“That’s the stuff. Pour me another, sweetie. I’ve got my drinking cap on, and my liver is going to take some real punishment this evening.”
The waiter looked at me imploringly, but I just gave him a What can you do? shrug. He sighed, quietly, in a Barbarians Are at the Gate sort of way, and refilled Molly’s glass. She knocked that one back too.
“I can’t help feeling you’re not getting the most out of that,” I said.
“I’m thirsty!” Molly said loudly. “It’s been a busy old day.” She glared at the waiter, and he hurried to pour her a third glass. He then put the bottle in the ice bucket and ran away before he could be forced to participate in any more appalling behaviour. Molly sipped at her Champagne, little finger delicately extended, grinned at me, and looked out the window. At all the endless, unmarked snow rushing past. I looked too, just to keep her company. There still wasn’t a single tree or landmark to be seen anywhere, even along the distant horizon. No sign of life, let alone civilisation.
“It’s like looking at a dead world,” Molly said quietly. “Like looking at the surface of the Moon . . . Siberia. You were here once before, weren’t you, Eddie? On that case you still don’t like to talk about.”
“Yes,” I said. “The great spy game. Somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, buried deep beneath the Siberian tundra, lies one of my family’s greatest secrets and most terrible horrors.”
“What?” said Molly.
“Hush,” I said. “Keep your voice down. We don’t want to wake him.”
“Your family history never ceases to appal me,” said Molly.
But there must have been something in my face . . . because she stopped asking questions. We both have our pasts, and our secrets, places we cannot go. Molly looked out at the empty landscape again, resting her chin on her hand.
“How are we supposed to find this Gateway?” she said morosely. “How are we supposed to find anything, in all this . . . wilderness?”
“The Doormouse said we’d just know,” I said. “That we’d sense where it was, the moment we were close enough, whether we wanted to or not. Which is, of course, not in the least worrying.”
“What can you do?” said Molly. “He’s a Mouse.”
We stopped talking, as the food finally arrived. So much food, in fact, that it had to be wheeled to our table on several large trolleys, by several large waiters hoping to share in a really big tip. Or perhaps because they wanted to see what kind of idiots would order so much more food than they could possibly eat. The waiters took it in turn to lay out plates and bowls, dishes and tureens, and all kinds of steaming-hot food, until they ran out of room on the table and had to start overlapping things. I just sat back and let them get on with it. I have to say, everything smelled pretty damned good. Molly started making cute little hungry sounds, and clapping her hands together. When the waiters finally finished, they stood back and stared respectfully at the magnificent repast they’d delivered, and then they all looked expectantly at me and Molly. Molly looked right back at them, and they all suddenly remembered they were needed urgently somewhere else, and ran away as slowly as their dignity would allow.
Molly and I tried bits and pieces of everything, stabbing things with forks or just picking them up with fingers. To the accompaniment of appalled noises from people around us, who couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I chewed enthusiastically at this and that, only occasionally spitting things out. Because there are limits. A lot of what we’d ordered turned out to be regional specialities, and strange delicacies from local cultures. Mostly hotly spiced meats, and unfamiliar vegetables beaten and boiled to within an inch of their lives. Some was just unidentifiable bits of animal, whole organs swimming in sauces thickened with fresh blood. More like a road accident than a meal.
“I think this . . . is yak,” I said, chewing determinedly on something purple, served on a bed of bright pink rice and grey peas. “On the grounds that just eating this fills me with an overwhelming impulse to shout Yak! in a loud and carrying voice.”
“I think what I’ve got here is Mammoth,” said Molly. “It’s certainly big enough. Could this be its trunk, do you think?”
“No,” I said judiciously. “That looks like a much more intimate part of its anatomy. You’re going to eat it, aren’t you?”
“Damn right I am!” said Molly. “I’m hungry! You sure I can’t tempt you to try just a little bit?”
“No,” I said. “I would wince with every bite.”
“I wonder if they had to tenderise it first, with a mallet?” said Molly, smiling wickedly, and I had to cross my legs and look the other way.
We ended up eating a hell of a lot of the food, and drinking all of the Champagne, before finally throwing in the napkin and leaning back in our seats, happily replete and more than a little stuffed. Molly fixed me with a sly grin.
“You know, I could probably use my magics to convince the conductor we have reservations for a first-class sleeping compartment. How would you like to join the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Club?”
“Nice thought,” I said. “But I am so full right now, all I’d want to do with a bed is sleep in it. My body is completely preoccupied with digestion.”
“Getting old, Eddie,” said Molly. “But we could just sleep, if you like. It has been a long, hard day . . . We could take it in turns, one sleeping while the other stays on guard. If we really are in any danger, this far from everyone and everything . . .”
“We’re in danger wherever we are,” I said. “And perhaps especially here. If word has got out that we’re going after the Lazarus Stone, they’ll expect us to go through Ultima Thule. So there are bound to be people lying in wait along the way . . . Hoping to intercept us, or follow us, or just pick us off from a distance. People who would just love to catch us napping . . . No, Molly, we can’t sleep, we can’t take it easy, and we can’t take our eye off the ball. Even for a moment.”
Molly looked out the window again. “There’s no one out there, Eddie.”
“No one we can see.”
Molly sniffed, and gestured rudely at the other diners. “I can’t see much of a threat coming from any of these overprivileged nostalgia freaks. Unless they plan to smug us to death.”
And then we both sat up straight, as shouts and screams and sounds of open violence suddenly exploded from beyond the closed door at the end of the restaurant carriage. The door we’d come in through. The other diners looked up, startled, and began to babble nervously among themselves. One large gentleman stood up, rather officiously, and started toward the door to investigate. He’d almost reached it when the door was smashed inwards with such force that the whole thing was blasted off its hinges and out of its frame. It flew down the aisle to slam into the large gentleman, knocking him off his feet and onto his back. He lay groaning on the floor, with the door on top of him.
One of the white-uniformed stewards came flying through the gap where the door had been, tumbling bonelessly down the narrow aisle between the tables, until finally he crashed to a halt. There was blood all over the torn white uniform, and it was suddenly horribly clear that the body had no head. The ragged wound at the neck suggested the head had been torn off by brute force.
Blood from the severed neck had been thrown everywhere as the body tumbled down the aisle, splashing the furnishings and fittings, and soaking into the expensive clothing of those diners sitting in the aisle seats. Their cries went flying up like startled birds, and they shrank back in their seats, away from the awful thing that had so violently invaded their comfortable lives. I looked at Molly, and we both got up from our seats and moved out into the aisle, to face whatever might be coming. We stood side by side, confronting the dark opening. Molly shot me a quick grin, ready for anything, and I had to smile back at her.