On the Train Page 8

  “This is only because of what happened during the war. Otherwise…” Zulman pursed up his lips and said “Pleh!” again.

  “Fair is fair,” Javan said. “The Train needs the dining cars. It needs the snack-sellers, too. We should work together. We shouldn’t try to drive each other out of business.”

  All Zulman said to that was “Pleh!” one more time. But he didn’t try to back away from what he’d just agreed to.

  Javan took the news back to the converted freight car. Siilo and Bordric both wrung his hand and told him what a clever son of a dog he was. Bordric gave him a knock from a little green bottle Javan had never seen before. It was as fiery as a salamander going down, but warmed him nicely after it exploded in his stomach.

  “You going to be rich, boy! Rich, I tell you!” Siilo said. “Who would believe it? A snack-seller, he get rich? No, nobody believe that. But you gonna do it.”

  “I was lucky,” Javan said. “And I’m not rich yet.” Whatever was in the little green bottle didn’t make him lose all his sense, anyhow.

  “You gonna be,” Siilo insisted. Bordric nodded—he thought so, too. Javan only shrugged. He didn’t care about being rich. Well, no: he did care. But he still had trouble believing a snack-seller, a third-class passenger, could make that kind of jump.

  Even so, he was eager to tell Luisa about the arrangement he’d hammered out with Zulman. She hugged him. “That couldn’t have been easy,” she said. “I know him. He thinks every pig we kill for the cooks is like his own son.”

  “Who knows? He may be right,” Javan answered.

  She giggled. “Now I’m going to have to find somebody I can tell that to, somebody who’ll spread it around without letting anyone find out who started it.” Then she yawned. Javan had noticed she’d been acting more tired than usual the past few days.

  He was still full of himself. “If you listen to Bordric and Siilo, I’m going to be rich,” he bragged.

  “If you listen to Bordric and Siilo, you won’t have time to do anything else,” Luisa replied tartly. This time, Javan laughed. Before he could rise to the snack-sellers’ defense, though, she went on, “This once, I hope they’re right. I really do, because I’m going to have a baby.”

  “You’re—” Javan’s jaw dropped. He asked a man’s age-old stupid question: “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I need to be,” Luisa said. “And I’m sure of something else, too.”

  “What’s that?” Javan knew he sounded dazed, but he couldn’t help it. A baby! That they would have children one of these days was no surprise. That one of these days should turn out to be this one day…was.

  “I don’t want to raise a baby in a third-class carriage, not if I can help it,” Luisa said. “I know lots of people do it, but I want a child of mine—a child of ours—to have things better than that. Do you think you’ll make enough to let us upgrade our tickets by the time the baby comes?”

  “I…may,” Javan answered after some thought. “It depends on how many other snack-sellers decide to let me buy for them, and on how soon they do it.”

  “Try to get lots of them to, and as soon as you can,” Luisa said. “I don’t look forward to sleeping on this hard bench when I’m all bulging, either. The seats in the second-class carriages are a lot more comfortable. You even have the chance to stretch out.”

  “I know,” Javan said automatically. He started laughing again. It was either that or bang his head against the—very hard—back of the bench in front of him. Upgrading not one but two tickets from third class to second…“After we do that, we won’t need to worry about getting rich for a while. Quite a while, probably.”

  “We’ll manage,” Luisa said. “You work hard, and so do I. We’ve got each other. We’ll have the baby, too. We’ll both work even harder for it than we do for ourselves. And what more do we need?”

  “Nothing, really.” Javan hesitated, but in the end he did continue: “When will we find time to sleep in those nice chairs, though?”

  Luisa gave him the look a spouse saves for the times when the other spouse comes out with something uncommonly stupid. “We’ll manage,” she said once more. In ominous tones, she added, “Won’t we?”

  “Yes, dear,” Javan said, which was always the right answer.

  The conductor studied Javan’s ticket, and Luisa’s, with unusual interest. Light from flitting will-o’-the-wisps glinted off his spectacles—they were in Dongorland. “How about that?” he said. “Not the kind of thing folks ask me about every day.”

  Javan believed that. More often than not, if you took your seat in a third-class carriage when you got on The Train, you’d stay in third class till you got off or till you died—whichever came first. But, as Minifing had shown Javan when he started hawking Siilo’s snacks, you could move up if you worked hard and if you caught a few breaks—or more than a few.

  Javan and Luisa had both worked hard almost from the moment they’d boarded. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been able to stay on The Train, even in third class. And the war that hurt both Pingaspor and Namila so badly gave him the break he needed. Even when you got one, you had to be able to use it. Javan had done that, too.

  “You know there are fees involved,” the conductor said.

  “We can pay,” Javan answered. They’d still have something left after they did. And only a few stubborn snack-sellers—Darvish and a couple of other old men who didn’t like Siilo or anyone who had anything to do with Siilo—weren’t buying from the dining car through him now. He didn’t like to think of it as getting rich. Getting by: that was better.

  The conductor changed the subject (or perhaps he didn’t). To Luisa, he said, “Looks to me like you’re expecting.”

  “Sim, I am.” She nodded.

  “Good. That’s good.” The fellow smiled. “Babies, now, babies ride for free long as they don’t need a seat of their own. Sooner or later, though, you’ll have to buy a place for the little one. Once it’s not so little any more, I mean. That’s something else you’ll want to think about before you move up to second class.”

  “We have been thinking about it,” Luisa said. There was an understatement; it was one of the things that made Javan wonder whether they ever would find time to sleep once they upgraded to second class. Luisa put the best face on it she could: “We don’t have to worry about it right now, though. You said so yourself.”

  “I guess I did.” The conductor admitted what he couldn’t very well deny. “All right. We’ll take care of this now and the other thing when it comes up. One way or the other, that will work out.”

  A certain warning—or was it anticipation?—roughened his voice. If Javan and Luisa couldn’t pay for their child’s second-class ticket when the time came, they and the child would all go back down to third. Working your way up once wasn’t easy. Working up a second time would be the next thing to impossible.

  For now, though, the couple had what they needed to convert their third-class tickets to those for the carriages farther forward. The conductor took their fees. He took their old tickets and gave them new ones. And he said, “I hope you like what you get.”

  So do I, Javan thought. He’d grown very used to third-class carriages, no matter how strange and crowded they’d seemed when he first climbed onto The Train. Changing to something new made him suspicious, even if it was supposed to be something better.

  But Luisa answered firmly: “I’m sure we will.” Her eyes challenged Javan to be anything but sure. He didn’t have the nerve.

  The conductor escorted them to their new seats. The passengers already in the second-class carriage gave them curious looks. When new people took seats in a carriage, it was almost always at a stop. Almost always, but not this time.

  A low buzz of conversation rose. “Isn’t that the snack-seller?” somebody said.

  “It is!” someone else exclaimed. “Siilo’s super extra delicious snacks—that’s him.”

  “What’s he doing here, though?” a woman asked
. “It looks like he’s getting seats in this carriage—him and his lady friend.” The last couple of words were vitriol dipped in honey.

  A man said, “I don’t know how many times she’s given me lunch in the dining car.”

  “Is that all she’s given you?” The woman couldn’t have been bitchier if she’d tried.

  “Shh! They’ll hear you,” another woman said.

  And so they would. Javan and Luisa looked at each other. Javan hadn’t expected—this. I should have, he realized. Plenty of people in Pingaspor jeered at social climbers. Money could buy places. Buying acceptance was harder, in Pingaspor and evidently on The Train, too. It would come more slowly, if it came at all.

  “We’re here,” Javan whispered to Luisa. “We’ve got as much right to be here as they do. And if they don’t like it, too bad for them.” She nodded, but her face was troubled.

  Slowly and deliberately, Javan settled into the seat he’d got. It was soft—soft enough to surprise his spine, which looked for a hard bench back to rub against it. He found the control that made the seat recline. Sure enough, it did. He couldn’t tell whether he liked it or not. Yes, he’d got used to being upright all the time.

  Beside him, Luisa was getting acquainted with her new seat, too. “This is good,” she said. Maybe she was trying to convince Javan, or maybe herself. After a moment, she spoke with more assurance: “And it will be wonderful when the baby comes.”

  “Of course.” Javan couldn’t go far wrong agreeing with her. He wondered if he would get any sleep at all in this unfamiliar seat. He hadn’t got much his first night in the third-class carriage. Yes, this was better. That would matter later. On the first night, its being different counted more.

  It did for him, anyhow. Luisa fell asleep right away, and slept as if someone had drugged her dinner. She’d been doing the same thing in the third-class carriage. A woman there told her you slept as much as you could before you had your baby, because you wouldn’t sleep at all afterwards. That made more sense than Javan wished it would have.

  He looked out the window. It was dark outside, so there was nothing to see. And then, all of a sudden, there was. Fairies—this was Dongorland, and they couldn’t have been anything else—danced in a glowing ring. He stared at them in awe and wonder till The Train rolled on and left them behind.

  Javan smiled to himself in slow wonder. When you got on The Train, you saw marvels you wouldn’t even have dreamt of before you set out. He glanced over at Luisa. Too bad she hadn’t glimpsed the shining, dancing fairies. Then his eyes went from her face, slack-featured now in sleep, to her belly. She had a marvel of her own, growing inside her. What did she need with fairies?

  On went The Train. Eventually, it came around to Pingaspor again. The war was still going on. The city looked battered. Something had melted part of the domed roof on the Wisdom Stupa, and the Needle of Victory had fallen over and knocked off the Patriot without a Name’s left arm, though the rest of the statue still stood. The few people Javan saw on the streets looked worried and preoccupied. No one got on or off The Train. He couldn’t remember that happening before. After The Train pulled out of the depot, he saw that the great cliffside face had lost its nose.

  White flags flying all over, The Train slowly passed through the fighting zone. No one damaged The Railroad this time. They entered Namilan territory without any trouble. When they reached the city, it also showed scars. The people there seemed as weary and wary and furtive as the Pingasporeans. A woman got off at the depot. No one boarded there.

  “It’s so sad,” Luisa said.

  “So stupid,” Javan said.

  “That, too,” she agreed. Her belly bulged enormously now. “I wish this silly baby would come out.”

  A few days later, it did. Supported by Javan, Luisa waddled to the first-aid car in front of the caboose. Then he went back to work. No matter what else was going on, that wouldn’t keep. He didn’t get to see how she was doing till after nightfall. The baby still hadn’t come.

  “Another couple of hours, I think,” the midwife said.

  “That’s not too long,” Javan said.

  “Yes, it is!” Luisa snarled. “You got the fun. I have to do the work. You—you man, you!”

  “This is your first?” the midwife asked. She was middle-aged and plump and very calm. Javan managed a nod. She patted him on the arm. “Don’t get upset about anything she says in labor. Sometimes women are a little crazy then.”

  Luisa called him worse things than a man before the baby was born. It was a girl. They named it Irini. It looked squashed to Javan, but the midwife seemed content.

  After Irini joined the world, Luisa seemed to realize Javan wasn’t really the enemy after all. “What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked him. “It’s the middle of the night—it’s past the middle of the night—and you’re still up.”

  “I’ll stagger through. That’s why there’s tea and coffee.” Javan expected he would need about a bathtub’s worth to make it to the end of the day. If that was what it took, that was what he’d do.

  Stagger through he did. He made several quick trips to the lavatories along with everything else, as the coffee and tea took their revenge. And he drank so much that he had trouble dropping off the next night no matter how tired he was and no matter how far that soft, inviting second-class seat reclined (yes, he was used to it now, and had trouble remembering how he’d ever managed to doze off on the third-class bench).

  In another day or two, Luisa and Irini would come up beside him. How am I supposed to sleep then? he wondered. What will I do when I can’t? But the answer to that seemed plain enough. He’d pour down as much tea and coffee as he could hold, and if he had to piss all the time, well, he’d do that, too.

  Satisfied that he’d worked everything out, he did fall asleep at last.

  When The Train rolled into the depot at Pingaspor again, Irini knew how to smile. She made different noises to show she was unhappy in different ways. Javan and Luisa had taken to remembering things by noting what Irini could do when they happened.

  The war was over. The people in the streets of Javan’s home city were skinny, but they wore ordinary clothes again. Quite a few of them still carried weapons, though.

  Posters proclaimed an end to tyranny. Other posters showed the old city rulers on a gibbet. And still others warned Pingasporeans about the enemies of liberty. They didn’t say exactly who those enemies were or how people could recognize them.

  “It may be peace, but I don’t think it’s freedom,” Javan remarked to Luisa.

  “If peace sticks, freedom may come back with it,” she answered. Irini’s toothless smile said she thought so, or maybe just that she’d had her linen changed and her bottom powdered a few minutes before. Sighing, Luisa added, “I wonder what Namila’s like now.”

  “We’ll find out pretty soon,” Javan answered in distracted tones. The Train had passed another poster warning that liberty had foes. The man doing the warning on this one was Colonel Uharto. He’d been Captain Uharto when Javan last dealt with him, and silly Uharto the hanger-on before the fighting started.

  I took advantage of the war, Javan thought nervously. I guess Uharto did, too. He wondered how the captain—no, the colonel—was doing with Kiri these days. He also wondered whether Uharto still had anything to do with her. A colonel whose face and message showed up on posters was someone who could tell lots of people how high to jump. Men like that had no trouble scooping up women if they wanted to, and a lot of them did.

  When he said as much to Luisa, the way her eyebrows jumped reminded him of Siilo. “And you still care about Kiri because…?” she asked pointedly.

  “I don’t care about her. I just wondered, that’s all.” Javan backtracked in a hurry. Now that Luisa had got in her jab, she let him do it. They did get on well most of the time, not least because they didn’t push quarrels as hard as they might have.

  If Kiri had got on The Train then…But she didn’t, although a couple of
Pingasporeans did. Pingaspor might not be back to normal yet, but it did seem to be heading that way.

  So did the city of Namila, when The Train reached that depot. If anything, it seemed closer to normal than Pingaspor did. That made Luisa happy and Javan sad. No one could have been anything but sad about the wide swath of shattered landscape between the one city and the other. Soldiers weren’t burning one another into shriveled lumps of charcoal out there any more, but the countryside and the ordinary people who’d lived on it would be a long time recovering. Javan hoped the farmers from whom he’d bought food after the emergency stop were all still safe and well. That was as much as he could do; The Train wouldn’t stop now to let him find out.

  When The Train did stop for resupply and repair at Liho, on The Railroad’s island out in the middle of the ocean, Javan didn’t take Luisa and Irini to the Fredarvi eatery. Good though it was, he had other things in mind. He hurried to the victualing office.

  He wasn’t astonished to find Zulman there ahead of him. The boss steward was talking with an official from The Railroad who wore a blue uniform even more encrusted with gold braid than his was. Seeing Javan walk in the door, Zulman did look surprised, but in no good way. He might have found Javan—or half of Javan—in a mango he was eating.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled, as if offended because Javan was anywhere near him.

  Speaking to the victualing official rather than to Zulman, Javan said, “I came to see about buying meat and tubers and mushrooms and onions.”

  “You can’t do that!” Zulman said furiously. “No miserable, no-account snack-seller has done that since The Railroad put a girdle around the world all these ages ago.”

  Still speaking to the official from the victualing office, Javan said, “I buy for almost all the snack-sellers on The Train. If I can get supplies for them straight from The Railroad instead of buying from the dining cars, my guess is that I’ll have a lower price.”