On the Train Read online

  ON THE TRAIN

  HARRY TURTLEDOVE

  Sequel Novella by Rachel Turtledove

  THE STELLAR GUILD SERIES

  Mike Resnick, Series Editor

  published by Phoenix Pick

  An Imprint of Arc Manor

  P. O. Box 10339

  Rockville, MD 20849-0339

  Smashwords Edition

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  On The Train: All Aboard! copyright 2012 by Harry Turtledove. All rights reserved. On The Train: First Passage copyright © 2012 by Rachel Turtledove. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

  This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.

  Segway is a registered trademark of Segway Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

  Series edited by Mike Resnick.

  ISBN (Digital Edition): 978-1-61242-077-6

  ISBN (Paper Edition): 978-1-61242-076-9

  *****

  Table of Contents

  Series Editor’s Introduction

  Book One – All Aboard!

  Introducing Rachel Turtledove

  Book Two – First Passage

  A Greeting from the Series Editor

  Greetings, and welcome to another Stellar Guild book.

  The first two in the series have sold well enough that we can safely predict that the Stellar Guild will be around for a while, and that can only bode well for the future of science fiction. Because the purpose of the Stellar Guild is to team a superstar science fiction writer up with a protégé of his own choosing. The star writes a novella, the protégé writes a long novelette set in the same universe and shares a book that’s guaranteed to get him or her better exposure than 98% of first novels do.

  This particular team-up is a little more unique than most, because bestseller and Hugo winner Harry Turtledove chose to team up with his own very talented daughter. (Two generations of writers are not unheard-of in this field. My own daughter, Laura, won the 1993 Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Fritz Leiber’s son Justin wrote some fantasy novels; Todd McCaffrey has taken over the Pern series after collaborating on a number of books with Anne before her death; and there have been a few others — but it’s still a rarity.)

  However, we’re not publishing this because it’s a rarity, but because we’re convinced that it’s a damned good book, and we think you’ll agree long before you’re halfway through it.

  And keep your eye out for more Stellar Guild team-ups. We’ve got Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, Eric Flint and their protégés under contract; Kevin J. Anderson and Mercedes Lackey and theirs are already in print; and we’re negotiating with still more superstars who want to give their protégés a very visible platform from which to shine.

  Mike Resnick

  ***

  ON THE TRAIN

  Book One

  ALL ABOARD!

  HARRY TURTLEDOVE

  The sun beat down on Pingaspor. Not much happened in the tropical town. What did happen mostly happened in slow motion.

  Except when The Train pulled in.

  A wise man somewhere along The Railroad once said, “You cannot step into The same Train twice.” A wag somewhere else along The Railroad soon answered, “You cannot step into The same Train once.” Yes, he was a wag, but maybe he wasn’t so far wrong just the same. And passengers on The Train carried his words along with the wise man’s to stops all along The Railroad: which is to say, to stops all around the world.

  Javan had heard both sayings. He knew the truth of one of them, for he’d seen it with his own eyes. Sometimes The Train pulled into Pingaspor with smoke belching from a tall stack. Sometimes it glided into town almost as clean and silent as a dream. Once, not long before he was born, a team of elephants had brought The Train to the Pingaspor depot. Graybeards still chattered about that, in smokeshops and coffeehouses.

  Once, before his great-grandfather was born, a team of dragons had pulled The Train into Pingaspor. These were not magic lands, so that created a great sensation. There were photographs of the day even yet, showing the dragons’ huge red wings furled against their green, scaly hides. Of course everyone knew photographs lied, and could be made to lie in many different ways. If only someone had made a sketch! You could trust a sketch. At least half the Pingasporeans disbelieved the old story, photographs or no.

  Javan himself did, at least half the time.

  Up till now, he’d never had much to do with The Train. Oh, like any young man along The Railroad, he’d done his spell keeping the line in good repair. He’d shoveled dirt to shore up embankments. He’d spread gravel in the roadway. He’d swung a sledge, spiking new sleepers to the tracks to take the place of ties rotted through or eaten out by insect pests. Like any young man with an ounce of sense along The Railroad, he’d worked no harder than the overseers made him. It was something he had to do, not something he wanted to do. And the little bits of silver wire his labors won him did not inspire him to outdo himself. Oh, no—on the contrary.

  But now mirrors of polished bronze were flashing from the west. The Train was on the way!

  Because so little happened in Pingaspor, when something did word of it exploded through town like a shower of fireworks. Along with his kinsfolk and friends and neighbors, Javan hurried to the depot. Most of them wore no more than a strip of cloth to cover their loins. Some of the women covered their breasts with a similar strip, some supported them with one, and some did not bother doing either. Pingaspor lay on the equator; comfort was where you found it.

  Javan, now, Javan wore a baggy cotton shirt, brightly dyed in stripes, and loose-fitting cotton trousers (not dyed at all). Sandals flipped and flopped on his feet. He clutched the leather handles of a carpetbag in his right fist. Unlike his friends and relations, he was dressed for a journey.

  “You lucky polecat!” one of his friends said. Laughing, several others nodded.

  “Am I, Uharto?” Javan said. “I don’t know.”

  “Will you miss me?” asked a girl not far from his own age.

  “Of course I will, Kiri,” he answered, and she smiled at him. Her bare, pert breasts seemed to smile at him, too. Trying not to stare—it wasn’t exactly rude, but it wasn’t polite, either—Javan went on, “I expect I’ll miss everything about Pingaspor. They don’t do things our way all the time on The Train, or people say they don’t.”

  Kiri pouted. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Javan realized as much a few heartbeats too late. She wanted him to talk about her.

  “I’ll come back one day,” he tried.

  She tossed her head. Her hair flew in a blue-black cloud. “You’ll be old by then, chances are,” she said. “I expect I’ll have found somebody else. I don’t suppose I’ll even remember your name. Patan, Jaman—what did we used to call that silly fellow?”

  “I bet you’ll remember me if I’m rich,” Javan said.


  “Well, maybe,” Kiri admitted. People did get off The Train with fortunes: not very often, but they did. She tossed her head again. “If you’re rich, I bet you won’t remember me.”

  “Don’t count coconuts till you’ve got them down from the tree,” Uharto said. “C’mon.” Along with the others, he swept Javan toward the ticket counter.

  The man in the shade on the other side of the barred window couldn’t have looked more bored if he were dead. “Your fare,” he said, and held out his hand.

  Javan had to remind himself that his pouch was in a pocket on the unfamiliar trousers. He opened it and shoved silver wire, and even a scrap of gold—a gift from an uncle who’d done well for himself—at the impassive clerk.

  The man weighed the precious metal. “It will do,” he said grudgingly. “Here is your ticket.” It was printed in tiny type in several languages and folded over onto itself at least half a dozen times. In a sour voice, the man added, “You can take your place with the rest of the fools.”

  “He’s jealous ’cause you’re going and he’s not,” chubby Uharto said, his double chin wobbling as he spoke.

  That jolted the clerk out of boredom. He threw back his head and laughed raucously. “Am I stupid enough to believe one place is better than another? I don’t think so!”

  Ticket in hand, Javan went out on the platform with kinsfolk and friends and neighbors. Only ticket-holders could go right to the edge; guards and ropes held back the rest. His friends slapped him on the back and pumped his hands. Sniffling, his mother kissed him good-bye. Then Kiri did, too. He remembered that kiss a lot longer. When at last she broke away, he was amazed to find that her outline wasn’t printed on the fabric of his shirt.

  Only a couple of other passengers waited with him. One was a man of about forty—an old man, Javan thought—who held a carpetbag like his. The other was a woman of indeterminate age. She had a duffel, bigger than either man’s bag, at her feet. Like him, they both wore more clothes than was common in Pingaspor. The man wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.

  Javan peered down the long, straight track at the parallel rails that nevertheless seemed to meet somewhere before infinity. He smiled when he saw the first puff of smoke in the distance. “It’s coming!” he exclaimed.

  Both the older passengers leaned out to look, too. And they also both smiled. It wouldn’t be long now! Soon The Train sounded its whistle: two long, sonorous blasts of steam to let Pingaspor know it was almost here. As if Pingaspor didn’t already know!

  As it slowed down to pull in to the depot, the older man said, “Now that’s what The Train is supposed to look like.” He spoke in tones of satisfaction, as if he would have been disappointed had it looked any other way.

  Was there one Train or many? Towns all along The Railroad—towns all around the world—asked themselves the same question. Javan thought there was only one, but he wasn’t sure. No one was sure, all around the world. Like so many large questions, that one might have been better argued than answered, anyhow.

  Brakes squealing, locomotive chuffing, The Train eased to a stop. As the older man had said, this was the way The Train looked when you imagined it inside your head. The engine was a long, sleek 4-6-2, with drive wheels as tall as a man. The passenger carriages were of teak and mahogany and other expensive lumber, with fancy brasswork and a rococo flourishing of carvings and ornaments and gold leaf. What didn’t gleam with bright metal gleamed with polished wood instead.

  Even the freight cars were, well, clean. Some of them had writing on the sides, mostly in scripts that were only squiggles to Javan. Doors squealed open. Handlers in the blue livery of The Railroad handed boxes and crates and bales to the Pingasporean stevedores waiting to receive them. The local men and women gave back other bales and crates and boxes. Eventually, those would come off somewhere else. The boss handler took notes on a sheet of paper in a clipboard. The boss stevedore on the platform talked to a device he held in the palm of his hand. At other stops along The Railroad, it might work the opposite way.

  Then Javan stopped worrying about anything so trivial as freight. The doors to three or four passenger carriages came open. In smooth unison, conductors set down wooden steps that led from the carriages to the platform. The conductors wore blue, too, blue of finer fabric and cut than the freight-handlers’. They had brimmed pillbox caps on their heads. There was a name for those.…Kepis! Javan beamed when he came up with it.

  In smooth unison, the conductors chorused, “Pingaspor! All out for Pingaspor!” That was in the local language, oddly accented. They said what was probably the same thing in other tongues, too. Javan recognized the name of his home city, but no more.

  Only a handful of people got out. A tall woman’s red hair made Javan gape—you heard about that kind of thing, but you hardly ever saw it here. A man with a hooked nose and fierce eyes wrapped himself in robes against the heat. A lizardy thing perched on his shoulder, as a tame bird might. It had fierce eyes, too, and sharp teeth. People out beyond the ropes squealed and waved at another man, a Pingasporean. He waved, too, but he looked unsure of himself. How long had he been away, if he didn’t understand this was home?

  Then Javan forgot him, too, for the conductors gave the call he’d been waiting to hear: “All aboard, Pingaspor! All aboard!”

  He went up to the blue-uniformed man who stood closest to him and proudly displayed the ticket he and his family had scrimped and saved for so long to buy. If it impressed the fellow in the kepi, he hid it very well. He unfolded the ticket with unconscious skill, skimmed the fine print, and pulled out a paper punch, which he plied with might and main.

  “You are in a third-class carriage. You understand? Third-class,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully. No, Pingasporean wasn’t his birthspeech. “You are in carriage number forty-three, bench five, place four. You understand? You read numbers?”

  “Yes, I understand you. Yes, I can read numbers,” Javan answered impatiently. He could read anything he pleased—well, anything in Pingasporean.

  The conductor only shrugged. “All good, then. Welcome aboard.” He waved Javan up the steps down which the red-haired woman had come a moment before.

  Up Javan went, at a bound. The carriage in which he found himself was cooler than the platform had been; he suddenly found himself glad to be wearing more clothes than usual.

  This was carriage number eleven: so it proclaimed in several languages and numbering systems. It was a second-class carriage, with padded seats that could recline. People—all kinds of people, wearing all kinds of clothes—stared at Javan. Greenhorn! He could read it in their eyes, no matter how exotic their features or coloring might have been.

  Well, he was a greenhorn, but not so green that he couldn’t figure out carriage forty-three would be farther from the engine than carriage eleven. Keeping his own eyes on the flowery carpet, he hurried down the aisle. He fumbled at the door; it used a latch he wasn’t familiar with. But he made it work before anyone laughed out loud or, worse, got up to help him. And he did better when he opened the door into carriage twelve, and better still with the door that led out of it.

  Third class, once he got to it, was a long step down from second. The seats were hard wooden benches. Some of the people sitting on them had cushions. Had they known to bring those along when they boarded? Javan wondered if he could make do with clothes from his carpetbag.

  Bench five, place four. Sitting between him and his place was a woman old enough to be his mother. “Excuse me, but that’s my seat,” he said, pointing.

  She replied in a clipped, economical tongue he’d never met before. He spread his hands to show he couldn’t understand. She tried again, this time in the language of Kambok, the city just west of Pingaspor on The Railroad. Javan didn’t speak it, but he knew it when he heard it. When she saw he still couldn’t follow, she smiled, shrugged, moved her knees aside, and patted the empty space. That, he got. As he sat down, he saw that the wooden bench was also polished: not with spice-scen
ted oils, but with the rubbing of backsides and spines uncountable—certainly by him. He wriggled, trying to get as comfortable as he could.

  There was his Pingaspor, on the other side of the window glass. There was his family, his mother crying on his father’s shoulder. There was Kiri, with the smiling breasts. He could still feel them, printed warm against his chest. He could still jump up, open the door, and go back to what he’d always known. He could…

  He sat where he was, alone in the jam-packed carriage.

  Handlers’ shouts and thumps and jolts transmitted along the length of The Train told him they were getting ready to set out. The engineer blew a long, echoing blast on his steam whistle. Javan wondered what kind of fool he’d made of himself by coming aboard. I’ll find out, he thought miserably.

  The Train began to roll. After the first little jerk as the couplings went tight, it didn’t seem to be moving at all. Rather, Pingaspor seemed to be unrolling in the opposite direction outside the window.

  Unroll it did, faster and faster. Pretty soon—much too soon—he was out in the suburbs and the fields. Then they unrolled, too, and rank jungle sprang up on either side of The Railroad. A flash of scarlet against the green was a bird on the wing.

  Javan watched it through a blur of tears he fought not to let fall. He was on The Train, bound for…whatever he was bound for. Pingaspor, everything he’d known in Pingaspor, Kiri—that all lay behind him now.

  A snack-seller came down the aisle. He carried a tray of roasted bite-sized bits of meat and pearl onions on bamboo skewers. When he called out his wares, he used what sounded like the economical language Javan’s benchmate had tried on him. People who bought talked with him in the same tongue, though by their looks and clothes they’d boarded at widely different stops on The Railroad.