“Sker.”
“The old train-witch doesn’t know.”
“The old train-witch has hightailed it.”
Skerry was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.
“She’s what?”
“Gone. Scarpered. Skedaddled. Flown the coop. Split the joint. Sker.”
“What?”
“There’s something else.”
Skerry’s stomach spasmed.
“What kind of something else?”
“He’s moving.”
“He’s not supposed to move.”
“I’m getting readings; he’s cast off from the dock and is under acceleration.”
Skerry swore. The calculations were all based on a stationary target. The margins were tight, hideously tight. Maimingly tight.
“Are we tracking him?”
“I’m setting up a radar lock now. That’s us. We’re locked on, provided he doesn’t make any sudden course changes. And, ah, Sker…”
“What now?”
“You know I said there was something else?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s another something else after that one.”
“Tell me.”
“Ground-to-orbit tracking at Molesworth has picked up a number of objects de-orbiting into atmospheric entry configurations.”
“A number, what number?”
“A big number.”
“How big a number?”
“Five thousand, in the first wave.”
“First wave? How many waves are there?”
“Four that Molesworth knows of.”
“Twenty thousand, that’s a big number. Does Molesworth know what they are?”
“Nothing on sensors, but, um, how should I put his? That other moon we used to have…”
“Oh, Mother of all Grace…”
“I don’t know how he’s done it, but he’s got into the planetary defence systems. He’s dropping soldiers all over the day side of the planet.”
Now Weill spoke in her ear.
“Thirty seconds. First positions.”
Skerry felt the dirigible shift altitude as Mishcondereya steered by radar through the cloud of unknowing. The fans swivelled into braking configuration, whirred, slowed to a safe-distancing thrum. Mishcondereya was parked directly over the Cathedral of the Church of the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family, matching its ponderous progress through the fog that would soon boil into angels and demons. Skerry tried to send her circus sense out into the churning mist, feeling for her unseen target, asking clues, hints, graces. Give me a sign, what does it look like? Give me a break, one little break.
“Ready, Bladnoch?” Weill said.
“Ready.”
“Ready, Mishcon?”
“Ready.”
“Ready, Skerry?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
She buckled the bungees together around her ankles, strapped the isokinetic punch around her left wrist. The charge light glowed. She would blow a pure and perfect circle out of the hull, dive head first through, blow free the bungee couplings, roll and come up slugging. Simple. Pity there wouldn’t be anyone there to see her greatest stunt.
The show goes on.
“Cue Armageddon,” Seskinore said. The green jump light went on. And, as it did every time, though she doubted it, every time, the fear went. Vanished. She was filled with a clear, cold certainty. It was easy. It was all so easy.
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard!” Skerry yelled, and dived head first out of the airship into the fog.
“Never!” Naon Sextus Solstice-Rising Asiim Engineer 11th thundered. His fist met the gleaming mahogany of the conference table. Tea glasses jumped, startled off their thick bottoms. “Never never never!” A double pound, doubly emphatic.
The gathered heads, without-portfolios and diverse uninviteds of the Domieties of Catherine of Tharsis turned their attention to the other end of the table where Child’a’grace sat, hands folded meekly in her lap, the natural leader of the rebel alliance.
She said, mildly, “But husband, it is your own mother.”
Naon Sextus’s mouth worked. For a terrible moment everyone thought all propriety would be undone and he would address his wife directly. He caught his words, turned to Marya Stuard, his lieutenant and interpreter.
“Inform my wife that she is correct, it is my mother, and Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer 10th is an Engineer of Engineers, and were she here, she would tell you no different from what I am telling you: we have never, never, never failed to deliver a contract. She would say, leave me there.”
The assembly pondered the self-orbiting logic. The Confab Chamber was steadily filling; word had passed up and down the train that the thing that had simmered four long years between Naon Engineer and his wife was at last coming to a head. Ringside seats at a full-blown domestic! Spectators packed the railed off Gentles and Relatives areas at each end of the carriage. The Bassareenis had turned out en famille. They were particularly keen to watch the snooty Engineers publicly disgrace themselves.
“But it was the red telephone,” Romereaux said. The conference room had a simple polarity. Stop the Trainers! at one end, The Mail Must Get Throughers at the other, undecideds down each side and baying bloodsports fans behind the studded brass railings. Amongst the nonaligned, mostly Tractions, a couple of new generation Deep-Fusion folk and the oldest Bassareenis, heads nodded, agreements muttered. A red telephone, yes, the red phone, starkest emergencies, Aid from Beyond Comprehension, in a time of Extreme Direness, only direst direness, Taal Chordant, of course she knows, wouldn’t have unless, worse than worst.
“Red telephones can be ignored,” Naon Engineer countered. There was a collective intake of breath. Heresy. Ignore a red telephone? Foolish. Worse than foolish. Reckless. Perilous. A dangerous precedent could be set. Taal Engineer was no grazeherd crying, “Leopard leopard leopard.” The collected heads turned back to Child’a’grace. She waited with an icon-like grace and stillness for the room to match her serenity. The very way she held herself in her council chair made everyone check his or her posture and sit up a little straighter.
“Husband, your mother, saints be kind to her, is being well aware of the Formas, of years more so even than you,” Child’a’grace said. That’s right, the nodding heads agreed, Yezzir. “Not for nothing would she imperil the economic well-being of this train and those who live upon her. Not for nothing, say I again, but for one thing and one thing only, and that is family. Wherefore this red phone, unless she has found our child, your daughter, Sweetness Octave?”
A smattering of applause swelled into a small ovation. Many Tractions, Deep-Fusioneers and Bassareenis bore generations of low-grade resentment at being the driven, never the driver. Smelling mutiny, Marya Stuard rose from her green buttoned-leather seat. The room fell silent.
“Economic well-being. Shall we explore this idea for a few moments? The economic well-being of this train and all who live upon her. That, I believe, was your expression, Child’a’grace. I’m very glad you used it because it clarifies our thinking upon this subject. For, despite our many Domieties and mysteries, ultimately, this train is one nation, mobile, indivisible. We are all on the same track together, headed for the same destination, carrying a common cargo. What we are discussing here is not an Engineer affair. It is not even a Stuard and Deep Fusion affair. It is all of us, Tractions, Bassareeenis, all the people of Catherine of Tharsis. That is why it warms me to see representatives here from all our peoples and ages. Our economic well-being, my friends. And that cannot be the responsibility of just one family, or one individual out of one family.”