Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“An old woman bought it. She had cancer of the lobe.”

“Don’t get a lot of that, cancer of the lobe.”

“Sometimes, when the wind’s right, I can hear what she’s hearing, in here.” He tapped the earless curve of his skull. “That’s how I know who got it, after.”

“What did you win for that?”

“The ticket out. Anywhere. And the golden purse. A thousand dollars.”

A tangential thought demanded Sweetness voice it before it faded.

“So, how many times did you go in for the, ah?”

“Meat lotto? Second time lucky.”

“The first time?”

“A big toe. Don’t balance too good.”

“Who got the toe?”

“Don’t know. Not much sense in a toe.”

“I suppose there’re one’s’ve been up for it a lot of times?”

“Well, there’s a kind of natural limit…”

“I suppose so.” Up ahead in the night, Naon Engineer whistled. Three short blasts, one long. Coming up on Juniper. Sweetness felt the great train shudder beneath her, brakes gently gripping.

“So, what happened? I mean, if you had a thousand dollars…”

“Got stiffed.”

“Where?”

“Suniyapa. Three big girls. Must’ve heard that they give out the Golden Purse with the lotto. They were looking for poor kids riding rich. They had suits. Looked like regular coh-mute-ers. Big damn blakey-toe boots, but.”

“Sorry.”

“What for? You were going to knock me off your train, so? Any road, they throw me off at High Plains and then I hitch a ride on some shit deadheader across Chryse because Mr. Engineer he’s expecting to ride the whole rig with me hanging off his lizard and when I don’t he dumps me out. Walked three days to Little Rapids.”

“I’m an Engineer,” Sweetness said quietly.

“Yeah, and like I said, you were going to knock me clean off. Anyway, I wait there and one two three trains go by, and then you come along and you’re the biggest by a way and I reckon, bigger the train, better to hide, and then one of youse spies me and I have to hide down over the edge, so.”

Sweetness gave him her full regard a moment. She rocked back on her heels.

“So, where’s this all going to end?”

“Grand Valley, I’d hoped.” No hesitation. “I’m not comfortable ’cept there’s a roof on the sky.”

The brakes were squealing now, biting down hard on raw steel. Within their familiarity, Sweetness was able to make out another sound, a Bassareeni voice, calling over the car tops.

“Quick,” Sweetness ordered. “There.” She pushed Pharaoh toward the gap, mimed with her hands for him to crawl face flat and hushed.

“Down there?” he whispered, peering down the ladder into grinding darkness.

“Down there,” Sweetness hissed. “And be quiet about it.” Railrat Pharaoh slid over the top rung. His upturned face caught the moonslight.

“Hello? Who dat dere?” Chagdi Bassareeni called from too damn close.

“Listen up,” Sweetness hissed down into the dark abyss. “We’re pulling up for Juniper. Don’t wait for the train to stop, there’s always someone looking out when we pull up. Wait until we’re dead slow, dead dead slow, then do what I told you back there, drop down between the carriages on to the track. There’s plenty of room if you lie flat, on your back, not your face. Wait until you can’t see the taillights any more, then you’re safe. Juniper’s a merde- hole, but the Xipotle Slow Stopper’s through in a couple a days and they’ve no dignity. You can ride the roof for two centavos. When it gets to Xipotle, it splits; front half goes on to become the Grand Trunk Rapido. Take you right to Grand Valley.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Fat-thighed Chagdi was standing at the far end of the truck, sending his torch beam swinging around like a jive-dancer.

“Got to go. Luck.”

“Thank you. I owe you.”

“You do, but I don’t mean to collect, so I’ll write it off.”

“Sweetness Octave, why did you do this?”

Heavy feet on steel roof.

“I don’t know, I haven’t time.”

“I want to know.”

“Okay, okay. I don’t like seeing people getting trapped in things they can’t get out of. Especially by other people.”

“That’ll do.”

“That’s all you’re getting.”

The face was swallowed by the grating black. This is the last time I will ever see you, Pharaoh , Sweetness thought. Quick and desperate and unprepared. But all partings should be sudden. Sweetness stood up. Chagdi’s beam dazzled her.

“Watch it with that thing.”

“It is you.”

Light-blinded, then night-blinded. Phosphenes flocked like bats across Sweetness’s retinas.

“You find anything?”

A soft, gritty thud, then the brakes reached a crescendo. Can’t see a smile in the dark.

“Hey, what happened to your djubba-stick?”

“Bastard caught hold of it. Took it with him.”

“You djubba him?”

“Right off.” A whistle and a downward curve of the hand.

“And is he?”

“Couldn’t see. Don’t think so.”

Plump Chagdi’s face resolved out of the dazzle. He looked piqued. He had a reputation for capturing and tormenting caboose vermin and probably resented that his had not been the thumb on the djubba-stick trigger.

“Pity you lost the stick, but.”

“Yeah.” Sweetness sized up the dark gulf she must leap to get back home. “Pity.”

Forty-two long years on the iron road buys a woman a measure of dignity. When Grandmother Taal made one of her increasingly rare progresses down Catherine of Tharsis , she stopped, and the train moved for her.

“Honoured Grandmother,” Tante Miriamme cooed from her cubby by the crew companionway. Grandmother Taal grunted acknowledgement and shuffled down another painful step. God smite these shoes.

“Fine morning, Amma Taal,” called Finvar Traction, penduluming across the feed pipes and plasma buffers in his abseil harness. No one believed that all this swinging and dangling was necessary to his routine repairs but he clearly enjoyed it and he was one of the sights of the railroad.

“Umph.” Too damn hot in layered skirts and tight-laced bodice on a day like this. Electric blue sky. The hottest colour.

“Regards to thee and thine!” hailed cheery Silva Deep-Fusion, eternally white to the elbows in flour.

Grandmother Taal nodded and grabbed for the handrail as the train jolted over points. Son and heir he might be, but Naon was no part of the Engineer his father had been, in his day. But neither was he cyberhatted into the autonomic systems, the drooling autopilot on the long, boring straights. Grandmother Taal waited for the last creak of brake and huff of steam before stepping down to the ground. A tip of the finger to Prevell Watchman Junior in his shunting turret.

“Grandmo’r!” he yelled in warning. She was already pulling on her track vest. Not so old, nor yet so incontinent, as to forget the laws of the universe. Catherine of Tharsis dragged her long load past Grandmother Taal. She fished in her waist purse for her needle case. Her thick thumb opened the leather wallet, felt out the smooth shaft of the delicate obsidian needles, anticipating power and pain. Had they no respect for a woman in her forties, that they make her stand under hot sun and stitch coloured silk through the pallid skin of her forearms? But her magic had never been respected. It was too useful, despite its limitations. Her clients found creative ways of bringing their woes into its peculiar bailiwick. Had there been someone she could have thanked and cursed, she would have, copiously, but her power was not a gift. It had just happened, the day of her womaning. The best she could work it out was that the power had gone out of her into the brown smear in her pants, then from there to every other brown thing in the world.