Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“Taal.”

“It didn’t work anyway.”

“Could you not get a high enough gloss?”

Child’a’grace traced a finger across the wooden scrying-mirror as she sat down on the dressing stool. Grandmother Taal shook her head.

“Something is fogging me.”

“Out of range?”

“It has no range. Something is muddying the scry-lines.”

“What did you write?”

Grandmother Taal sat on the side of the bed. Her feet did not touch the ground. Blood was a crusty red rivulet in the contours of her ankle. She pulled up her skirt. SWEETNESS, her thin calf said.

“He’s not a bad man,” Child’a’grace said.

“He tries hard,” Grandmother Taal said. “And you are defending him? How long since he last spoke to you?”

“Four years, sixteen months, twenty-seven days.”

“If he does this over a folly of cards, you expect any less for a daughter who runs out on her own betrothal?”

“Ach, you are too right.”

“Yes. So, do you think he will go ahead and shame himself to death?”

“He is embarrassed enough.”

“Embarrassment is good for the soul. Especially his soul. Ah, if his father…I tell you, one good thing, if he did go and die of shame, at least it would give that girl the chance to do what she’s always wanted.”

There was no reasonable reply to this. Child’a’grace pursed her lips, then said, “I hope she has enough clean underwear.” She looked at the circle of sheened wood, tried to catch her own reflection in the dressing tabletop. “Did you see anything?”

“It was muddy.”

“But did you see anything?”

“I saw mirrors. Muddy mirrors. I saw the girl, reflected in many many mirrors. She was looking for something. She was looking very hard.”

“Was it real? Or was it a sign?”

“How should I know?” Grandmother Taal said, testily. “I’m only a domestic magician. But I know one thing, she did not look happy. She looked scared.”

Child’a’grace glanced away to hide the sudden emotion swelling in the corners of her eyes.

“I should…”

“No. They need you. Someone must keep the train on track, and the men are useless.”

Child’a’grace nodded. From her bag she produced a thin, rectangular, oil-paper-wrapped packet. She presented it to Grandmother Taal. The old woman sniffed the yellow, greasy, thick paper carefully. Her eyes widened a sliver.

“This is most fine stuff.”

“It is Etzvan Canton Black Loess.”

In that ancient division of Deuteronomy, Grandmother Taal recalled, the soil was so dark and rich a teaspoon was stirred into the local hot chocolate to promote long life and fertility.

“It was in my dowry,” Child’a’grace said simply. “I never really got the taste for it.”

Grandmother Taal sniffed the packet again.

“Yes, I can smell bottom-drawer cottons and mothballs,” she said.

“It’s for your journey,” Child’a’grace added hastily, “not your own use.”

“I gathered that.” The crow-corners of Grandmother Taal’s eyes wrinkled.

“If I’d had any money…”

“Etzvan Canton Black Loess is better than money, especially a bar of this fine a vintage.” Grandmother Taal slid the neat little wad into one of her many skirt pockets. “So, how did you know I was going?”

Again, Child’a’grace stroked fingertips against the wooden mirror.

“I’ve got my own domestic magic.”

“Yes,” Grandmother Taal said. “All women do.”

“Keep safe,” Child’a’grace said, kissing the old woman the three-fold kiss of farewell; forehead, wrist, wrist. “You’ve got a photograph…”

“A grandmother does not have a photograph of her granddaughter?”

“Of course. Well, let us know…”

“Immediately.”

Ten minutes later, a figure a little more black than the Muchanga night climbed slowly down the passenger steps to the ground. The air smelled of sage and cold, stone-chilled water. The stars were sharp and threatening as an arrow storm. The moonring seemed suspended in flight, an arch of frost. Grandmother Taal took two nostrilfuls of the big night. She took three steps away from the track. This was the furthest she had been from Catherine of Tharsis in a half-decade. The novelty was worth that brief a consideration, no more. She found a place of concealment among the trackside equipment. Ladies of her venerability did not hide. Skittering night things fled from her. Good. There were almost certainly things out there that she would flee from. The big train swigged its fill of fossil water. The feeder arms swung loose. Voices called up and down the track. Steam vented from valves. The big horns sang once, twice, thrice. The pistons thrashed, the wheels spun. Freighted with lights and lives, Catherine of Tharsis glided slowly past her.

Grandmother Taal watched the red taillights curve out of sight around the bend in the track. She stepped out of concealment. By the light of the moonring, she took a reading from her pocket vade-mecum . The timetable function told her the 22:50 Triskander-Grand Valley Limited Night Service would be on the upline in eighty minutes. Time enough. She began to walk. She laid the first detonator on the upline switchover. Vertebrae protested as she straightened up. The night was working into her marrow. She found a pair of fingerless gloves and pulled them on. Warm hands fool a cold body. She laid the second detonator a twenty-minute walk upline by the vade-mecum clock. The service lights of Muchanga Water Station had receded into the great dark, a dirty, low constellation. She thought a bit about the flee-worthy things in the dark. Onward.

She heard an explosion behind her. She turned. Too soon, too close…Grandmother Taal fumbled in her infinity bag. Keys, sweets, small ladylike weapons, items of food, coins, charms, vials of scented waters, comfits, hair pins and old-fashioned jewellery, hard edges of very large machines. Where was it? Damn infundibular folding dimensions.

The second detonator went off. She saw its brief sharp flare close to the ground, eclipsed by wheels. She began to walk very quickly, counting one thousand two thousand three thousand four thousand…There. Her fingers curled around the shaft of the thermite flare. Fifteen thousand sixteen thousand…So dark, so damned dark, no light from all those stupid, wasted stars, and so cold; one frosty sleeper, one unseated trackbed, one loose tie, she could fall, and that would be… Twenty-two thousand twenty-three thousand twenty-four thousand…Boom.

The last detonator. He was coming fast, too fast. There must have been delays down the line in Margaret Land, he was making up time on the empty Oxus section.

She turned, held the flare at arm’s length, pulled the ripcord. The metal cap flipped off. The thermite mixture coughed, spat sparks. A low flare guttered, teetered on the edge of extinction in the wind, then caught. A blade of searing white flame leaped from the casing. Grandmother Taal faced down the night train to Grand Valley with a sword of light. She could see the headlamp, cutting a curve through the night. The wheels beat, the horns declared their impatience with all that might impede them. Grandmother Taal held her sword firm before her face. See it. They must see it. But she could not hear brakes. She could not hear the chunter of an Engineer throwing the drive into reverse, the shriek of the emergency steam release. She tried to remember how much fire there was in the standard Bethlehem Ares Railroads signal flare. The light expanded before, swallowing her like the hypnotising eyes of a speedsnake bewitching a Syrtis hare. The world around her was white, the horns bellowed, “ This is the Triskander-Grand Valley Limited, out of my way .” He wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t stopping. Brakes. She heard brakes. Sparks cascaded from the agonised steel. Geysers of steam jetted from the piston valves. The horns yelled at her, then fell silent. The engine stood motionless before her. She could have reached out and touched the cow-catcher.