Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

Such abilities did not go unnoticed by the station authorities, and when on occasion there was a pre-fusion percolator that just wasn’t settling right or a persistent kink in the number 3 pinch bottle that had the engineers slamming their E-M field-inducer wrenches to the concrete in frustration, then the most junior subapprentice would be sent into the faeces-redolent warren of runways and tunnels to get Rajandra Das. And Rajandra Das would straighten the kink and adjust the faulty percolator and everything would be right as ninepence again, if not righter.

So Rajandra Das led a charmed life; immune to the periodic transport police purges of the tunnels, respected and liked and comfortably off. Then one day Rajandra Das won the Great Railroad Lotto.

This was a cunning piece of social engineering devised by a legendary bum known only as the Old Wise Fellow, and this was how it worked. Once a month the name of every subterranean beneath Meridian Main Station went into a big tombola. A name was drawn and the winner invited to leave Meridian Main Station that same night on any train of his choice. For the Old Wise Fellow had recognized Meridian Main Station for the trap it was; a comfortable, warm, dry hole, an invitation to an eternity of contented beggarhood and self-mortification. It was the denial of everything potential in a human. It was a gentle jail. Because he was Old and Wise, (old as the world, the legend went) the Old Wise Fellow made two laws to govern his game. The first was that every name without exception must go into the tombola. The second was that no winner could ever refuse his prize.

And then the tombola in the little room with picture postcards from past winners on the walls gave a little whirr and a little cough and coughed up Rajandra Das’s name. It may have been pure luck. Then again, it may have been sheer eagerness to please on the part of the tombola machine. Either way, Rajandra Das won and while he packed his few possessions into a canvas bag word spread across Meridian Main Station, both above and below ground, from the Esterhazie Avenue Freight Siding to the office of Mr. Populescu, the station master: “Rajandra Das has won the lotto… have you heard? Rajandra Das has won the lotto… he’s leaving tonight… really? Yes, he won the lotto,” so by the time midnight came and Rajandra Das was crouching in an inspection pit beside Number Two Main Downline waiting for the signal light to change, there were over a hundred people lining the track to see him off.

“Where you heading for?” asked Djong Pot Huahn, holemate and faithful provider.

“Don’t know. Wisdom eventually, I think. I’ve always wanted to see Wisdom.”

“But that’s right on the other side of the world, R.D.”

“Makes it all the more worth reaching.”

Then the signal light did turn green and down the line in the bright glow of Meridian Main Station there came a puffing and panting of fusionheated steam. Out of the glare and the steam came the train, a thousand and a half tons of clunking clanking Bethlehem Ares steel. The boxcars rolled ponderously past Rajandra Das’s covert, crushingly slow and heavy. Rajandra Das counted twelve, his lucky number, and made his jump. As he ran along between the train and the rows of well-wishers, hands reached out to slap him on the back and voices called out shouts of encouragement. Rajandra Das smiled and waved to them as he jogged along. The train slowly gathered speed. Rajandra Das picked his car and hopped up onto the coupling. Shouts, whoops and applause came out of the dark at him. He edged along the side of the car and tried the door. His charm had not failed him. It was unlocked. Rajandra Das slid the door open and rolled inside. He made himself comfortable on a pile of boxed mangos. The train rumbled into the night. In his fitful, fretful sleep, it seemed to Rajandra Das that the train stopped for long times at anonymous junctions while brighter, faster trains screamed past. At dawn he woke and breakfasted on mango. He slid the door open and sat with his legs dangling over the track, watching the sun rise beyond a vast red desert, eating slices of mango which he cut with his multibladed Defence Forces knife, stolen from Krishnamurthi Speciality Hardware on Water Street. There being nothing to look at except a lot of red desert, he went back to sleep again and dreamed of the towers of Wisdom glistening in the dawn light as the sun rose beyond the Syrtic Sea.

At twelve minutes of twelve Rajandra Das was awakened by a small explosion at the base of his spine. Stars blazed before his eyes, he gasped and gaped for breath, winded, agonized. There was another explosion, and another. Rajandra Das was now sufficiently awake to recognize them as kicks to his kidneys. Too winded even to howl, he rolled over and a bristling, sweaty face breathed a foul miasma over him.

“No good goddamn freeloading lazy bum of a tramp,” growled the greasy face. A foot drew back for another kick.

“No no no no no no no no no, no no don’t kick,” wailed Rajandra Das, finding the air in some pocket of his lungs to plead, hands raised up in futile defence.

“No good goddamn freeloading lazy bum of a tramp,” said bristle-breath again, for emphasis, and kicked the wind out of Rajandra Das. A hand grabbed Rajandra Das’s threadbare coat and lifted him.

“Off you go,” said the face, dragging Rajandra Das to the open door. Red desert sped by beneath the wheels.

“No no no no no,” pleased Rajandra Das. “Not here, not in the desert. It’s murder!”

“What do I care?” grumbled the sweaty face, but some vestige of decency untouched by Bethlehem Ares Railroads must have been stroked, for he set Rajandra Das down on a heap of mango boxes and sat down to watch him, tapping his nightstick against his thigh. “Next place we so much as slow down, you going off.” Rajandra Das said nothing. He was feeling his bruises turn purple up and down his back.

After half an hour the car jolted. Rajandra Das could tell from the pressure on his purple bruises that the train was slowing.

“Where are we, hey? Someplace civilized?”

The guard smiled, showing a wicket of rotting teeth. The train slowed. With a gritty grinding of brakes, the train stopped. The guard slid the door open, admitting a blaze of brilliant sunshine.

“Hey hey hey, what is this?” said Rajandra Das, blinking and blinded. Then he found himself lying on hard dirt with the wind knocked out of him again. His canvas bag thumped painfully onto his chest. Whistles blew, steam hissed, pistons churned. A trickle of burning hot liquid ran down Rajandra Das’s face. Blood! he thought, then blinked, spat, sat up. The guard was urinating on him, laughing uproariously as he tucked his warty member back into his rancid pants. The train blew and moved off.

“Bastards,” said Rajandra Das to the railroad company in general. He wiped his face clean with his sleeve. The urine formed a dark red stain in the dust. It might well have been blood. Rajandra Das took a long look from the sitting position at the place he had landed in. Low adobe houses, a white wall or two, some greenery, some trees, some wind-pumps, a handful of large lozenge-shaped solar collectors and a stubby microwave relay tower on top of a pile of rocks that looked as if someone lived in them.

“It’ll do,” said Rajandra Das, beloved of tombolas and trains and boxcars but not guards, never guards of the Bethlehem Ares Railroad Company. Figures were approaching, indistinct in the noontime heat-haze. Rajandra Das picked himself up and went to meet his new hosts.

“Hey,” he said, “there wouldn’t be any picture postcards of this place, would there?”