The Last Frontier (25 page)

Jansci was in the third compartment. Reynolds stopped abruptly, catching his shadows on the wrong foot, stood stiffly to one side to let them pass, waited till they were about ten feet away, nodded to Jansci then ran back the way he had come praying that he would not bump into anyone: a portly man blocking the corridors just then could have been the end of everything.
He could hear the footsteps pounding behind him, increased his speed and that was almost his undoing: he slipped on a wet corner, struck his head against a window bar, fell, but forced himself to his feet, ignoring the sharp, almost stunning pain and the bright lights that flashed in front of his eyes, and ran on again. Two carriages, three carriages, four and this was his: he rounded a corner sharply, dodged into the toilet, banged the door shut behind him as loudly as possible -- he didn't want his pursuers to be in a moment's doubt as to where he had gone -- and locked it.
Once inside he wasted no time. He picked up the big earthenware jar of water, stuffed a dirty towel into the top to retain as much of the water as possible, took a step backwards and flung the jar with all his strength through the window. The crash was all that he had hoped for and more, the noise almost deafening in that confined space, and the sound of the shattering glass was still in his ears when he took the gun from his pocket, caught it by the barrel, switched off the light, softly eased the lock and stepped into the corridor.
The shadows had the window down and were peering out, leaning as far as possible, crowding each other in their eagerness to see what had happened, where Reynolds had gone: they would have been less than human to have done anything else. Reynolds didn't even break step as he came through the door: one long stride, a leap propelled by all the strength of his legs, his feet stiffly in front of him smashing into the back of the nearest man and the door burst open, one of the men catapulting out into the driving snow and the gloom before he had even time to cry out. The other, the pale-faced man, twisted impossibly in mid-air, caught the inside edge of the door with one hand, his face contorted with venom and fear as he fought like a wild-cat to pull himself inside. But the whole struggle lasted perhaps only two seconds, and Reynolds was merciless, his downward clubbing pistol, aimed at the snarling face, changing direction in the last moment as the man's free hand came up in instinctive protection. The butt struck the fingers clinging to the doorway with a force that jarred Reynolds' arm to the elbow, and then there was no man in the doorway, only the gathering darkness of the night and a thin, high scream lost in the thunder of the Wheels and the high threnody of the wind.
It took Reynolds seconds only to work the already loosened piece of wood free of the bolt-hole and shut the door securely. Then he stuffed his gun into his pocket, retrieved the hammer and the torch from the toilet and moved across to the opposite door of the coach, on the windward side.
Little enough time was left-^seven minutes perhaps, eight at the most. He reached up, caught the metal grip at the top of the window, brought it right down in one convulsive jerk and had he not dropped to the floor, the blast of wind and snow that shrieked in through the open window would have blown him clear across to the other side of the coach. It was even worse than he had imagined it would be, he could understand now that the driver was slowing up not because of the incline but because he wanted to keep his train on the rails, and for one bad moment Reynolds was tempted to give up the whole suicidal project. Then he thought of the professor sitting alone in the last wagon among a pack of hardened criminals, of Jansci and all the others who were depending on him, of the girl who had turned her back on him when he had made to say good-bye, and the next moment he was on his feet, gasping as the bulleting snow lashed cruelly across his exposed face and sucked the breath from his lungs. He heaved with all his strength, once, twice, three times, unmindful of the fact that a sudden lull in the wind would have pitched him helplessly out into the snow, and on the fourth attempt managed to get the sole of his shoe stuck in the opening. He got his forearm into the crack, then his shoulder and finally half his body, pressed outwards with all the strength of his arms, reached down with a groping right foot until he found the snow-encrusted running-board, and brought his left foot into the gap of the door. It was then that the hammer and torch in his inside pocket caught on the inside jamb of the door and he stood there for almost a minute, a minute that seemed an eternity, jammed between door and side of the coach, struggling frantically to free himself, fearing that at any moment someone might come along the corridor to investigate the source of the snow-laden gale that was whistling the length of the carriage. And then, suddenly, with a ripping of buttons and tearing of cloth,, he was free, freed with a jerk that caused his right foot to slip off the running-board, and he hung there for a moment supported only by his left hand and the left foot still jammed in the doorway. Then, he hauled himself slowly, painfully upright -- he could get no purchase anywhere for his right hand -- regained his footing on the board, stood there for a moment until he had regained control of himself, got his left hand out, hooked it round the inside of the open window and jerked his left sole free. The door shut with a crash, and he was now completely outside, supported only by the already numbing fingers of his left hand and the pressure of the wind pinning him against the carriage side.
It was dusk now, but though there was still enough light to see by he could not see, for with the driving snow he was a blind man groping in a blind world. He was, he knew, at the very end of the coach, and the corner was only a foot from where he stood, but though he could reach his right arm almost two feet round the comer he could find not the smallest projection to give him purchase of any kind. At the fullest stretch of his left arm he tried with his right foot, and found the narrow lateral steel member that housed the bumpers, but it was at far too acute an angle to serve his purpose: he tried to find the bumper, but it eluded him.
His left forearm was beginning to ache with the strain of supporting his weight, and his fingers were now so numbed that he had no means of knowing whether they were slipping or not. He hauled himself upright outside the carriage door window again, changed arms, cursed himself for his stupidity as he suddenly thought of his torch, changed hands again and once more leaned back and as far round the corner as he could, this time with the beam of the powerful torch probing through the gloom and the snow. It took him only two seconds to see all he wanted to see and memorise the relative positions of the lateral steel member at the back of the coach, the concertina coupling and the steel bumper that seemed to leap uncontrollably from side to side as every jolting sway of the train caused a violent change in position relative to the opposing bumper on the next carriage. He pulled himself quickly upright, thrust the torch back in his pocket, and didn't hesitate, because he was dimly aware, without admitting it to himself, that if he as much as paused to consider the near certainty of a miss, a slip and being crushed to instant death under the wheels, he could never have brought himself to do what he now did at once without any thought for the consequences. He moved both feet along till they were at the very edge of the running-board, released his grip with his left hand, stood there held against the outcurving side of the carriage by wind pressure alone, then lifted his right foot into blind space, his body curving far over to the left as he did so. For an instant of time he was poised there in mid-air, the toe of his left shoe the only contact he had left with the train, and then, in the very moment of that toe slipping off the frozen running-board the wind caught him and he flung himself forward into the darkness.
He landed with one knee on the lateral member, the shin of the other leg striking cruelly across the bumper even as his outstretched hands struck against the stiffly yielding side of the concertina coupling. Such was his momentum that his right leg slipped at once across the frozen metal of the bumper, but he tightened his leg muscles convulsively and hooked his instep round the narrowest part of the bumper as his knees pointed down to the track rushing by beneath. For a few seconds he hung there, supported only by the counteracting pressures of his arms and one shin, wondering vaguely whether his leg had been broken, then he felt his hands, for all the maximum pressure he was exerting against them, begin to slip helplessly down the smooth, snow-covered material of the coupling. Despairingly, he flung out his left hand, struck it painfully against the back of the carriage he had just left, pushed it forward and felt his stiffened, outstretched fingers slide in the narrow gap between the carriage and its coupling. He clutched the rough edge of the toughened, rubberised fabric as if he were seeking to drive his hooking fingers clear through it, and three seconds later, he was standing upright on the lateral member, securely anchored by his left hand, and trembling uncontrollably from the reaction of his effort.
But the trembling was from the reaction only. Reynolds, afraid only moments ago as he had never been afraid before, had crossed that nebulous frontier between fear and that strange world of uncaring and selfless indifference that lies beyond. With his right hand he felt for his spring knife, clicked open the blade and thrust the dagger point into the material about waist-height: there could have been a dozen people streaming through the inside of the concertina coupling at that instant for all he cared. A few seconds' vigorous sawing with the blade's razor edges and he had a hole cut in the material, large enough to accommodate the toe of one foot, and at head-height he cut another for a hand-grip. Then he thrust his right toe into the first hole, his left hand into the second, pushed and heaved upwards and drove the blade into the hilt through the top of the coupling to give him a secure handhold. And then he was on top, clinging desperately to the handle of the knife as the full force of the wind caught him and sought to blow him over the other side of the wildly vibrating coupling.
The first carriage -- the fourth from the front, that was -- proved to be relatively easy. The narrow metal sheathing for the ventilation louvers ran the entire length of the carriage along the top, and it took him less than half a minute, lying on the leeward side of the roof with his face bowed against the knifing blizzard and overhanding himself along the sheathing, to reach the far end. All the way along his feet had hung out over the edge, but he could do nothing about this: he should have been able to get some purchase with his toes on the guttering, but it was blocked and smooth with frozen snow.
And now he was reaching out gingerly on top of the corrugations of the next carriage coupling, and had no sooner let go of the security of the ventilation sheathing that he realised the mistake he had made: he should have launched himself across in a dive for the other side, instead of exposing himself to that shrieking wind that was beginning to gust most dangerously now, one moment all but blowing him clear over the far side of the furiously vibrating coupling, the next easing so unexpectedly that he had to hang on grimly to prevent himself toppling off into the wind: but by flattening himself as low as possible and working his hand-grip from corrugation to corrugation he safely reached the end of the third carriage. It was again a relatively easy matter to traverse this, and when he reached the front he sat up, swung his legs over on to the next coupling, bent low and launched himself across the intervening space, barking one of his knees badly as it struck the sheeting on the second carriage, but getting a secure grip at the time. Seconds later only, it seemed, he was at the front end of the second carriage and it was then as he swung his legs out on to the coupling that he saw it: the wavering dipping beams of headlights, vanishing and reappearing through swirling flurries of snow, on a road that paralleled the railway track not twenty yards away. The elation that swept through Reynolds banished for the moment all thought of exhaustion and cold, and numbed senseless hands that could not serve him very much longer: it could have been anyone, of course, driving that vehicle out there in the blinding snow, but Reynolds was oddly certain it wasn't. He stooped again, poised on his toes and launched himself across on to the roof of the first carriage: it wasn't until he -arrived there and was skidding along helplessly on his face that he realised that this carriage, unlike the others, had no ventilation sheathing running along the top.
For a moment panic returned again, and he scrabbled furiously on the ice-smooth, slippery surface of the roof seeking for a handhold -- any handhold. Then he forced himself to be calm, for that frantic threshing of legs and arms was exactly what was required to destroy what little friction coefficient there was between himself and the train and send him sliding helplessly over the side to his death. There must, he told himself desperately, be ventilators of some kind or other, and suddenly he knew what they must be -- those little top-hatted chimneys spaced three or four to a coach and it was just at that moment he realised something else: the train was curving round sharply into the wind and the centrifugal force was sending him sliding slowly, remorselessly, towards the edge.
He was sliding feet first, face down, and his toes beat a furious tattoo on the carriage roof as he sought to crack the frozen snow that filled up the guttering and gain at least a toehold. But the snow was frozen into ice, he smashed against it in vain, and the first he knew that he had failed was when his shins struck painfully against the edge of the carriage roof. And still the train kept curving round that interminable corner.
His knees now rested on the edge of the roof and his nails were breaking off as his fingers, hooked into rigid talons, furrowed through the smooth ice on the carriage top. He knew nothing could save him, and he could never afterwards explain what strange, subconscious instinct -- for in that moment of approaching death his mind had ceased to work altogether -- had caused him to jerk out his knife, press the release catch and bury the blade in the roof just before his hips reached the side and he had passed the point of no return.