Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

The Babooshka did not like trains. Their bulk intimidated her. Their weight crushed her. Their speed alarmed her and the sound of their wheels was that of doomsday approaching. She feared their steam and their spoutings and the possibility of their fusion tokamaks exploding and blasting her to loose atoms in the upper atmosphere. She hated trains. Especially trains that had to cross dreadful red deserts. Trains, they were largely indifferent to the Babooshka. Even this one that was crossing a dreadful red desert.

“Misha, Misha, how much longer until we can get off this horrid engine?”

Mikal Margolis, mineralogist, industrial chemist, dutiful son and young pioneer, looked away from the hypnotic red desert; clean, spare and beautiful in its geological potential, and said to his little old mother, “We shall be through it when we’re through it, and then we shall be in Paradise Valley, where it rains only at two o’clock in the morning, where, when you plant a seed, you have to stand back because it will shoot up and hit you on the chin, where tame songbirds come and sing on your finger and where you and I, Mother, will make our fortunes and see our days out in wealth, health and happiness.”

The Babooshka was pleased by her son’s simple tale of wonder. She liked the bit about tame songbirds sitting on her fingers. The only birds in New Cosmobad had been raucous black crows.

“But how much longer, Misha?”

“Next stop, Mother. No towns in this desert, so we don’t stop until we are there. Next stop, then we change to the mountain railroad that will take us to Paradise Valley.”

“Oh, changing trains, I do not like it. I do not like trains, Misha, I do not like them at all.”

“Never worry, Mother. I’m here. Now, would you like some mint tea to soothe your nerves?”

“That would be very nice indeed, Misha. Thank you.”

Mikal Margolis rang for the steward, who brought mint tea in a smart pot decorated with the black and gold Bethlehem Ares Railroads livery. The Babooshka sipped her tea and smiled at her son between sips. Mikal Margolis smiled back and wondered what he was going to tell his mother when they got to Paradise Valley, for the only paradise it was was an industrial chemist’s one; where the rain fell at two o’clock in the morning because that was when the refineries vented their tail-gasses into the atmosphere, where it was ethylene in the soil that made the plants shoot up overnight, then wither, then die, and where all the birds had succumbed long ago to toxic fumes and the ones that sat upon fingers were cunning mechanical duplicates, all part of the Company’s public relations programme.

He would worry about that nearer the time. Outside the polarized window was the thrilling red desert, a man’s landscape, a gritty wonderland of raw rocks and minerals. He imagined himself riding across it on horseback, wrapped in serape and headcloths, his leather specimens case slapping against his back. Caught up in such reverie, it was not long before the gentle rocking of the train sent him off to sleep.

He woke in pandemonium. Not the Pandemonium that was the name of the interchange for Paradise Valley, but the other, more dreadful sort. Valves were hissing, voices shouting, metal clanking against metal, and someone was shaking him by the shoulder, calling, “Sir, your mother, sir, wake up, sir, your mother, sir, sir, sir.” He focused on the pale face of the steward. “Sir, your mother, sir.” The Babooshka was not in her seat. All the luggage was gone. Mikal Margolis dashed to the window to see his mother gliding happily down the side of the track, waving along a slender young man with a beard grinning under a pile of parcels and cases.

“Mother!” he roared. “Mother!”

The Babooshka looked up and waved, a tiny, happy china doll of a woman. Her voice was as doll’s.

“Misha! Come on! Can’t waste time. Have to find the other station.”

“Mother!” bellowed Mikal Margolis, “This is not the right stop!” But his words were lost in a billow of steam and the thunder of fusion engines powering up. Creakingly, agedly, the train began to roll. “Sir, sir!” cried the flapping steward. Mikal Margolis straight-armed him into an empty seat and dashed for the door. He jumped as the carriage passed the end of the makeshift platform.

The Babooshka swirled up the platform in a storm of small indignation.

“Misha, the shock you are giving me, your poor dear mother! Falling asleep on the train, no less. Come, we shall miss the mountain railroad.”

The cheeky porter-type had to put the bags down, he was laughing so hard.

“Mother, where are the mountains?”

“Behind the buildings.”

“Mother, you can see right over the buildings, they are so low. Mother, this is not the right station.”

“Oh, no? Then where is this your poor dear mother has put you?”

Mikal Margolis pointed to some words laid out in pretty white pebbles by the edge of the track.

“Desolation Road, Mother.”

“And this is the next stop, no?”

“We were meant to get off at Pandemonium. The train was not supposed to stop here. This town is not supposed to be here.”

“Then blame the railroad company, blame the town, but not your poor dear mother!” fumed the Babooshka, and lambasted, lampooned, be-jasused and generally cursed the railroad company, their trains, their tracks, their signals, their rolling stock, their drivers, their engineers, their guards and anyone even remotely connected with Bethlehem Ares Railroads down to the meanest lavatory attendant, third-class, for approximately twenty minutes.

Finally Dr. Alimantando, nominal head of Desolation Road, pop. 7, elev. 1250 m., “one step short of Paradise,” arrived to settle the altercation so he could return to his chronokinetic studies in peace. Only the day before he had commissioned Rajandra Das, general factotum, sorcerer’s apprentice, odd-job man and station porter, to spell out the name of the town in proud white pebbles so that any train that might pass would know that the people of Desolation Road had pride in their town. As if lured by a malicious sympathetic magic, the train bearing the Babooshka and Mikal Margolis pulled over the horizon and stopped to take a look. Rajandra Das’s charm over machines was powerful, but surely not that powerful. Nevertheless, he had charmed the Babooshka and her son into being, and now Dr. Alimantando had to decide what to do with them. He offered them refuge in one of the warm dry caves that riddled the bluffs until such time as they chose to leave or had a more permanent residence constructed. Stiff with indignation, the Babooshka refused the offer of sanctuary. She would not sleep in a dirty cave with bat droppings on the floor and lizards for company; no, nor would she share it with a son who was a faithless wastrel and did not know how to treat an old lady who was his poor dear mother. Dr. Alimantando listened with what little grace he could muster and then prevailed upon the Mandellas, whose house was built with family in mind, to take in the waif. Mikal Margolis took the cave. There were bat droppings and there were lizards, but there was no mother so it was not that bad.

In the Mandella household the Babooshka found a contemporary in Grandfather Haran, who entertained her with peapod wine and honeytongued flatteries and asked his son to build an extra room onto the already rambling Mandella home especially for the Babooshka. Every night they would sip wine, reminisce on the days when both they and the world were young, and play the word games the Babooshka loved so much. On one such night, in early autumn, as Grandfather Haran was putting the word “bauxite” down on a double-word triple-letter, the Babooshka noticed for the first time his distinguished grey hair and fine upright body, chipped by time like a china god, but strong and uneroded. She let her eyes rest upon the ironstiff beard and the lovely little shiny button-eyes, and she let out a quiet sigh and fell in love with him.