On the Train Read online

  Javan started to get angry. Showing that would have been a bad mistake. To keep from showing it, he spoke in his driest tones: “Could be.”

  “Heh.” Siilo cuffed him, again more in affection than not—but not altogether. “Besides your brains, you got one other thing going for you when you carry the tray.”

  “Oh? What’s that?” Javan asked, as he knew he should.

  “If I do cooking, what you sell will be super extra delicious,” Siilo answered proudly.

  “Could be,” Javan said, his voice as dry as it had been a moment before.

  He made the old man laugh out loud. That filled him with pride—he could count the times he’d managed it on his fingers.

  He’d told Siilo he could sell. He’d told himself the same thing at the same time. He hadn’t the faintest idea whether he was telling the truth. Luisa assured him that he’d do fine. Her trust made him feel better and worse at the same time. He would have been crushed if she hadn’t thought he could do it. But if he failed now, he’d fail her, too. And that would be more crushing still.

  His heart thuttered when Siilo draped the strap to the tray around his neck. The old man had to adjust it so the tray sat right—Javan was half a head taller. He felt proud again once it went into place, as if he were a prince invested with a magic sword in one of the costume dramas that delighted Pingasporeans.

  My home city makes up stories about magic. Me, I’ve seen it, Javan thought. That helped steady him. So did the delicious aromas rising from the tray as Siilo filled it full. Surely no magic sword had ever smelled so good.

  Siilo set a callused hand on his shoulder. “Go sell, boy. Go. Keep us both eating. I make more for when you sell all that.”

  “Not all of it.” Javan ate the meat and onions and mushrooms off one skewer in a couple of quick bites. “Breakfast.”

  “Breakfast,” Siilo agreed. “You see how super extra delicious it is when I do it?”

  “Oh, yes. You have everything spiced just right.” Javan wasn’t about to argue with his boss, especially when he didn’t have to strain himself to pay a compliment. It wasn’t as if Siilo had forgotten what he was up to at the grill just because he’d been away from it for a little while.

  Once Javan finished eating, he had no excuses left. If he was going to do this, he had to do it. He took a deep breath and wiggled a little to make the strap more comfortable. Then he walked away from Siilo, through the little vestibule between the converted freight car and the hindmost passenger carriage, and into a kind of chaos different from the one he’d got used to with the snack-sellers and their helpers.

  The third-class carriage was packed. Javan had never seen a third-class carriage that wasn’t packed. Children yelled and clambered over benches and ran up and down the narrow aisle. One of them almost tripped him as soon as he walked into the carriage.

  “You stupid moron, watch where you’re going!” the brat squalled in Traintalk. He thought it was Javan’s fault!

  Javan didn’t boot the little monster halfway to the other end of the carriage. His family had trained him to be polite. That was a demon of a lot more than you could say for the horrible kid.

  “Snacks! Siilo’s snacks! Get your skewers right here!” The first time Javan came out with it, he could hardly hear his own voice. The children, the dicers, the drinkers, the poor people—the people like him—in the carriage would have had no idea he was there if they hadn’t seen him and smelled what he was carrying.

  “Gimme one of them,” a skinny woman said, tugging at his tunic. “And where’s Siilo at, anyways?”

  “He’s cooking for a while,” Javan answered as he handed her a skewer. “The food is super extra delicious now.” He stole Siilo’s line without a qualm.

  “That’s what you say.” The woman gave him a debit card. He did what he needed to do with it and returned it. On this stretch of The Railroad, the mechanical arts seemed strong, perhaps even stronger than they were in Pingaspor. Pretty soon…I’ll worry about that when The Train comes to it, Javan thought. Not like I don’t have plenty of other things to worry about now.

  He went up through the third-class carriages, calling, “Siilo’s super extra delicious snacks! Get Siilo’s super extra delicious snacks right here!”

  He made sales. The tray emptied. People were used to buying Siilo’s snacks. They’d buy them from someone else, as long as that someone else made it plain what they were. A lot of them would, anyhow.

  Before long, Javan had to go back to the grill to fill up the tray. Sure enough, Siilo had snagged a tall stool from somewhere. Maybe it was a discard from a saloon car; it wobbled to and fro as The Train rolled along the track. Siilo rode it with as much aplomb as if he’d perched on it for half his life.

  “You back already?” he barked at Javan. “I bet you eat up half the tray yourself, and that’s how come.”

  “No such thing,” Javan said indignantly. “Here. See for yourself.” He showed Siilo the numbers on the card-reader.

  “Huh.” The old man shoved it away. “Don’t you stand around here, all oopy-doopy on account of you sell maybe a little bit. Go do some more.” He started filling Javan’s tray again.

  “Oopy-doopy?” That was a bit of Traintalk—if it was Traintalk—Javan had never heard before.

  “Oopy-doopy.” Siilo sounded sure of it. But then, Siilo sounded sure of just about everything. “Go on now. Get out of here. Work!”

  Because he’d just gone through the third-class carriages, Javan didn’t sell much in them on his second pass. He wasn’t too upset at that; he’d known it would happen. So he took the tray up to the second-class carriages.

  He hadn’t been up there since he boarded The Train. He sometimes thought he’d barely been up to the third-class carriages since he started working for Siilo; he’d spent most of his time on that smooth wooden bench either sleeping or trying to sleep.

  Second class was a different world, as different from third as Dongorland was from Pingaspor. Second class seemed as magical as that now-approaching land of sorcery, too. The aisle was wider. The individual seats seemed wide, too, and generously padded. They were also generously spaced. They went back if you wanted to sleep in them, or even if you just wanted to relax. There was carpet under his sandals when he walked up through these carriages.

  Would anyone here want to buy from him? Only one way to find out. “Siilo’s snacks!” he called, nervously at first but then with more energy in his voice. “Siilo’s super extra delicious snacks!”

  “Give me two skewers,” a man said, holding up his thumb and forefinger in case Javan didn’t understand him. “Where’s the old man?”

  “He’s cooking for a while,” Javan answered. “That’s why the snacks are super extra delicious.”

  “I liked ’em fine before,” the man said. Hearing that made Javan feel good, since he’d cooked them before. He’d done it to Siilo’s recipe, of course, but the work was his own. The customer went on, “I’ve seen how his leg was bothering him. Is that why you’re doing the carrying for now?”

  “It is,” Javan said. “Let me have your card, please.”

  “Here you go.” The man handed it to him. “When you go back there, tell him Minifing hopes he feels better soon.”

  “Minifing.” Javan repeated the name so he wouldn’t forget it. “I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks.” Minifing nodded. “He knows who I am. I’ve been buying from him for a long time.” He sounded pleased that Siilo would recognize his name. “His food is cheaper than what you can get in the dining cars. You ask me, it’s better, too. Some people don’t care how they spend their money. I’m stupid all kinds of ways, but not like that.”

  “Good for you. Me, neither,” Javan said.

  Minifing chuckled at that. “Oh, I believe you, son. Siilo wouldn’t take on anybody who was. He’s stupid some ways, too, but not like that. And me…I started out back there on those lousy hard benches myself, you know. I remember what that was like—you bet I do. This
here, this is better.”

  Sitting soft? Sleeping soft? Sleeping stretched out? The only trouble with coming up here was that Javan envied the people who got to stay here all the time. It felt cooler here than it did in the third-class carriages, too, or maybe just more reliably cool. Whatever they used in the carriages where Javan usually stayed, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. No, third class wasn’t everything it might have been—not even close.

  “Don’t waste all your time gabbing with Minifing,” a woman a couple of rows farther up called to Javan. “I want to get something to eat, too.”

  “He’s not wasting his time, Rosita,” Minifing said with dignity. “He’s spending it.” Rosita made a rude noise. Minifing laughed.

  So did Javan, more from relief than for any other reason. The people in the second-class carriages had more money than he did. Well, all right—lots of people in Pingaspor had had more money than he did, too. But even the richer Pingasporeans were people. And the same seemed true of these second-class passengers.

  Javan sold Rosita her skewers. He made his way up the aisle. “Siilo’s snacks!” Now he sounded like himself. “Siilo’s super extra delicious snacks! Get ’em here! Get ’em from me! Get ’em now!”

  Damned if they didn’t. They weren’t just people of a familiar sort. They were hungry people of a familiar sort—the best kind of people, as far as a snack-seller was concerned. And, because they had more money, they bought more food. Javan also liked that.

  Quite a few of them asked after Siilo. Javan hoped he got all their names right. If he didn’t, the old man would likely give him a hard time when he brought them back to the converted freight car.

  Siilo, in fact, proved more interested in the numbers on the card-reader than in the customers’ best wishes. He liked them, yes, but in the same way a sausage-maker liked his hogs. However much he liked them, he had to extract value from them. That came before everything else.

  He plucked a white hair from his chin beard. His eyes crossed as he looked at it. Then he let it fall. “Well,” he said at last. “I have worse mornings myself sometimes, bugger me blind if I don’t.”

  “The snacks must be super extra delicious,” Javan said, deadpan.

  “Sim. I bet that’s it,” Siilo answered. “Now they getting hungry for lunch. You go out again. Could be you work all the way up to first-class carriages. That don’t happen every day. You bet it don’t—not even close.”

  In all the time Javan had traveled on The Train, he’d never once set foot in a first-class carriage. He had an idea of how much it cost to travel in that kind of style. Plenty more than the likes of him had, that was how much. He counted himself lucky that he’d been able to get on The Train at all.

  Minifing had started off in the third-class carriages, though. He’d said so. Somehow, he’d managed to put enough together to upgrade his ticket. Javan was used to his bench by now. He wondered if he’d still be able to fall asleep stretched out on something soft.

  He sighed. Finding out would be nice, wouldn’t it?

  Siilo’s glare snapped him out of his reverie. “How come you still hanging around?” the old man growled. “Go on. Go sell. Super extra delicious!”

  Javan made himself nod. “Super extra delicious. Right.” And away he went.

  The conductor studied Javan’s ticket. He also studied the bits of silver wire Javan had pressed into his hand. At last he nodded, with deliberation a judge might have admired. “We can make that change,” he said, as solemnly as that judge might have pronounced guilt or innocence in a capital case.

  “Then do it, please,” Javan said.

  “All right. I do it.” The conductor used Traintalk with some of Siilo’s abruptness. He wrote on the ticket. He punched it with a brass punch. And he stamped it with the seal ring he wore on his right middle finger. The stamp glowed for a moment with a clear blue light—they were in Marmorica, and magic played its part in everything they did. Smiling, the conductor looked from Javan to Luisa, who stood beside him. “This suits you, young lady?”

  “Oh, yes!” Luisa’s hand stole into Javan’s. He squeezed. She squeezed back.

  “Well, good. It had better. People get seats side by side, they need to get along, you know?” the conductor said.

  Javan squeezed Luisa’s hand again. “We wouldn’t have changed seats this way if we didn’t,” he said. She nodded. And his reply was nothing but the truth. Yes, he’d had to pay a fee to The Railroad to change his seat to the one next to Luisa’s. He’d also had to pay the man who’d been sitting beside her to trade seats with him. He hoped the middle-aged woman from Kambok wouldn’t be too sorry at getting a new seatmate—she’d always been kind to him. He also hoped she didn’t feel like going to the saloon car and hoisting a few to celebrate getting rid of Javan at last. He didn’t think she would, but you never could tell.

  “All right.” The conductor leered. “Third class. Everybody see everything that happen in third class. Everybody gossip about it, too. Even in the middle of the night, everybody see. You know someplace quiet you can go?”

  Luisa looked down at the hardwood planks on the floor. She wasn’t pale-skinned like Bordric, but her ears turned pink anyhow. Javan wondered if the conductor wanted to tell them about a discreet, quiet place or two—for some more silver wire, of course. Instead of finding out, he said, “I think we’ll manage.”

  “Well!” The man in the blue kepi threw his hands in the air. Yes, he’d been angling for another fee, one that would go straight into his pocket, not to The Railroad. “I hope you do.” The way he said it made him out to be a liar. Muttering under his breath, he stomped off.

  “Someplace quiet.” Luisa smiled saucily at Javan. “Sim, I think we can find a place like that. If we were up in first class…”

  “Wish for the moons while you’re at it,” Javan said. Now he’d sold snacks up in first class. He knew what it was like. They didn’t just have reclining seats there. They had real beds, and curtains you could pull around them. He hadn’t seen any hired pretty girls or handsome men sharing those beds with the first-class passengers, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Behind those curtains, you could do whatever you wanted, and no one would ever know—unless you made too much noise, of course.

  Now he also knew exactly what riding up there cost. It wasn’t enough to buy The Train. (He didn’t think so, anyway.) But it was a lot more than a young snack-seller with a brand-new spouse who served meals in the dining car could readily imagine having. He wished he were rich. Wishing didn’t seem likely to make it happen, even in a land where magic worked.

  Sure enough, though, he and Luisa did know some spots that were quiet, at least in the middle of the night. It might have been more comfortable in a nice, soft bed, but it was wonderful any which way. While Javan held Luisa, he thought he was richer than all the first-class passengers put together.

  Then he’d grab what sleep he could, and then he’d go back to work for Siilo. No one who worked for Siilo was ever likely to imagine he was rich—not for long, he wasn’t. Rich or not, though, Javan was happier than he could ever remember being.

  Around the world. West to east. No matter what the people riding on it did, no matter what they loaded onto it or took off it, The Train rolled on. A little less than a year after Javan found his place in that third-class carriage, it slowed to a stop in Pingaspor for the second time.

  As he had before, he begged some time off from Siilo and jammed his face up against the window glass to get a look at his home city. He’d changed a lot since coming aboard. He was still only beginning to realize how much (for that matter, he was still changing, too). He’d found steady work—maybe not work he wanted to do for the rest of his life, but work that kept him fed and kept him busy. And he’d found love.

  Pingaspor had also changed. Not for the better, either, or it didn’t seem so to him. The streets of his home city had always been packed with cycles and segways, buses and trucks, hoppers and people on foot. N
ow they looked eerily empty.

  No—almost empty. Here came a long column of soldiers. Under the beetling brims of their fritzhats, their faces, all slabs and angles and impassive eyes, might have been machined from bronze. They carried firespears and storm rifles and marched in perfect unison, again like machines.

  The city rulers had slapped posters on everything that didn’t march. The posters that didn’t shout about how wonderful Pingaspor was did shout about how awful and wicked and vile and perfidious Namila was.

  “But that’s silly!” Javan exclaimed. The next city farther east was just the next city farther east…wasn’t it? Was he suddenly supposed to think Luisa was awful and wicked and vile and perfidious? She came from Namila. He remembered when she’d got on The Train, right after he had. “Silly,” he said again. He loved her no matter where she came from.

  Nobody in Pingaspor seemed to think all the insults the locals were flinging at Namila were silly. Or if people did, they didn’t dare show it, for fear of what the rulers would do to them. Javan didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so much in earnest as those soldiers.

  When The Train reached the depot, the platform was almost empty. Javan had wondered if he’d be able to spot Kiri and Uharto in the usual jostling crowd, but there was no crowd. More soldiers in their tarncapes made sure of that. A few somber passengers waited to get on. Stevedores stood by to deal with freight. And that was about it.

  “Pingaspor!” the conductor shouted in several tongues as The Train slowed to a stop. “All out for Pingaspor!” Did they sound less sure of themselves than usual, as if wondering why anybody in his right mind would want to get off at Pingaspor today? It might have been Javan’s imagination, but he didn’t think so.

  Two or three people did disembark. They stood on the platform with dazed expressions, as if wondering what they were going to do in a city that might have taken leave of its senses. No, not as if—that had to be exactly what they were wondering. And the new passengers, the ones escaping Pingaspor, jumped onto The Train with the air of folk who knew they were escaping by the skin of their teeth.