Gods of the Greataway (29 page)

The Girl walked a little apart from the others and after a while began to lag behind. Mentor dropped back with her and, in due course, said, “He’s an unpleasant character, isn’t he? Just as well he isn’t real.”

Getting no reply from the Girl, he glanced at her. He was surprised to see the pallor of her face and the dull, dead horror in her eyes above the tear-stained cheeks. Awkwardly, he said, “Here, give me your arm. You must be tired.”

M
anuel
looked about himself in some bewilderment. Things had changed in a subtle fashion, in that way they do when you doze off for a minute without realizing it.

The passengers were exclaiming in surprise, staring out of the window as the stars flashed by. Zozula, Mentor and the Girl watched too, and something nudged the back of Manuel’s memory, some recollection of a series of events that seemed to be fading from his mind as fast as he tried to catch them.

Then Long John Silver appeared with a smile of false joviality, but as he swung his way past Manuel, the youth could see the lines of his jaw — the tenseness, the clenched teeth that turned the smile into a grimace. Silver paused at the door for a moment, then turned and faced them all, smiling still.

Then he caught sight of Zozula, who smiled back. His own smile faded as his gaze traveled to Manuel and the Girl, and finally to Mentor. “Belay there,” he said softly. “Is this a stowaway?” And he made a great lunge with leg and crutch, and stood before Mentor. “What foreign shores d’ye hail from?” he inquired.

“I …” Mentor looked at Zozula, puzzled. This was a different happentrack. Silver didn’t remember him, it seemed.

“Brothers ye be, I’ll be bound,” said Silver, his sharp glance snapping from one to the other. “And yet not brothers. Well now … How be ye fixed for psy, Mister Stowaway?” He smiled coldly. “We have a little test for newcomers, to see if they can afford the fare. D’ye see a parrot on my shoulder, eh?”

Zozula said tiredly, “He wants you to smallwish a parrot there, Mentor. Humor the fool, will you?”

“I … I
don’t know how.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Like this.” Irritably, Zozula blinked and wished.

Silver uttered a squeal of dismay.

A huge vulture sat on his shoulder, scrawny of neck and evil of eye, shuffling untidy black feathers. Silver swung at it with his crutch and it gave an ungainly hop, landing on his head. It hung its neck, peering into Silver’s face upside down. The passengers roared with laughter and Sir Charles discharged his twelve-bore with a deafening report, prompting the vulture to excrete onto Silver. The driver reached up, seized the bird by the neck and dashed it to the floor.

“Mayhap ye find that comical,” he snarled. “And mayhap I’ll show ye something more comical still.” He smiled with an effort, his face working its way toward joviality by stages. “Come with me, and ye may drive the Locomotive, shipmates. Just the four o’ ye — ‘tis a rare honor I offer ye, to be sure.”

“We’re fine where we are, thanks,” said Zozula.

“ ’Tis nothing to be afeard of. By the Powers!” Silver appealed to the passengers at large, “We have a craven shipmate here. Who’d a-thought it?”

Zozula stood. “Come on,” he said to the others. “He can’t hurt us.”

Mentor hung back. “I’m not sure …”

Irritably, Zozula jerked him to his feet, and together they followed Silver forward. Manuel and the Girl trailed behind, with some misgivings.

The Triad had seen the Locomotive’s cab before, but Mentor had not, and the sight was almost too much for him. He uttered a small cry of shock and jerked aside as the cowled fireman’s shovel swung past his face and crashed against the firebox sill, scattering coals across the roaring furnace within. Mentor stared into the flames, which seemed to draw him forward. Roaring with laughter, Silver reached for a dangling chain and dragged at it, and a banshee wail echoed through the cab like a lonely yell of terror.

Then Silver
glanced at the pressure gauge and his expression changed. “By thunder!” he shouted at the fireman. “Ye’ve gone and done it this time, ye soft-headed lubber. Cease yer shoveling, for pity’s sake, or it’ll be Davy Jones’s locker for the whole ship!”

The fireman swung back, cloak swirling, and his shovel screeched against the footplate as he scooped up another load of coal.

“Avast there!” yelled Silver. He jerked at the regulator, opening it fully, so that the beat of the exhaust quickened to a manic throbbing and the cab vibrated in sympathy. “Avast there, afore ye blow us all to Kingdom Come! The boiler can’t take any more!”

As the stoker swung toward the firebox opening, Silver let go of the regulator and seized the shaft of the shovel, and a grim struggle ensued. Sweat rolled down Silver’s broad face as he was forced slowly backward until he was brought up against the very lip of the furnace and the hot sill pressed against the back of his one leg. “Belay there,” he groaned. His gaze, darting about the cab, settled on the Triad. “I … I’ve brought some shipmates,” he gasped. “Mayhap ye’d be pleased to meet them.”

At this, the fireman let go of the shovel and Silver stumbled forward, off balance, to collapse to the footplate floor. From this position he raised a hand, summoned a smile, and shouted, “Mates! I’d like you to meet the best friend a man ever had, the best worker ever to set foot in an engine room — the fireman of the Celestial Steam Locomotive!”

The fireman stood motionless. The shovel lay on the footplate.

“We may as well play this thing through,” said Zozula tolerantly, and he stepped forward, extending a hand.

“Y’see?” said Silver. “He’s stopped work — that he has! ’Tis the only time he ever does. Likes meetin’ folk, he does.” There was huge relief on his slab face.

The fireman’s hand emerged from under his cloak. It reached steadily toward Zozula’s — pale, bony, long-fingered.

Zozula said, chuckling, “I’m very pleased to —”

“Stop!”

It was Mentor, and his voice was high with fright.

“Eh?” Zozula’s hand stopped, a centimeter from the fireman’s.

“For
God’s sake don’t shake his hand!”

“Why not? I don’t see what harm —”

And Mentor flung himself at Zozula, toppling him backward onto a heap of coal. Zozula swore, beginning to fight back. Beneath his cloak, the fireman’s skeletal shoulders shrugged, and he picked up his shovel.

“Just keep still for a moment while I explain, damn you!” panted Mentor.

“You’d better make it good.” The coal was digging into Zozula’s back and the ignominy of his position infuriated him. Again he tried to throw Mentor off, but his clone-son hung on grimly.

“Listen to me!” gasped Mentor. “He’s Death, don’t you understand? That fireman is Death himself. If you shook hands with him, that would be the end of you.”

“Death? Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a smallwish. He can’t harm real people.”

“So why are the neotenites in the Dome dying?”

“They’ve got some disease.”

“This fireman is the only disease that matters, Zozula. I heard about him the last time we were on the Train, before you arrived. That woman Tranter told me. She said people disappear when Silver introduces them to the fireman. And she was right — look! He doesn’t have a face! He’s Total Death — this is what it’s all about. He snuffs out people’s minds here in Dream Earth, so their bodies die back on Real Earth.”

The fireman paused in his shoveling and turned their way. And Zozula saw the empty cowl make a sharp movement, as though the phantom head were nodding. Suddenly he shivered. Then his fear turned to quick anger. He disengaged himself from Mentor and stood, facing a cowed Silver.

“Is this true?”

“Aye,” muttered
the driver. “ ’Tis the truth, for sure. But ‘tis the only way I can stop the devil shoveling.”

Zozula said, “Whatever you and this fireman are up to, Silver, it’s killing people on Real Earth. You’ve got yourself mixed up in something you don’t understand, and you’ve got to stop it.”

“It’ll take more’n me to stop this devil!” protested the driver. A low laugh came from beneath the fireman’s hood.

“If you don’t stop him, Silver, there will be nobody left in Dream Earth. Do you know what that will mean? No more passengers. And if there are no passengers, then there will be no Long John Silver. You’re just a smallwish, man! Can you understand that?”

“Me a smallwish? Come now, shipmate.”

“Take my word for it. You must keep the passengers away from the fireman.”

Manuel, who had been struck speechless by events, spoke at last. “Let’s get out of here.”

“ ’Tis the lives of a few against the lives of every passenger on the Train,” said Silver, pleading.

The Girl was already limping through the tender’s narrow corridor.

“Don’t maroon me, shipmates!” cried Silver. “Don’t leave me alone with this devil!”

As Zozula, Manuel and Mentor turned to leave, Silver crowded after them, pawing at their backs. Sobbing, he whispered to Mentor, “D’ye think I’ve forgotten ye, lad? Oh, no — old Barbecue never forgets. We had a deal, didn’t we? And haven’t I kept my side of the bargain? Have I allowed anyone to lay a finger on ye?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“Most certainly not. I’m an honorable man — ye may lay to it. But as for
ye
…” His mood changing swiftly, he seized Mentor by the shoulder, his huge hand like a vice, “Ye’ve tricked me, lad! Once when ye stood by and allowed yon pirates to desert the ship, and nary a word o’ warning to me. And now — this. I tell ye, lad. Only a fool tricks Long John Silver!”

“Get away
from me!” Mentor half turned, shoving.

“Ye’ll pay yer dues, shipmate.”

A hand gripped Mentor’s and, furious, he tugged at it, intending to jerk its owner to the ground. But the hand held firm, and it dawned on Mentor that it was unnaturally cold and hard, almost fleshless … He turned round.

The fireman stood there.

*

As they reassembled in the carriage Manuel was a little surprised at the speed with which Silver had recovered his equanimity. The driver came swinging jovially into the carriage after Mentor — who looked pale and scared — and immediately addressed the passengers in a bellowing shout: “The sun is over the yardarm, messmates! Tis time to splice the mainbrace!”

But for once there was no answering roar of enthusiasm. The passengers sat silently, with expressions of embarrassment and distaste. Bambi’s gaze flickered toward a corner of the carriage, and for once even she could see no redeeming feature in the situation. Her face showed disgust. Silver followed her gaze.

Blind Pew stood there.

Silver backed away, one hand to his mouth, eyes wide with terror. He reached the swaying wall and could retreat no farther. Pew, smiling coldly and still silent, took two slow strides toward him and laid his stick across the flip-up seat; then he felt for him.

He ran his fingers over Silver’s face quickly and comprehensively. Then he smiled and nodded, and the smile was gone again, and his face was like seamed marble. He picked up his stick and sat on the flip-up seat, adjusting his cloak about him. Under the green eyeshade, his eyes resembled pale stones on a wintry beach, cold and moist and heartless as he faced the passengers.

Silver tried to run for the Locomotive, but Pew slid his stick across the doorway without changing expression.

Manuel shivered. It might have been the effect of the appalling Pew sitting there like a judge, or perhaps the temperature had dropped. People began to recover from the shock of Pew’s materialization and the clink of glasses against bottles could be heard, and the murmur of the card games resuming.

What happened next was so unexpected that Manuel thought he’d imagined it.

An
eye appeared at the window.

And yet he hadn’t been looking at the window. In point of fact, he’d been watching Pew and thinking how he’d like to get his fingers around that scrawny neck again. It was some seconds since he’d last actually looked at the window — and he’d noticed it was foggy out there, but there had been no eye.

He heard Zozula say, “It wasn’t there.”

The Girl screamed. There was a startled babble of comment.

“AH HAH!”

A hideous creature appeared on the luggage rack right above Manuel’s head. It squatted on thin, muscular shanks and peered down at him through the slats so that its face appeared from between its thighs — a face like a baboon, like a swamp, like rotting meat, like a nightmare. Fluid dripped from between the slats and Manuel jerked away; the varnish dissolved from the woodwork, leaving a grey, slimy stain.

Thick-armed and agile, the brute swung down and reached for Manuel almost casually, as an ape reaches for fruit. Then, quick as a flash, the creature hopped aside. Manuel flung himself back in his seat and kicked out with all his strength at emptiness. The Bale Wolf dropped into his lap.

Beside him, the Girl was struggling from her seat, while nearby Zozula swung aimless punches. Manuel caught the gleam of something red in the Girl’s hand, something heavy that she swung and then lost. The Bale Wolf bobbed up and down in his lap, knocking the wind out of him. Manuel was dead — and he knew he was dead. The beast was playing with him. Mercifully, he seemed to have stepped outside himself and for the last few seconds of his life was an observer, watching the death of the passengers and the Girl and Zozula, and Manuel. Manuel, noticed Manuel, had a Bale Wolf in his lap and it was shortly going to tear his throat out. Elsewhere, he noticed, Silver was slashing with his crutch to no effect, and Sir Charles seemed to be choking.

And nearby, noticed Manuel, a Bale Wolf squatted beside the Girl, who lay on her back on the floor. She made pathetic sweeping gestures with her fat arms, weakly trying to fend the creature off. The Bale Wolf held a little knife — just a short thing, but long enough to reach the Girl’s heart. The Bale Wolf played with it, teasing her. It touched her stomach with it, cutting the cloth of her dress and laying bare the flesh. Then it jerked the knife back. The Girl swatted at the place where the knife had been.