camouflaged as an old-time instrument. I saw other medieval rides: some sort of boat on a giant swing that flung people forward and back; a curving metal track on which mag-lev cars raced, accompanied by a clunk-clattering sound that I assumed was a recording of some long-ago roller coaster, and even a gigantic, ruby-colored circle that I remembered from old books was a Ferris wheel. The crowd swirled around us in gauzy chaos. I was jostled and squeezed by the perfumed and colorful stream of people, although the tourists could be picked put by their drab attire and glazed eyes as they captured memories for later Immersion replay.
Once, I gave a start as I came face to face with myself. My doppelgänger wore a mask of me and carried a pink backpack like mine. Then I saw another, who nodded at me, and I finally noticed there were dozens of me. Some people stopped to compliment me on the realism of my mask.
I gaped, open-mouthed, until Trino said, “Another reason you won’t be recognized here. They like to wear the faces of famous people.”
“Or infamous ones,” I said.
I also saw a panoply of pre-Collapse generals in gaudy braided uniforms, several long-dead revolutionaries, a couple of disturbingly realistic Iron Wolves and even a dozen or so Pallburgs, who looked so natural that I shuddered. Thankfully, the replicas lacked the bleached skin and blue lips of the lifeless face I’d seen in the Columbarium.
In between the crowds, I caught a flash of fluorescent green. Someone was wearing a Civic jumpsuit like mine. I recognized her profile. It was Rin. She was standing near a food stall. She was holding some kind of rainbow-colored confection and talking to a tall, good-looking man. He looked to be a few years older than me. As Trino and I approached, the man bent close to Rin and said something in her ear. She erupted in peels of laughter. Her hand reached out and brushed his arm.
I don’t know why but at that instant I hated that guy. I looked him up and down. I didn’t like his hair. I didn’t even like his shoes.
Rin and the man spotted us. He straightened up, took a small step back from Rin and suddenly seemed more formal and distant.
I liked him better.
“Mavo,” Rin said. “This is my friend, Brian.”
“Hi,” I grunted.
He smiled. I tried not to notice that he was half a head taller than me and his teeth were Immersion perfect.
I turned to Rin. “What are you eating?”
“This? It’s a snow cone. Try it.” She held out the paper cone. “You lick it,” she said.
With embarrassment, I stuck out my tongue and gingerly touched it.
“No,” Rin said. “Lick it. You’re not a snake.” Brian laughed. I could feel my ears turning crimson. I bent forward and took a long lick, then started back in surprise.
“It’s sweet,” I said. “And cold.”
“Shaved ice with syrup,” Rin said. “It has a lot of sugar.”
“Real sugar?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “No synth here. You can have real food. That’s part of the attraction. Tastes better than an Immersion, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does,” I said, though I honestly had no idea.
“That’s why I love this place,” Rin said. “It’s all done without Immersion. Hand-crafted. It shows you what people can do without depending on artificial knowledge.” She held out the cone. “Here, you can have the rest. Go slowly, though. You’re not used to it.”
I tried to disguise my eagerness as I took the cone. It was cold under my fingers. The cup was also a little sticky, unlike Immersion food, which wasn’t messy. Oddly, I didn’t mind. It was different but interesting. It added something to the experience. Maybe, I thought, the Realists were on to something. I took a bite. My teeth crunched on sweet ice. It was delicious, until all of a sudden something like a freezing spike shot up through my mouth and bored into my head.
“Ahhh!” I cried. “My skull has a toothache!”
Rin wasn’t sympathetic. In fact, she laughed. So did everyone else.
“It’s called a brain freeze,” Rin said. “Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth and it’ll go away.”
I did and was amazed that the sensation diminished. I shook my head and handed back the cone.
“Does all your food have a learning curve?” I asked.
“Wait ‘til you taste a taco with habañero sauce.”
“I hope that won’t give me a brain freeze.”
Brian chuckled. I briefly wondered how he’d look with a snow cone buried in his ear. To conceal my thoughts, I turned to Rin.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said quickly. “I thought you’d be doing, you know, important stuff.”
“Why, did you think we’re all grim-faced zealots, that we spend all our time plotting dark deeds in dank caves? We like to have fun.” She shook her head. “We’re people, Mavo. We want sunlight and freedom. That’s the promise of the cause. Besides, you know what Emma Goldman said: ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” She laughed. I really liked that laugh.
Trino spoke up. “Yes,” he said. “But there’s a time to play and a time to work.”
“He’s right,” Brian said. “We should go.”
Just then, I heard a high-pitched screech, like a furious hawk who’d missed its kill. I recognized the sound of a steam whistle.
Rin stopped short, her eyes wide.
“Wait,” Rin said. She turned to me. “There’s one more thing you have to see.”
Trino seemed about to protest but Brian broke in.
“Lead the way,” he told Rin, extending a hand.
