They were the only people who got off. The straggled town felt like frontier territory, lazy and open and half-finished. The local vehicle dealer had the six-wheel All-Terrain waiting in the station car park; Miz signed the papers, they collected a last few supplies from a general hardware store and then set off into the karst along a bumpy, dusty solar-farm road that roughly paralleled the widely spaced fence of inverted U’s supporting the thin white lines of the monorails.
Sharrow looked up as something moved above her on the monorail. Cenuij looked down, his scarf-enfolded head showing over the edge of the rail eight metres above.
“What exactly is going on?” he said.
She shrugged. “No idea.” She looked at Dloan, still listening to the monorail’s circuits, then along to the next support leg, where Zefla was sitting in the shade, her head bowed.
“Well, that’s fine,” Cenuij said tetchily. “I’ll just stay up here and get heat-stroke, shall I?” He disappeared again.
“What an excellent idea,” Sharrow muttered, then tight-beamed to the point on the rail two kilometres away where Miz was. “Miz?”
“Yeah?” Miz’s voice said.
“Still nothing?”
“Still nothing.”
“How long till the next one’s through in the other direction?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Miz, you are absolutely sure-” she began.
“Look, kid,” Miz said, sounding annoyed. “It’s the regular fucking express, the Passports were issued yesterday and my agent in Yada says a Huhsz front company hired a private carriage on this train, today, about five minutes after the Passports hearing broke up. How does it all sound to you?”
“All right, all-” she began.
“Whoa,” Miz said. There was silence for a few moments, then Miz’s voice returned, suddenly urgent. “Got something on the phones… definite vibration… should be it. All ready?”
She glanced at Dloan, who was holding one hand to his ear. He looked up at her and nodded. “Here it comes,” he said.
“Ready,” Sharrow told Miz. She whistled to Cenuij, who stuck his head over the top again. “It’s on its way,” she told him.
“About time.”
“Got the other foil ready?”
“Of course; putting the gunge on now.” He shook his head. “Stopping a monorail with glue; how do I get into these situations?” His head disappeared.
Sharrow looked at the squatting figure a hundred metres up the line. “Zef?”
Zefla jerked. Her head came up; she looked round and waved. “Business?” her sleepy voice said in Sharrow’s ears.
“Yes, business. Try to stay awake, Zef.”
“Oh, all right then.”
Dloan shut the junction box in the monorail leg and started climbing up the hand-holds towards the top of the rail.
Sharrow felt her heart start to race. She checked the rifle again. She brought out the HandCannon and checked it too. They were under-gunned for an operation like this, but they hadn’t had time to get all the gear they’d wanted together.
The morning after she’d been dropped in Nis by the Solipsists and met up with the others, they heard the Passports would be issued within the next twenty hours.
Miz told them his plan; Cenuij told him he was crazy. Zefla’s considered opinion on its legal implications was that it was ‘cheeky’.
They had just enough time to set up the All-Terrain purchase for the next day and storm through Aïs in a variety of taxis, buying up desert gear, bits of comm equipment and the heaviest automatic hunting rifles and ammunition the Aïs county laws would allow them to have. Just another day or so and Miz could have had heavier weaponry flown in and cleared through one of his front companies, but the Passports were issued on time that day and they had no choice but to make their move.
Their final purchases had been three large discs of coated heavy-duty aluminium foil-spare parts for a portable solar furnace-and some glue. While Dloan and Miz had been buying those, Sharrow had been in the hotel, placing a call to a descendant of one of the Dascen family’s servants, a man rich enough himself to have a butler and a private secretary both of whom Sharrow had to go through before she got to Bencil Dornay, who cordially and graciously invited her to his mountain house, along with her friends.
“-ast!” Sharrow heard Miz say.
“What?” she sent back, rattled by the tone of his voice. There was no reply. She stared into the distance, where the white line of the monorail disappeared into the desert shimmer.
“I can see it!” Cenuij shouted from above.
An infinitesimal silent line appeared on the liquid horizon, barely visible through the trembling air. The tiny bright line lengthened; sun burst off it briefly, flickering, then blinked out again.
Sharrow stood up and clicked the visor magnification to twenty. It was like looking at a toy-train set reflected in a pool of wobbling mercury. The train was still a couple of kilometres away from where Miz was lying on the top of the monorail. She watched the shadows of the support legs flicking across the train’s nose as it raced along under the rail, a tearing silver line curving through the heat.
She counted.
“Shit,” she heard herself say. The shadows were strobing across the train’s aircraft-sleek snout at almost three per second; the supports were spaced every hundred metres and the expresses normally ran at about two-twenty metres per second; that was the speed they’d based their calculations on. She drew a breath, to tell Miz to throw the foil over early, when she saw a flash under the monorail.
“Foil’s down!” she heard Miz yell.
If Miz’s plan was going to work, the train’s needle radar should now be picking up the echo of the foil screen and slamming the emergency brakes on.
“It’s going too fast,” she beamed to Zefla. “It’ll overshoot.”
“On my way,” Zefla sent back, and started running towards Sharrow.
A roaring, screaming noise came through the tight-beam; Miz was just audible above the racket, shouting, “Feels like it’s braking. Here it comes!”
“Start running!” Cenuij called down to Sharrow.
“I’m running, I’m running,” she muttered, sprinting across the corrugated karst towards the next support leg.
Two kilometres away, Miz lay on the top of the monorail, his cheek held just off the burning surface. The vibration and the noise bored through him; the humming from beneath built into a teeth-aching buzz that seemed to threaten to jolt him right off the rail. He spread himself out, trying to clamp himself to the rail with his hands and feet. Beneath him, the circle of foil he’d dropped into the path of the train vibrated gently on its plastic stays, its coated surface reflecting the train’s radar. The noise and vibration rose to a crescendo as the furiously braking train screamed past underneath.
“Shi-i-i-i-t!” Miz said, his teeth chattering, every bone in his body seeming to judder. The vortex of air swept up and over him, lashing at his clothes.
The bullet nose of the decelerating train hit the circle of foil, ripping through it instantly and sending the shredded pieces fluttering through the air like a flock of falling silver birds.
The train roared away, still braking. Miz jumped up. “I’d put that second foil down now, kids!” he tight-beamed, then ran to the support leg and started climbing down towards the All-Terrain.
Sharrow slowed, looking back down the curving line of support legs; light and shade flickered at their limit. She ran on through the parched air, still slowing, and waited for the second circle of foil to drop above her. She could hear the train now; a distant roar.