Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

And now she released them As one the audience rose; audience, party nominees, party members, party workers, a storm of applauding hands. Marya Quinsana smiled, bowed. But her performance had not pleased her. She preferred subtlety to tub-thumping and welkin-ringing. Clumsy, unsophisticated, unsubtle. A dirty night’s work. Unseen and unheard in the tumult, a messenger slipped onto the platform and handed her a piece of paper: a telegram.

RETURN WISDOM IMMEDIATELY COMMA EMERGENCY MEETING RE JONATHON BYRDE OUTRAGE COLON KAROLAITIS STOP.

Jonathon Byrde? Jonathon Byrde?

She only learned that Jonathon Byrde was not an assassinated dignitary when the cabin attendant on the Jabalpur-Syrtia Night Mail brought her the morning papers with breakfast and banner headlines toppled over each other in plumbing the thesaural depths of outrage and horror.

She met First Minister the Honourable Vangelis Karolaitis on the veranda of his town house overlooking the Syrtic Sea. He was a fine old gentleman, honourable as his title, and wise, and Marya Quinsana hoped he would die in his bed before it became necessary for her to depose him. A butler served mint tea. The breeze carried the scent of jasmine and wisteria from the gardens that reached down to the sea.

“Well,” said the First Minister.

“I’ve said it all along. Get me out of Science and Education into Security and I’ll have the Whole Earth Army on its knees in six months.”

“I’ll be announcing the ministerial reshuffle this afternoon. I’ll also introduce the emergency bill outlawing the Whole Earth Army per se; shouldn’t have any trouble getting it passed, the Liberals aren’t sounding quite so liberal this morning. So: the army’s yours. Remember, they’ve never fought a proper war, so try and bring it all back in one piece, but that aside, do whatever you have to do to rid these lands of this… cancer of terrorism.”

“One question: who destroyed the Jonathon Byrde? I want him first.”

“Some faction calling itself the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group. The Parliamentary Group’s issued blanket denial of any involvement with this group: personally I don’t believe them. Leader’s called… yes, Arnie Nicolodea Tenebrae.”

The world had lost its sense of wonder. The marvels that seven, six, five years ago excited gasps and sighs of amazement today prompted contemptuous yawns of tedium. Only one hundred and fifty years old, the world was already middle-aged and cynical, consigning its cast of wonder-workers, tellers of tales, showmen, miracle men, medicine men, and carnival touts to the rusted sidings of forgotten stations.

“Old train, the world has lost its sense of wonder!” cried Adam Black. He poured himself another liberal brandy and stood in the centre of his onceopulent now-shabby showmaster’s carriage, glass raised high in an ironic toast. “The world has grown weary of Chautauquas and Educational ’Stravaganzas, my friend. What shall Adam Black do now?”

“Might I suggest pooling your resources with those of the Immam of Bey and his Circus of Glass?”

Adam Black hurled his brandy glass at the wall.

“That charlatan! That mountebank! That money-spinning titillator of public fancy! Adam Black is a man of education and learning, his mission is that of teacher and preacher, not hustler and whore!”

“Still, I maintain that his is the sole remaining carnival of wonders in this hemisphere.” The train’s voice was calm and patient, almost unbearably so.

“Maintain what you will. Adam Black will not stride the same midway as the Immam of Bey.”

Two days later locomotive and three coaches pulled away from the freight sidings of Ahuallpa Station and headed onto the main southbound line, eight tracks wide. The Great South Line was buzzing that day with the rolling stock and haulers of the world’s great railroads: Bethlehem Ares, Great Southern, Great Eastern, Grand Valley, Argyre Express, Transpolaris Traction, Llangonnedd and Northeastern, Trans-Borealis, and among their jewel bright flashing liveries was the chipped and pimpled paintwork of Adam Black’s Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza. In his managerial car Adam Black stormed and hurled things.

Smash.

“Turn this train around immediately.”

“You know as well as I that that is physically impossible.” The train’s voice was a model of imperturbability as it took a set of points at two hundred.

Smash crash.

“Don’t be clever. You know what I mean. I forbid you to take me to Beysbad, I forbid you to go to the Immam of Bey.” Adam Black pounded on the sealed doors. The carriage rocked and bounced, the train was piling on more speed. Adam Black feared for the tokamaks. It had been a long time since he could afford a service.

“May I clarify one small point?” said the train. “You are a passenger. I am not taking you to Beysbad. I am taking myself. I am sure that the Immam of Bey will have a proud and honored position in his Glass Circus for a unique, computerized, thinking train!”

“Ingrate!” roared Adam Black. Smash crash smash went his bottles of Belladonna brandy against the camera-eye. “To betray the one who made you, gave you life and awareness!”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” said the train, and Adam Black thought he heard a strange tone of menace in its perfect diction. “I am not your son anyway.”

“We shall see!” shouted Adam Black. He reeled across the swaying carriage and unlocked a strong metal cabinet. He removed an antennae-feathery headpiece.

“I would not advise the use of the cyberhat,” said the train, and now the menace was unmistakable.

“Oh, would you not?” said Adam Black. Fighting for balance, he jammed the helmet on his head. “Now you will turn back.”

“Don’t,” said the train.

“I will.”

“Don’t… I reversed the polarity so you can’t…”

Adam Black pressed his fingers to his temples. All at once senses one two three four five and six shut down. Hallucinations bubbled up in his imagina tion: pushing against a glowing wind, star-hot fires burning in his belly, tireless legs, tireless arms, a wall of stout brick.

—So the train resists me. He gathered his mental strength and hurled his imagination at the bricks. It flew apart, no stronger than tissue, and Adam Black went falling falling into the abyss of preconsciousness.

“Reversed polarity, reversed polarity, reversed polarity.” The words circled around him like condors as he fell. He felt his body changing, growing, expanding, taking on new textures and surfaces, new hard planes, new alignments of power.

—No! howled Adam Black as his consciousness merged with the metal and oil and steam of the train. No no no no no no no nonono noooooo; like a train building up steam, his denial lost its words and became a whistle, a steam whistle, whistling out across the paddy fields of the Great Oxus.

In the managerial car the body of Adam Black gave a convulsive deathjerk as if a million volts of electricity had coursed through it, which indeed it had, for the computer personality of the train was too strong for the delicate synapses of Adam Black’s brain and they fused one by one, cracking, snapping, smoking, swinging. In a flash his eyeballs burned out and smoke trickled from the empty sockets and open mouth. The dissolved brain ran out of his empty eyes onto his lap to he like clotted soup and with a desperate cry the train realized it was dead dead dead and Adam Black its erstwhile father was trapped inside the steel body of a Great Southern Class 27 locomotive.