Consider Phlebas

12. The Command System: Engines

“…A sky like chipped ice, a wind to cut you to the body core. Too cold for snow, for most of the journey, but once for eleven days and nights it came, a blizzard over the field of ice we walked on, howling like an animal, with a bite like steel. The crystals of ice flowed like a single torrent over the hard and frozen land. You could not look into it or breathe; even trying to stand was near impossible. We made a hole, shallow and cold, and lay in it until the skies cleared.

“We were the walking wounded, straggled band. Some we lost when their blood froze in them. One just disappeared, at night in a storm of snow. Some died from their wounds. One by one we lost them, our comrades and our servants. Every one begged us make what use we could of their corpse once they were gone. We had so little food; we all knew what it meant, we were all prepared; name a sacrifice more total, or more noble.

“In that air, when you cried, the tears froze on your face with a cracking sound, like a heart breaking.

“Mountains. The high passes we climbed to, famished in that thin and bitter air. The snow was white powder, dry as dust. To breathe it was to freeze from inside; flurries from the jagged slopes, dislodged by feet in front, stung in the throat like acid spray. I saw rainbows in the crystal veils of ice and snow which were the product of our passing, and grew to hate those colours, that freezing dryness, the starved high air and dark blue skies.

“Three glaciers we traversed, losing two of our comrades in crevasses, beyond sight or sound, falling further than an echo’s reach.

“Deep in a mountain ring we came to a marsh; it lay in that scoop like a cess for hope. We were too slow, too stupefied, to save our Querl when he walked out into it and floundered there. We thought it could not be, with air so cold around us, even in that wan sunlight; we thought it must be frozen and we saw what only seemed to be, and our eyes would clear and he come walking back to us, not slip beneath that dark ooze, out of reach.

“It was an oil marsh, we realised too late, after the tarry depths had claimed their toll from us. The next day, while we were still looking for a way across, the chill came harder still, and even that sludge locked itself to stillness, and we walked quickly to the other side.

“In the midst of frozen water we began to die of thirst. We had little to heat the snow with save our own bodies, and eating that white dust until it numbed us made us groggy with the cold of it, slowing our speech and step. But we kept on, though the cold sucked at us whether awake or trying to sleep, and the harsh sun blinded us in fields of glittering white and filled our eyes with pain. The wind cut us, snow tried to swallow us, mountains like cut black glass blocked us, and the stars on clear nights taunted us, but on we came.

“Near two thousand kilometres, little one, with only the small amount of food we could carry from the wreck, what little equipment had not been turned to junk by the barrier beast, and our own determination. We were forty-four when we left the battle cruiser, twenty-seven when we began our trek across the snows: eight of my kind, nineteen of the medjel folk. Two of us completed the journey, and six of our servants.

“Do you wonder that we fell upon the first place we found with light and heat? Does it surprise you that we just took, and did not ask? We had seen brave warriors and faithful servants die of cold, watched each other wear away, as though the ice blasts had abraded us; we had looked into the cloudless, pitiless skies of a dead and alien place, and wondered who might be eating who when the dawnlight came. We made a joke of it at first, but later, when we had marched a thirty-day, and most of us were dead, in ice gullies, mountain ravines or raw in our own bellies, we did not think it so funny. Some of the last, perhaps not believing our course was true, I think died of despair.

“We killed your humans friends, these other Changers. I killed one with my own hands; another, the first, fell to a medjel, while he still slept. The one in the control room fought bravely, and when he knew he was lost, destroyed many of the controls. I salute him. There was another who put up a fight in the place where they stored things; he, too, died well. You should not grieve too much for them. I shall face my superiors with the truth in my eyes and heart. They will not discipline me, they will reward me, should I ever stand before them.”

Horza was behind the Idiran, walking down the tunnel after him while Yalson took a rest from guarding the tall triped. Horza had asked Xoxarle to tell him what had happened to the raiding party which had come to the planet inside the chuy-hirtsi animal. The Idiran had responded with an oration.

“She,” Horza said.

“What, human?” Xoxarle’s voice rumbled down the tunnel. He hadn’t bothered to turn round when he talked; he spoke to the clear air of the foot tunnel leading to station seven, his powerful bassy voice easily heard even by Wubslin and Aviger, who were bringing up the rear of the small, motley band.

“You did it again,” Horza said wearily, talking to the back of the Idiran’s head. “The one killed while asleep: it was a she; a woman, a female.”

“Well, the medjel attended to her. We laid them out in the corridor. Some of their food proved edible; it tasted like heaven to us.”

“How long ago was that?” Horza asked.

“About eight days, I think. It is hard to keep time down here. We tried to construct a mass sensor immediately, knowing that it would be invaluable, but we were unsuccessful. All we had was what was undamaged from the Changer base. Most of our own equipment had been attacked by the beast of the Barrier or had to be abandoned when we set off from the warp animal to come here, or left en route, as we died off.”

“You must have thought it was a bit of luck finding the Mind so easily.” Horza kept his rifle trained on the tall Idiran’s neck, watching Xoxarle all the time. The creature might be injured — Horza knew enough about the species to tell that the section leader was in pain just from the way he walked — but he was still dangerous. Horza didn’t mind him talking, though; it passed the time.

“We knew it was injured. When we found it in station six, and it did not move or show any sign of noticing us, we assumed that those were only the signs of its damage. We already knew that you had arrived; it was only a day ago. We accepted our good luck without second thoughts, and prepared to make our escape. You only just stopped us. Another few hours and we would have had that train working.”

“More likely you’d have blown yourselves into radioactive dust,” Horza told the Idiran.

“Think what you like, little one. I knew what I was doing.”

“I’m sure,” Horza said sceptically. “Why did you take all the guns with you and leave that medjel on the surface without a weapon?”

“We had intended to take one of the Changers alive and interrogate him, but failed; our own fault, no doubt. Had we done so we could have reassured ourselves there was nobody else down here ahead of us. We were so late in getting here, after all. We took all the available weaponry down with us and left the servant on the surface with only a communicator so—”

“We didn’t find the communicator,” Horza interrupted.

“Good. He was supposed to hide it when not checking in,” Xoxarle said, then went on, “So we had what little firepower we did possess where it might be needed most. Once we realised that we were in here by ourselves, we sent a servant up with a weapon for our guard. Unhappily for him, it would appear he arrived very shortly after you did.”

“Don’t worry,” Horza said, “he did well; damn nearly blew my head off.”

Xoxarle laughed. Horza flinched slightly at the sound. It was not only loud, it was cruel in a way Xoralundra’s laugh had not been.

“His poor slave soul is at rest, then,” Xoxarle boomed. “His tribe can ask for no more.”

Horza refused to pause until they were halfway to station seven.

They sat in the foot tunnel, resting. The Idiran sat furthest down the tunnel, Horza across the tunnel from him and roughly six metres away, gun ready. Yalson was by his side.

“Horza,” she said, looking at his suit and then at her own, “I think we could take the AG of my suit; it does detach. We could rig it up to yours. It might look a bit untidy, but it would work.” She looked into his face. His eyes shifted from Xoxarle for a moment, then flicked back.

“I’m all right,” he said. “You keep the AG.” He nudged her gently with his free arm and lowered his voice. “You’re carrying a bit more weight, after all.” He grunted, then rubbed the side of his suit in faked pain when Yalson elbowed him hard enough to move him fractionally across the floor of the tunnel. “Ouch,” he said.

“I wish I hadn’t told you, now,” Yalson said.

“Balveda?” Xoxarle said suddenly, turning his huge head slowly to look up the tunnel, past Horza and Yalson, over the pallet and the drone Unaha-Closp, past Wubslin — watching the mass sensor — and Aviger to where the Culture agent sat, her eyes closed, silent, against the wall.

“Section Leader?” Balveda said, opening her calm eyes, looking down the tunnel to the Idiran.

“The Changer says you are from the Culture. That is the part he has cast you in. He would have me believe you are an agent of espionage.” Xoxarle put his head on one side, looking down the dark tube of tunnel at the woman sitting against the curved wall. “You seem, like me, to be a captive of this man. Do you tell me you are what he says you are?”

Balveda looked at Horza, then at the Idiran, her slow gaze lazy, almost indolent. “I’m afraid so, Section Leader,” she said.

The Idiran moved his head from side to side, blinked his eyes, then rumbled, “Most strange. I cannot imagine why you should all be trying to trick me, or why this one man should have such a hold over all of you. Yet his own story I find scarcely credible. If he really is on our side then I have behaved in a way which may hinder the great cause, and perhaps even aid yours, woman, if you are who you say. Most strange.”

“Keep thinking about it,” Balveda drawled, then closed her eyes and put her head back against the tunnel wall again.

“Horza’s on his own side, not anybody else’s,” Aviger said from further up the tunnel. He was speaking to the Idiran, but his gaze shifted to Horza at the end of his sentence, and he dropped his head, looking down at a container of food at his side and picking a last few crumbs from it.

“That is the way with all of your kind,” Xoxarle said to the old man, who wasn’t looking. “It is how you are made; you must all strive to claw your way over the backs of your fellow humans during the short time you are permitted in the universe, breeding when you can, so that the strongest strains survive and the weakest die. I would no more blame you for that than I would try to convert some non-sentient carnivore to vegetarianism. You are all on your own side. With us it is different.” Xoxarle looked at Horza. “You must agree with that, Changer ally.”

“You’re different all right,” Horza said. “But all I care about is you’re fighting the Culture. You may be God’s gift or plague in the end result, but what matters to me is that at the moment you’re against her lot.” Horza nodded at Balveda, who didn’t open her eyes, but did smile.

“What a pragmatic attitude,” Xoxarle said. Horza wondered if the others could hear the trace of humour in the giant’s voice. “Whatever did the Culture do to you to make you hate it so?”

“Nothing to me,” Horza said. “I just disagree with them.”

“My,” Xoxarle said, “you humans never cease to surprise me.” He hunched suddenly, and a crackling, booming noise like rocks being crushed came from his mouth. His great body shuddered. Xoxarle turned his head away and spat onto the tunnel floor. He kept his head turned away while the humans looked at each other, wondering how badly injured the Idiran really was. Xoxarle became silent. He leaned over and looked at whatever he had spat up, made a distant, echoing sort of noise in his throat, then turned back to Horza. His voice was scratchy and hoarse when he spoke again. “Yes, Mr Changer, you are a strange fellow. Allow a little too much dissention in your ranks, mind you.” Xoxarle looked up the tunnel to Aviger, who raised his head and glanced at the Idiran with a frightened expression.

“I get by,” Horza told the section leader. He got to his feet, looking round the others and stretching his tired legs. “Time to go.” He turned to Xoxarle. “Are you fit to walk?”

“Untie me and I could run too fast for you to escape, human,” Xoxarle purred. He unfolded his huge frame from its squatting position. Horza looked up into the dark, broad V of the creature’s face and nodded slowly.

“Just think about staying alive so I can take you back to the fleet, Xoxarle,” Horza said. “The chasing and fighting are over. We’re all looking for the Mind now.”

“A poor hunt, human,” Xoxarle said. “An ignominious end to the whole endeavour. You make me ashamed for you, but then, you are only human.”

“Oh shut up and start walking,” Yalson told the Idiran. She stabbed at buttons on her suit control unit and floated into the air, level with Xoxarle’s head. The Idiran snorted and turned. He started to hobble off down the foot tunnel. One by one, they followed him.

Horza noticed the Idiran starting to tire after a few kilometres. The giant’s steps became shorter; he moved the great keratinous plates of his shoulders more and more frequently, as though trying to relieve some ache within, and every so often his head shook, as if he was trying to clear it. Twice he turned and spat at the walls. Horza looked at the dripping patches of fluid: Idiran blood.

Eventually, Xoxarle stumbled, his steps veering to one side. Horza was walking behind him again, having had a spell on the pallet. He slowed down when he saw the Idiran start to sway, holding one hand up to let the others know, as well. Xoxarle made a low, moaning noise, half turned, then with a sideways stagger, the wires on his hobbled feet snapping tight and humming like strings on an instrument, he fell forward, crashing to the floor and lying still.

“Oh…” somebody said.

“Stay back,” Horza said, then went carefully towards the long, inert body of the Idiran. He looked down at the great head, motionless on the tunnel floor. Blood oozed from under it, forming a pool. Yalson joined Horza, her gun trained on the fallen creature.

“Is he dead?” she asked. Horza shrugged. He knelt down and touched the Idiran’s body with his bare hand, at a point near the neck where it was sometimes possible to sense the steady flow of blood inside, but there was nothing. He closed then opened one of the section leader’s eyes.

“I don’t think so.” He touched the dark blood gathering in its pool. “Look’s like he’s bleeding badly, inside.”

“What can we do?” Yalson said.

“Not a lot.” Horza rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“What about some anti-coagulant?” Aviger said from the far side of the pallet, where Balveda sat and watched the scene in front of her with dark, calm eyes.

“Ours doesn’t work on them,” Horza said.

“Skinspray,” Balveda said. They all looked at her. She nodded, looking at Horza. “If you have any medical alcohol and some skin-spray, make up an equal solution. If he’s got digestive tract injuries, that might help him. If it’s respiratory, he’s dead.” Balveda shrugged at Horza.

“Well, let’s do something, rather than stand around here all day,” Yalson said.

“It’s worth a try,” Horza said. “Better get him upright, if we want to pour the stuff down his throat.”

“That,” the drone said wearily from beneath the pallet, “no doubt means me.” It floated forward, placing the pallet on the floor near Xoxarle’s feet. Balveda stepped off as the drone transferred the load from its back to the tunnel floor. It floated to where Yalson and Horza stood by the prone Idiran.

“I’ll lift with the drone,” Horza told Yalson, putting his gun down; “you keep your gun on him.”

Wubslin, now kneeling on the tunnel floor and fiddling with the controls of the mass sensor, whistled quietly to himself. Balveda went round the back of the pallet to watch.

“There it is,” Wubslin smiled at her, nodding at the bright white dot on the green-lined screen. “Isn’t that a beauty?”

“Station seven, you reckon, Wubslin?” Balveda hunched her slim shoulders and shoved her hands deep into her jacket pockets. She wrinkled her nose as she watched the screen. She could smell herself.

They were all smelling, all giving off animal scents, after their time down there without washing. Wubslin was nodding.

“Must be,” he said to the Culture agent. Horza and the drone struggled to get the slack-limbed Idiran into a sitting position. Aviger went forward to help, taking off his helmet as he went. “Must be,” Wubslin breathed, more to himself than to Balveda. His gun fell off his shoulder and he took it off, frowning at the jammed reel which was supposed to take up the slack on the weapon’s strap. He placed the weapon on the pallet and went back to tinkering with the mass sensor. Balveda edged closer, peering over the engineer’s shoulder. Wubslin looked round and up at her as Horza and the drone Unaha-Closp slowly heaved Xoxarle from the floor. Wubslin smiled awkwardly at the Culture agent, and moved the laser rifle he had placed on the pallet further away from Balveda. Balveda gave a small smile in return and took a step backwards. She took her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms, watching Wubslin work from a little further away.

“Heavy bastard,” Horza gasped, as he, Aviger and Unaha-Closp finally pulled and pushed Xoxarle’s back against the side of the tunnel. The massive head was angled limply forward over his chest. Liquid drooled from the side of his huge mouth. Horza and Aviger straightened. Aviger stretched his arms, grunting.

Xoxarle seemed dead; for a second, maybe two.

Then it was as though some immense force blasted him away from the wall. He threw himself forward and sideways, one arm whacking into Horza’s chest and sending the Changer cannoning into Yalson; at the same time, his partly buckled legs flicking straight, the Idiran pounced away from the group forward of the pallet, past Aviger — thrown against the tunnel wall — and Unaha-Closp — slapped into the floor of the tunnel with Xoxarle’s other hand — towards the pallet.

Xoxarle flew over the pallet, his raised arm and massive fist coming down. Wubslin’s hand hadn’t even started to move for his gun.

The Idiran brought his fist down with all his strength, shattering the mass sensor with a single crushing blow. His other hand flashed out to snatch the laser. Wubslin threw himself back instinctively, knocking into Balveda.

Xoxarle’s hand snapped shut round the laser rifle like a sprung trap round an animal’s leg. He rolled through the air and over the disintegrating wreckage of the sensor. The gun twirled in his hand, pointing back down the tunnel to where Horza, Yalson and Aviger were still trying to recover their balance and Unaha-Closp was just starting to move. Xoxarle steadied briefly and aimed straight at Horza.

Unaha-Closp slammed into the Idiran’s lower jaw like a small, badly streamlined missile, lifting the section leader bodily from the pallet, stretching his neck on his shoulders, jerking all three of his legs together, and throwing his arms out to each side. Xoxarle landed with a thud beside Wubslin and lay still.

Horza stooped and grabbed his gun. Yalson ducked and swivelled, bringing her gun to bear. Wubslin sat up. Balveda had staggered back after Wubslin had fallen against her; a hand at her mouth, she stood now, staring down at where Unaha-Closp hovered in the air over Xoxarle’s face. Aviger rubbed his head and looked resentfully at the wall.

Horza went over to the Idiran. Xoxarle’s eyes were closed. Wubslin tore his rifle from the Idiran’s slack fist.

“Not bad, drone,” Horza said, nodding.

The machine turned to him. “Unaha-Closp,” it said, exasperatedly.

“OK,” he sighed. “Well done, Unaha-Closp.” Horza went to look at Xoxarle’s wrists. The wires had been snapped. The wires on his legs were intact, but those on his arms had been broken like threads.

“I didn’t kill him, did I?” Unaha-Closp said. Horza, the barrel of his rifle hard against Xoxarle’s head, shook his head.

Xoxarle’s body started to tremble; his eyes flicked open. “No, I’m not dead, little friends,” the Idiran rumbled, and the cracking, scraping noise of his laughter echoed through the tunnels. He levered his torso slowly from the ground.

Horza kicked him in the side. “You—”

“Little one!” Xoxarle laughed before Horza could say any more. “Is this how you treat your allies?” He rubbed his jaw, moving fractured plates of keratin. “I am injured,” the great voice announced, then broke with laughter again, the big V head rocking forward towards the wreckage lying on the back of the pallet, “but not yet in the same state as your precious mass sensor!”

Horza rammed his gun against the Idiran’s head. “I ought—”

“You ought to blow my head off right now; I know, Changer. I have told you already you should. Why don’t you?”

Horza tightened his finger round the trigger, holding his breath, then roared — shouted without words or sense at the seated figure in front of him — and strode off, past the pallet. “Tie that motherfucker up!” he bellowed, and stamped by Yalson, who pivoted briefly to watch him go; then she turned back with a small shake of her head to watch while Aviger — helped by Wubslin, who cast the occasional mournful look at the debris from the mass sensor — trussed the Idiran’s arms down tightly to his sides with several loops of wire. Xoxarle was still shaking with laughter.

“I think it sensed my mass! I think it sensed my fist! Ha!”

“I hope somebody told that three-legged scumbag we still have a mass sensor in my suit,” Horza said when Yalson caught up with him. Yalson looked over her shoulder, then said:

“Well, I told him, but I don’t think he believed me.” She looked at Horza. “Is it working?”

Horza glanced at the small repeater screen on his wrist controls. “Not at this range, but it will, when we get closer. We’ll still find the thing, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Yalson said. “You going to come back and join us?” She looked back at the others again. They were twenty metres behind. Xoxarle, still chortling now and again, was in front, with Wubslin walking behind guarding the Idiran with the stun gun. Balveda sat on the pallet, with Aviger floating behind.

Horza nodded. “I suppose so. Let’s wait here.” He halted. Yalson, who had been walking rather than floating, stopped too.

They leant against the tunnel wall as Xoxarle came closer. “How are you, anyway?” Horza asked the woman.

Yalson shrugged. “Fine. How are you?”

“I meant—” Horza began.

“I know what you meant,” Yalson said, “and I told you I’m fine. Now, stop being such a pain in the ass.” She smiled at him. “OK?”

“OK,” Horza said, pointing the gun at Xoxarle as the Idiran went past.

“Lost your way, Changer?” the giant rumbled.

“Just keep walking,” Horza told him. He fell into step alongside Wubslin.

“Sorry I put my gun down on the pallet,” the engineer said. “It was stupid.”

“Never mind,” Horza told him. “It was the sensor he was after. The gun must just have been a pleasant surprise. Anyway, the drone saved us.”

Horza gave a kind of snort through his nose, like a laugh. “The drone saved us,” he repeated to himself, and shook his head.

… ah my soul my soul, all is darkness now. now i die, now i slip away and nothing will be left. i am frightened. great one, pity me, but i am frightened. no sleep of victory; i heard. merely my death. darkness and death. moment for all to become one, instance of annihilation. i have failed; i heard and now i know. failed. death too good for me. oblivion like release. more than i deserve, much more. i cannot let go, i must hold on because i do not deserve a quick, willed end. my comrades wait, but they do not know how much i have failed. i am not worthy to join them. my clan must weep.

ah this pain… darkness and pain…

They came to the station.

The Command System train towered over the platform, its dark length glistening in the lights of the small band of people entering the station.

“Well, here we are at last,” Unaha-Closp said. It stopped and let Balveda slide off the pallet, then put the slab with its supplies and material down on the dusty floor.

Horza ordered the Idiran to stand against the nearest access gantry, and tied him against it.

“Well,” Xoxarle said as Horza strapped him to the metal, “what of your Mind, little one?” He looked down like a reproachful adult at the human wrapping the wire round his body. “Where is it? I don’t see it.”

“Patience, Section Leader,” Horza said.

He secured the wire and tested it, then stepped back. “Comfortable?” he asked.

“My guts ache, my chin is broken and my hand has pieces of your mass sensor embedded in it,” Xoxarle said. “Also my mouth is a little sore inside, where I bit it earlier, to produce all that convincing blood. Otherwise I am well, thank you, ally.” Xoxarle bowed his head as much as he was able.

“Don’t go away, now.” Horza smiled thinly. He left Yalson to guard Xoxarle and Balveda while he and Wubslin went to the power-switching room.

“I’m hungry,” Aviger said. He sat on the pallet and opened a ration bar.

Inside the switching room, Horza studied the meters, switches and levers for a few moments, then started to adjust the controls.

“I, uh…” Wubslin began, scratching his brow through the open visor of his helmet, “I was wondering… about the mass sensor in your suit… Is it working?”

Lights came on in one control group, a bank of twenty dials glowing faintly. Horza studied the dials and then said, “No. I already checked. It’s getting a low reading from the train, but nothing else. It’s been that way since about two kilometres back up the tunnel. Either the Mind’s gone since the ship sensor was smashed, or this one in my suit isn’t working properly.”

“Oh shit,” Wubslin sighed.

“What the hell,” Horza said, flicking some switches and watching more meters light up. “Let’s get the power on. Maybe we’ll think of something.”

“Yes.” Wubslin nodded. He glanced back out through the open doors of the room, as if to see whether the lights were coming on yet. All he saw was the dark shape of Yalson’s back, out on the dim platform. A section of shadowy train, three storeys high, showed beyond.

Horza went to another wall and repositioned some levers. He tapped a couple of dials, peered into a bright screen, then rubbed his hands together and put his thumb over a button on the central console. “Well, this is it,” he said.

He brought his thumb down on the button.

“Yes!”

“Hey-hey!”

“We did it!”

“About time, too, if you ask me.”

“Hmm, little one, so that’s how it’s done…”

“…Shit! If I’d known it was this colour I wouldn’t have started it…”

Horza heard the others. He took a deep breath and turned to look at Wubslin. The stocky engineer stood, blinking slightly, in the bright lights of the power control room. He smiled. “Great,” he said. He looked round the room, still nodding. “Great. At last.”

“Well done, Horza,” Yalson said.

Horza could hear other switches, bigger ones, automatics linked to the master switch he had closed, moving in the space beneath his feet. Humming noises filled the room, and the smell of burning dust rose like the warm scent of an awakening animal all around him. Light flooded in from the station outside. Horza and Wubslin checked a few meters and monitors, then went outside.

The station was bright. It sparkled; the grey-black walls reflected the strip lights and glow panels which covered the roof. The Command System train, now seen properly for the first time, filled the station from end to end: a shining metal monster, like a vast android version of a segmented insect.

Yalson took off her helmet, ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair and looked up and around, squinting in the bright yellow-white light falling from the station roof high above.

“Now, then,” Unaha-Closp said, floating over towards Horza. The machine’s casing glittered in the harsh new light. “Where exactly is this device we’re looking for?” It came close to Horza’s face. “Does your suit sensor register it? Is it here? Have we found it?”

Horza pushed the machine away with one hand. “Give me time, drone. We only just got here. I got the power on, didn’t I?” He walked past it, followed by Yalson, still looking about her, and Wubslin, also staring, though mostly at the gleaming train. Lights shone inside it. The station filled with the hum of idling motors, the hiss of air circulators and fans. Unaha-Closp floated round to face Horza, reversing through the air while keeping level with the man’s face.

“What do you mean? Surely all you have to do is look at the screen; can you see the Mind on there or not?” The drone came closer, dipping down to look at the controls and the small screen on Horza’s suit cuff. He swatted it away.

“I’m getting some interference from the reactor.” Horza glanced at Wubslin. “We’ll cope with it.”

“Take a look round the repair area, check the place out,” Yalson said to the machine. “Make yourself useful.”

“It isn’t working, is it?” Unaha-Closp said. It kept pace with Horza, still facing him and backing through the air in front of him. “That three-legged lunatic smashed the mass sensor on the pallet, and now we’re blind; we’re back to square one, aren’t we?”

“No,” Horza said impatiently, “we are not. We’ll repair it. Now, how about doing something useful for a change?”

“For a change?” Unaha-Closp said with what sounded like feeling. “For a change? You’re forgetting who it was saved all your skins back in the tunnels when our cute little Idiran liaison officer over there started running amuck.”

“All right, drone,” Horza said through clenched teeth. “I’ve said thank you. Now, why don’t you take a look around the station, just in case there’s anything to be seen.”

“Like Minds you can’t spot on wasted suit mass sensors, for example? And what are you lot going to be doing while I’m doing that?”

“Resting,” Horza said. “And thinking.” He stopped at Xoxarle and inspected the Idiran’s bonds.

“Oh, great,” Unaha-Closp sneered. “And a lot of good all your thinking has done—”

“For fuck’s sake, Unaha-Closp,” Yalson said, sighing heavily, “either go or stay, but shut up.”

“I see! Right!” Unaha-Closp drew away from them and rose in the air. “I’ll just go and lose myself, then! I should have—”

It was floating away as it spoke. Horza shouted over the drone’s voice, “Before you go, can you hear any alarms?”

“What?” Unaha-Closp came to a halt. Wubslin put a pained, studious expression on his face and looked around the station’s bright walls, as though making an effort to hear above the frequencies his ears could sense.

Unaha-Closp was silent for a moment, then said, “No. No alarms. I’m going now. I’ll check out the other train. When I think you might be in a more amenable mood I’ll come back.” It turned and sped off.

“Dorolow could have heard the alarms,” Aviger muttered, but nobody heard.

Wubslin looked up at the train, gleaming in the station lights, and like it, seemed to glow from within.

… what is this? is it light? do i imagine it? am i dying? is this what happens? am i dying now, so soon? i thought i had a while left and i don’t deserve…

light! it is light!

I can see again!

Welded to the cold metal by his own dry blood, his body cracked and twisted, mutilated and dying, he opened his one good eye as far as he could. Mucus had dried on it, and he had to blink, trying to clear it.

His body was a dark and alien land of pain, a continent of torment.

… One eye left. One arm. A leg missing, just lopped off. One numb and paralysed, another broken (he tested to make sure, trying to move that limb; a pain like fire flashed through him, like a lightning flash over the shadowed country that was his body and his pain), and my face… my face…

He felt like a smashed insect, abandoned by some children after an afternoon’s cruel play. They had thought he was dead, but he was not built the way they were. A few holes were nothing; an amputated limb… well, his blood did not gush like theirs when a leg or arm was removed (he remembered a recording of a human dissection), and for the warrior there was no shock; not like their poor soft, flesh-flabby systems. He had been shot in the face, but the beam or bullet had not penetrated through the internal keratin brain cover, or severed his nerves. Similarly, his eyes had been smashed, but the other side of his face was intact, and he could still see.

It was so bright. His sight cleared and he looked, without moving, at the station roof.

He could feel himself dying slowly; an internal knowledge which, again, they might not have had. He could feel the slow leak of his blood inside his body, sense the pressure build-up in his torso, and the faint oozing through cracks in his keratin. The remains of the suit would help him but not save him. He could feel his internal organs slowly shutting down: too many holes from one system to another. His stomach would never digest his last meal, and his anterior lung-sack, which normally held a reserve of hyperoxygenated blood for use when his body needed its last reserves of strength, was emptying, its precious fuel being squandered in the losing battle his body fought against the falling pressure of his blood.

Dying… I am dying… What difference whether it is in darkness or in light?

Great One, fallen comrades, children and mate… can you see me any better in this deeply buried, alien glare?

My name is Quayanorl, Great One, and—

The idea was brighter than the pain when he’d tried to move his shattered leg, brighter than the station’s silent, staring glow.

They had said they were going to station seven.

It was the last thing he remembered, apart from the sight of one of them floating through the air towards him. That one must have shot him in the face; he couldn’t remember it happening, but it made sense… Sent to make sure he was dead. But he was alive, and he had just had an idea. It was a long shot, even if he could get it to work, even if he could shift himself, even if it all worked… a long shot, in every sense… But it would be doing something; it would be a suitable end for a warrior, whatever happened. The pain would be worth it.

He moved quickly, before he could change his mind, knowing that there might be little time (if he wasn’t already too late…). The pain seared through him like a sword.

From his broken, bloody mouth, a shout came.

Nobody heard. His shout echoed in the bright station. Then there was silence. His body throbbed with the aftershock of pain, but he could feel that he was free; the blood-weld was broken. He could move; in the light he could move.

Xoxarle, if you are still alive, I may soon have a little surprise for our friends…

“Drone?”

“What?”

“Horza wants to know what you’re doing.” Yalson spoke into her helmet communicator, looking at the Changer.

“I’m searching this train; the one in the repair section. I would have said if I’d found anything, you know. Have you got that suit sensor working yet?”

Horza made a face at the helmet Yalson held on her knees; he reached over and switched off the communicator.

“It’s right, though, isn’t it?” Aviger said, sitting on the pallet. “That one in your suit isn’t working, is it?”

“There’s some interference from the train’s reactor,” Horza told the old man. “That’s all. We can deal with it.” Aviger didn’t look convinced.

Horza opened a drink canister. He felt tired, drained. There was a sense of anti-climax now, having got the power on but not found the Mind. He cursed the broken mass sensor, and Xoxarle, and the Mind. He didn’t know where the damn thing was, but he’d find it. Right now, though, he just wanted to sit and relax. He needed to give his thoughts time to collect. He rubbed his head where it had been bruised in the fire-fight in station six; it hurt, distantly, naggingly, inside. Nothing serious, but it would have been distracting if he hadn’t been able to shut the pain off.

“Don’t you think we should search this train now?” Wubslin said, gazing up hungrily at the shining curved bulk of it in front of them.

Horza smiled at the engineer’s rapt expression. “Yes, why not?” he said. “On you go; take a look.” He nodded at the grinning Wubslin, who swallowed a last mouthful of food and grabbed his helmet.

“Right. Yeah. Might as well start now,” he said, and walked off quickly, past the motionless figure of Xoxarle, up the access ramp and into the train.

Balveda was standing with her back against the wall, her hands in her pockets. She smiled at Wubslin’s retreating back as he disappeared into the train’s interior.

“Are you going to let him drive that thing, Horza?” she asked.

“Somebody may have to,” Horza said. “We’ll need some sort of transport to take us round if we’re going to look for the Mind.”

“What fun,” Balveda said. “We could all just go riding round in circles for ever and ever.”

“Not me,” Aviger said, turning from Horza to look at the Culture agent. “I’m going back to the CAT. I’m not going round looking for this damn computer.”

“Good idea,” Yalson said, looking at the old man. “We could make you a sort of prisoner detail; send you back with Xoxarle; just the two of you.”

“I’ll go alone,” Aviger said in a low voice, avoiding Yalson’s gaze. “I’m not afraid.”

Xoxarle listened to them talk. Such squeaky, scratchy voices. He tested his bonds again. The wire had cut a couple of millimetres into his keratin, on his shoulders, thighs and wrists. It hurt a little, but it would be worthwhile, maybe. He was quietly cutting himself on the wire, rubbing with all the force he could muster against the places where the wire held him tightest; chafing the nail-like cover of his body deliberately. He had taken a deep breath and flexed all the muscles he could when he was tied up, and that had given him just enough room to move, but he would need a little more if he was to have any chance of working his way loose.

He had no plan, no time scale; he had no idea when he might have an opportunity, but what else could he do? Stand there like a stuffed dummy, like a good boy? While these squirming, soft-bodied worms scratched their pulpy skin and tried to work out where the Mind was? A warrior could do no such thing; he had come too far, seen too many die…

“Hey!” Wubslin opened a small window on the top storey of the train and leaned out, shouting to the others. “These elevators work! I just came up in one! Everything works!”

“Yeah!” Yalson waved. “Great, Wubslin.”

The engineer ducked back inside. He moved through the train, testing and touching, inspecting controls and machinery.

“Quite impressive, though, isn’t it?” Balveda said to the others. “For its time.”

Horza nodded, gazing slowly from one end of the train to the other. He finished the drink in the container and put it down on the pallet as he stood up. “Yes, it is. But much good it did them.”

Quayanorl dragged himself up the ramp.

A pall of smoke hung in the station air, hardly shifting in the slow circulation of air. Fans were working in the train, though, and what movement there was in the grey-blue cloud came mostly from the places where open doors and windows blew the acrid mist out from the carriages, replacing it with air scrubbed by the train’s conditioning and filter system.

He dragged himself through wreckage — bits and pieces of wall and train, even scraps and shards from his own suit. It was very hard and slow, and he was already afraid he would die before he even got to the train.

His legs were useless. He would probably be doing better if the other two had been blown off as well.

He crawled with his one good arm, grasping the edge of the ramp and pulling with all his might.

The effort was agonisingly painful. Every time he pulled he thought it would grow less, but it didn’t; it was as though for each of the too long seconds he hauled at that ramp edge, and his broken, bleeding body scraped further up the littered surface, his blood vessels ran with acid. He shook his head and mumbled to himself. He felt blood run from the cracks in his body, which had healed while he lay still and now were being ripped open again. He felt tears run from his one good eye; he sensed the slow weep of healing fluid welling where his other eye had been torn from his face.

The door ahead of him shone through the bright mist, a faint air current coming from it making curls in the smoke. His feet scraped behind him, and his suit chest ploughed a small bow wave of wreckage from the surface of the ramp as he moved. He gripped the ramp’s edge again and pulled.

He tried not to call out, not because he thought there was anyone to hear and be warned, but because all his life, from when he had first got to his feet by himself, he had been taught to suffer in silence. He did try; he could remember his nest-Querl and his mother-parent teaching him not to cry out, and it was shaming to disobey them, but sometimes it got too much. Sometimes the pain squeezed the noise from him.

On the station roof, some of the lights were out, hit by stray shots. He could see the holes and punctures in the train’s shining hull, and he had no idea what damage might have been done to it, but he couldn’t stop now. He had to go on.

He could hear the train. He could listen to it like a hunter listening to a wild animal. The train was alive; injured — some of its whirring motors sounded damaged — but it was alive. He was dying, but he would do his best to capture the beast.

“What do you think?” Horza asked Wubslin. He had tracked the engineer down under one of the Command System train carriages, hanging upside down looking at the wheel motors. Horza had asked Wubslin to take a look at the small device on his suit chest which was the main body of the mass sensor.

“I don’t know,” Wubslin said, shaking his head. He had his helmet on and visor down, using the screen to magnify the view of the sensor. “It’s so small. I’d need to take it back to the CAT to have a proper look at it. I didn’t bring all my tools with me.” He made a tutting noise. “It looks all right; I can’t see any obvious damage. Maybe the reactors are putting it off.”

“Damn. We’ll have to search, then,” Horza said. He let Wubslin close the small inspection panel on the suit front.

The engineer leant back and shoved his visor up. “Only trouble is,” he said glumly, “if the reactors are interfering, there isn’t much point in taking the train to look for the Mind. We’ll have to use the transit tube.”

“We’ll search the station first,” Horza said. He stood up. Through the window, across the station platform, he could see Yalson standing watching Balveda as the Culture woman paced slowly up and down the smooth rock floor. Aviger still sat on the pallet. Xoxarle stood strapped to the girders of the access ways.

“OK if I go up to the control deck?” Wubslin said. Horza looked into the engineer’s broad, open face.

“Yeah, why not? Don’t try to get it to move just yet, though.”

“OK,” Wubslin said, looking happy.

“Changer?” said Xoxarle, as Horza walked down the access ramp.

“What?”

“These wires: they are too tight. They are cutting into me.”

Horza looked carefully at the wires round the Idiran’s arms. “Too bad,” he said.

“They cut into my shoulders, my legs and my wrists. If the pressure goes on they will cut through to my blood vessels; I should hate to die in such an inelegant manner. By all means blow my head off, but this slow slicing is undignified. I only tell you because I am starting to believe you do intend to take me back to the fleet.”

Horza went behind the Idiran to look at where the wires crossed over Xoxarle’s wrists. He was telling the truth; the wires had cut into him like fence wire into tree bark. The Changer frowned. “I’ve never seen that happen,” he said to the motionless rear of the Idiran’s head. “What are you up to? Your skin’s harder than that.”

“I am up to nothing, human,” Xoxarle said wearily, sighing heavily. “My body is injured; it tries to rebuild itself. Of necessity it becomes more pliable, less hardy, as it tries to rebuild the damaged parts. Oh, if you don’t believe me, never mind. But don’t forget that I did warn you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Horza said. “If it gets too bad, shout out.” He stepped out through the girders back onto the station floor, and walked towards the others.

“I shall have to think about that,” Xoxarle said quietly. “Warriors are not given to ‘shouting out’ because they are in pain.”

“So,” Yalson said to the Changer, “is Wubslin happy?”

“Worried he won’t get to drive the train,” Horza told her. “What’s the drone doing?”

“Taking its time looking through the other train.”

“Well, we’ll leave it there,” Horza said. “You and I can search the station. Aviger?” He looked at the old man, who was using a small piece of plastic to prise bits of food from between his teeth.

“What?” Aviger said, looking up suspiciously at the Changer.

“Watch the Idiran. We’re going to take a look around the station.”

Aviger shrugged. “All right. I suppose so. Not too many places I can go for the moment.” He inspected the end of the piece of plastic.

He reached out, took hold of the end of the ramp, and pulled. He moved forward on a wave of pain. He gripped the edge of the train door, and hauled again. He slid and scraped from the ramp and onto the interior floor of the train itself.

When he was fully inside, he rested.

Blood made a steady roar inside his head.

His hand was becoming tired now and sore. It was not the aching, grinding pain from his wounds, but it worried him more. He was afraid that his hand would soon seize up, that it would grow too weak to grip, and he would be unable to haul himself along.

At least now the way was level. He had a carriage and a half to drag himself, but there was no slope. He tried to look back, behind and down to the place he had lain, but could manage only a brief glimpse before he had to let his head fall back. There was a scraped and bloody trail on the ramp, as though a broom laced with purple paint had been dragged through the dust and debris of the metal surface.

There was no point in looking back. His only way was forward; he had only a little while left. In a half hour or less he would be dead. He would have had longer just lying on the ramp, but moving had shortened his life, quickened the sapping forces steadily draining him of strength and vitality.

He hauled himself towards the longitudinal corridor.

His two useless, shattered legs slithered after him, on a thin slick of blood.

“Changer!”

Horza frowned. He and Yalson were setting out to look over the station. The Idiran called Horza when he was only a few steps away from the pallet where Aviger now sat, looking fed up and pointing his gun in roughly the same direction as Balveda while the Culture agent continued pacing up and down.

“Yes, Xoxarle?” Horza said.

“These wires. They will slice me up soon. I only mention it because you have so studiously avoided destroying me so far; it would be a pity to die accidentally, due to an oversight. Please — go on your way if you cannot be bothered.”

“You want the wires loosened?”

“The merest fraction. They have no give in them, you see, and it would be nice to breathe without dissecting myself.”

“If you try anything this time,” Horza told the Idiran, coming close to him, gun pointed at his face, “I’ll blow both your arms and all three legs off and slide you home on the pallet.”

“Your threatened cruelty has convinced me, human. You obviously know the shame we attach to prosthetics, even if they are the result of battle wounds. I shall behave. Just loosen the wires a little, like a good ally.”

Horza loosened the wires slightly where they were cutting into Xoxarle’s body. The section leader flexed and made a loud sighing sound with his mouth.

“Much better, little one. Much better. Now I shall live to face whatever retribution you may imagine is mine.”

“Depend on it,” Horza said. “If he breathes belligerently,” he told Aviger, “shoot his legs off.”

“Oh yes, sir,” Aviger said, saluting.

“Hoping to trip over the Mind, Horza?” Balveda asked him. She had stopped pacing and stood facing him and Yalson, her hands in her pockets.

“One never knows, Balveda,” Horza said.

“Tomb robber,” Balveda said through a lazy smile.

Horza turned to Yalson. “Tell Wubslin we’re leaving. Ask him to keep an eye on the platform; make sure Aviger doesn’t fall asleep.”

Yalson raised Wubslin on the communicator.

“You’d better come with us,” Horza told Balveda. “I don’t like leaving you here with all this equipment switched on.”

“Oh, Horza,” Balveda smiled, “don’t you trust me?”

“Just walk in front and shut up,” Horza said in a tired voice, and pointed to indicate the direction he wanted to go in. Balveda shrugged and started walking.

“Does she have to come?” Yalson said as she fell into step beside Horza.

“We could always lock her up,” Horza said. He looked at Yalson, who shrugged.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said.

Unaha-Closp floated through the train. Outside, it could see the repair and maintenance cavern, all its machinery — lathes and forges, welding rigs, articulated arms, spare units, huge hanging cradles, a single suspended gantry like a narrow bridge — glinting in the bright overhead lights.

The train was interesting enough; the old technology provided things to look at and bits and pieces to touch and investigate, but Unaha-Closp was mostly just glad to be by itself for a while. It had found the company of the humans wearing after a few days, and the Changer’s attitude distressed it most of all. The man was a speciesist! Me, just a machine, thought Unaha-Closp, how dare he!

It had felt good when it had been able to react first in the tunnels, perhaps saving some of the others — perhaps even saving that ungrateful Changer — by knocking Xoxarle out. Much as it disliked admitting it, the drone had felt proud when Horza had thanked it. But it hadn’t really altered the man’s view; he would probably forget what had happened, or try to tell himself it was just a momentary aberration by a confused machine: a freak. Only Unaha-Closp knew what it felt, only it knew why it had risked injury to protect the humans. Or it should know, it told itself ruefully. Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered; maybe it should just have let the Idiran shoot them. It just hadn’t seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Mug, Unaha-Closp told itself.

It drifted through the bright, humming spaces of the train, like a detached part of the mechanism itself.

Wubslin scratched his head. He had stopped at the reactor car on his way to the control deck. Some of the reactor carriage doors wouldn’t open. They had to be on some sort of security lock, probably controlled from the bridge, or flight deck, or footplate, or whatever they called the bit at the nose the train was controlled from. He looked out of a window, remembering what Horza had ordered.

Aviger sat on the pallet, his gun pointing at the Idiran, who stood stock still against the girders. Wubslin looked away, tested the door through to the reactor area again, then shook his head.

The hand, the arm, was weakening. Above him, rows of seats faced blank screens. He pulled himself along by the stems of the chairs; he was almost at the corridor which led through to the front car.

He wasn’t sure how he would get through the corridor. What was there to hold onto? No point in worrying about it now. He grabbed at another chair stem, hauled at it.

From the terrace which looked over the repair area, they could see the front train, the one the drone was in. Poised over the sunken floor of the maintenance area, the glittering length of the train, nestling in the scooped half-tunnel which ran along the far wall, looked like a long thin spaceship, and the dark rock around it like starless space.

Yalson watched the Culture agent’s back, frowning. “She’s too damn docile, Horza,” she said, just loud enough for the man to hear.

“That’s fine by me,” Horza said. “The more docile the better.”

Yalson shook her head slightly, not taking her eyes off the woman in front. “No, she’s stringing us along. She hasn’t cared up till now; she’s known she can afford to let things happen. She’s got another card she can play and she’s just relaxing until she has to use it.”

“You’re imagining things,” Horza told her. “Your hormones are getting the better of you, developing suspicions and second sight.”

She looked at him, transferring the frown from Balveda to the Changer. Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

Horza held up his free hand. “A joke.” He smiled.

Yalson looked unconvinced. “She’s up to something. I can tell,” she said. She nodded to herself. “I can feel it.”

Quayanorl dragged himself through the connecting corridor. He pushed open the door to the carriage, crawled slowly across the floor. He was starting to forget why he was doing this. He knew he had to press on, go forward, keep crawling, but he could no longer recall exactly what it was all for. The train was a torture maze, designed to pain him.

I am dragging myself to my death. Somehow even when I get to the end, where I can crawl no more, I keep going. I remember thinking that earlier, but what was I thinking of? Do I die when I get to the train’s control area, and continue my journey on the other side, in death? Is that what I was thinking of?

I am like a tiny child, crawling over the floor… Come to me, little fellow, says the train.

We were looking for something, but I can’t recall… exactly… what… it…

They looked through the great cavern, searching, then climbed steps to the gallery giving access to the station’s accommodation and storage sections.

Balveda stood at the edge of the broad terrace which ran round the cavern, midway between floor and roof. Yalson watched the Culture agent while Horza opened the doors to the accommodation section. Balveda looked out over the broad cavern, slender hands resting on the guard rail. The topmost rail was level with Balveda’s shoulders; waist level on the people who had built the Command System.

Near where Balveda stood, a long gantry led out over the cavern, suspended on wires from the roof and leading to the terrace on the other side, where a narrow, brightly lit tunnel led into the rock. Balveda looked down the length of the narrow gantry at the distant tunnel mouth.

Yalson wondered if the Culture woman was thinking of making a run for it, but knew she wasn’t, and wondered then whether perhaps she only wanted Balveda to try, so she could shoot her, just to be rid of her.

Balveda looked away from the narrow gantry, and Horza swung open the doors to the accommodation section.

Xoxarle flexed his shoulders. The wires moved a little, sliding and bunching.

The human they had left to guard him looked tired, perhaps even sleepy, but Xoxarle couldn’t believe the others would stay away for very long. He couldn’t afford to do too much now, in case the Changer came back and noticed how the wires had moved. Anyway, though it was far from being the most interesting way things could fall, there was apparently a good chance that the humans would be unable to find the supposedly sentient computing device they were all looking for. In that case perhaps the best course of action would be no action. He would let the little ones take him back to their ship. Probably the one called Horza intended to ransom him; this had struck Xoxarle as the most likely explanation for being kept alive.

The fleet might pay for the return of a warrior, though Xoxarle’s family were officially barred from doing so, and anyway were not rich. He could not decide whether he wanted to live, and perhaps redeem the shame of being caught and paid for by future exploits, or to do all he could either to escape or to die. Action appealed to him most; it was the warriors’ creed. When in doubt, do.

The old human got up from the pallet and walked around. He came close enough to Xoxarle to be able to inspect the wires, but gave them only a perfunctory glance. Xoxarle looked at the laser gun the human carried. His great hands, tied together behind his back, opened and closed slowly, without him thinking about it.

Wubslin came to the control deck in the nose of the train. He took his helmet off and put it on the console. He made sure it wasn’t touching any controls, just covering a few small unlit panels. He stood in the middle of the deck, looking round with wide, fascinated eyes.

The train hummed under his feet. Dials and meters, screens and panels indicated the train’s readiness. He cast his eyes over the controls, set in front of two huge seats which faced over the front console towards the armoured glass which formed part of the train’s steeply sloping nose. The tunnel in front was dark, only a few small lights burning on its side walls.

Fifty metres in front, a complex assembly of points led the tracks into two tunnels. One route went dead ahead, where Wubslin could see the rear of the train in front; the other tunnel curved, avoiding the repair and maintenance cavern and giving a through route to the next station.

Wubslin touched the glass, stretching his arm out over the control console to feel the cold, smooth surface. He grinned to himself. Glass: not a viewscreen. He preferred that. The designers had had holographic screens and superconductors and magnetic levitation — they had used all of them in the transit tubes — but for their main work they had not been ashamed to stick to the apparently cruder but more damage-tolerant technology. So the train had armoured glass, and it ran on metal tracks. Wubslin rubbed his hands together slowly and gazed round the many instruments and controls.

“Nice,” he breathed. He wondered if he could work out which controls opened the locked doors in the reactor car.

Quayanorl reached the control deck.

It was undamaged. From floor level, the deck was metal seat stems, overhanging control panels and bright ceiling lights. He hauled himself over the floor, racked with pain, muttering to himself, trying to remember why he had come all this way.

He rested his face on the cold floor of the deck. The train hummed at him, vibrating beneath his face. It was still alive; it was damaged and like him it would never get any better, but it was still alive. He had intended to do something, he knew that, but it was all slipping away from him now. He wanted to cry with the frustration of it all, but it was as though he had no energy left even for tears.

What was it? he asked himself (while the train hummed). I was… I was… what?

Unaha-Closp looked through the reactor car. Much of it was inaccessible at first, but the drone found a way into it eventually, through a cable run.

It wandered about the long carriage, noting how the system worked: the dropped absorber baffles preventing the pile from heating up, the wasted uranium shielding designed to protect the fragile humanoids’ bodies, the heat-exchange pipes which took the reactor’s heat to the batteries of small boilers where steam turned generators to produce the power which turned the train’s wheels. All very crude, Unaha-Closp thought. Complicated and crude at the same time. So much to go wrong, even with all their safety systems.

At least, if it and the humans did have to move around in these archaic nuclear-steam-electric locomotives, they would be using the power from the main system. The drone found itself agreeing with the Changer; the Idirans must have been mad to try to get all this ancient junk working.

“They slept in those things?” Yalson looked at the suspended nets. Horza, Balveda and she stood at the end door of a large cavern which had been a dormitory for the long-dead people who had worked in the Command System. Balveda tested one of the nets. They were like open hammocks, strung between sets of poles which hung from the ceiling. Perhaps a hundred of them filled the room, like fishing nets hung out to dry.

“They must have found them comfortable, I guess,” Horza said. He looked round. There was nowhere the Mind could have hidden. “Let’s go,” he said. “Balveda, come on.”

Balveda left one of the net-beds swinging gently, and wondered if there were any working baths or showers in the place.

He reached up to the console. He pulled with all his strength and got his head onto the seat. He used his neck muscles as well as his aching, feeble arm to lever himself up. He pushed round and swivelled his torso. He gasped as one of his legs caught on the underside of the seat and he almost fell back. At last, though, he was in the seat.

He looked out over the massed controls, through the armoured glass and into the broad tunnel beyond the train’s sloped nose; lights edged the black walls; steel rails snaked glittering into the distance.

Quayanorl gazed into that still and silent space and experienced a small, grim feeling of victory; he had just remembered why he’d crawled there.

“Is that it?” Yalson said. They were in the control room, where the station complex’s own functions were monitored. Horza had turned on a few screens, checking figures, and now sat at a console, using the station’s remote-control cameras to take a final look at the corridors and rooms, the tunnels and shafts and caverns. Balveda was perched on another huge seat, swinging her legs, looking like a child in an adult’s chair.

“That’s it,” Horza said. “The station checks out; unless it’s on one of the trains, the Mind isn’t here.” He switched to cameras in the other stations, flicking through in ascending order. He paused at station five, looking down from the cavern roof at the bodies of the four medjel and the wreckage of the Mind’s crude gun carrier, then tried the roof camera in station six…

They haven’t found me yet. I can’t hear them properly. All I can hear is their tiny footsteps. I know they’re here, but I can’t tell what they’re doing. Am I fooling them? I detected a mass sensor, but its signal vanished. There is another. They have it here with them but it can’t be working properly; maybe fooled as I hoped, the train saving me. How ironic.

They may have captured an Idiran. I heard another rhythm in their step. All walking, or some with AG? How did they get in here? Could they be the Changers from the surface?

I would give half my memory capacity for another remote drone. I’m hidden but I’m trapped. I can’t see and I can’t hear properly. All I can do is feel. I hate it. I wish I knew what is going on.

Quayanorl stared at the controls in front of him. They had worked out a lot of their functions earlier, before the humans had arrived. He had to try to remember it all now. What did he have to do first? He reached forward, rocking unsteadily on the alien-shaped seat. He flicked a set of switches. Lights blinked; he heard clicks.

It was so hard to remember. He touched levers and switches and buttons. Meters and dials moved to new readings. Screens flickered; figures began blinking on the readouts. Small high noises bleeped and squeaked. He thought he was doing the right things, but couldn’t be sure.

Some of the controls were too far away, and he had to drag himself halfway on top of the console, being careful not to alter any of the controls he had already set, to reach them, then shove himself back into the seat again.

The train was whirring now; he could feel it stir. Motors turned, air hissed, speakers bleeped and clicked. He was getting somewhere. The train wasn’t moving but he was slowly bringing it closer to the moment when it might.

His sight was fading, though.

He blinked and shook his head, but his eye was giving out. The view was going grey before him; he had to stare at the controls and the screens. The lights on the tunnel wall in front, retreating into the black distance, seemed to be dimming. He could have believed that the power was failing, but he knew it wasn’t. His head was hurting, deep inside. Probably it was sitting that was causing it, the blood draining.

He was dying quickly enough anyway, but now there was even more urgency. He hit the buttons, moved some levers. The train should have moved, flexed; but it stayed motionless.

What else was there left to do? He turned to his blind side; light panels flashed. Of course: the doors. He hit the appropriate sections of the console and heard rumbling, sliding noises; and most of the panels stopped flashing. Not all, though. Some of the doors must have been jammed. Another control overrode their fail-safes; the remaining panels went dim.

He tried again.

Slowly, like an animal stretching after hibernation, the Command System train, all three hundred metres of it, flexed; the carriages pulling a little tighter to each other, taking up slack, readying.

Quayanorl felt the slight movement and wanted to laugh. It was working. Probably he had taken far too long, probably it was now too late, but at least he had done what he had set out to do, against all the odds, and the pain. He had taken command of the long silver beast, and with only a little more luck he would at least give the humans something to think about. And show the Beast of the Barrier what he thought of its precious monument.

Nervously, fearing that it would still not work, after all his effort and agony, he took hold of the lever he and Xoxarle had decided governed the power fed to the main wheel motors, then pushed it until it was at its limit for the starting mode. The train shuddered, groaned and did not move.

His one eye, containing the grey view, began to cry, drowning in tears.

The train jerked, a noise of metal tearing came from behind. He was almost thrown from the seat. He had to grab the edge of the seat, then lean forward and take the power lever again as it flicked back to the off position. The roaring in his head grew and grew; he was shaking with exhaustion and excitement; he pushed the lever again.

Wreckage blocked one door. Welding gear hung under the reactor car. Strips of metal torn from the train’s hull were splayed out like stray hairs from a badly groomed coat. Lumps of debris littered the tracks by the sides of both access gantries, and one whole ramp, where Xoxarle had been buried for a while, had crashed through the side of a carriage when it had been cut free.

Groaning and moaning as though its own attempts at movement were as painful as Quayanorl’s had been, the train lurched forward again. It moved half a turn of its wheels, then stopped as the jammed ramp stuck against the access gantry. A whining noise came from the train motors. In the control deck, alarms sounded, almost too high for the injured Idiran to hear. Meters flashed, needles climbed into danger zones, screens filled with information.

The ramp started to tear itself free from the train, crumpling a jagged-edge trench from the carriage surface as the train slowly forced its way forward.

Quayanorl watched the lip of the tunnel mouth edge closer.

More wreckage ground against the forward access gantry. The welding gear under the reactor car scraped along the smooth floor until it came to the lip of stone surrounding an inspection trough; it jammed, then broke, clattering to the bottom of the trough. The train rammed slowly forward.

With a grinding crash, the ramp caught on the rear access assembly fell free, snapping aluminium ribs and steel tubes, flaying the aluminium and plastic skin of the carriage it had lodged in. One corner of the ramp was nudged under the train, covering a rail; the wheels hesitated at it, the linkages between the cars straining, until the slowly gathering onward pull overcame the ramp. It buckled, its structures compressing, and the wheels rolled over it, thumping down on the far side and continuing along the rail. The next wheels clattered over it with hardly a pause.

Quayanorl sat back. The tunnel came to the train and seemed to swallow it; the view of the station slowly disappeared. Dark walls slid gently by on either side of the control deck. The train still shuddered, but it was slowly gathering speed. A series of bangs and crashes told Quayanorl of the carriages dragging their way after him, through the debris, over the shining rails, past the wrecked gantries, out of the damaged station.

The first car left at a slow walking pace, the next a little faster, the reactor carriage at a fast walk, and the final car at a slow run.

Smoke tugged after the departing train, then drifted back and rose to the roof again.

… The camera in station six, where they had had the fire-fight, where Dorolow and Neisin had died and the other Idiran had been left for dead, was out of action. Horza tried the switch a couple of times, but the screen stayed dark. A damage indicator winked. Horza flicked quickly through the views from the other stations on the circuit, then switched the screen off.

“Well, everything seems to be all right.” He stood up. “Let’s get back to the train.”

Yalson told Wubslin and the drone; Balveda slipped off the big seat, and with her in the lead, they walked out of the control room.

Behind them, a power-monitoring screen — one of the first Horza had switched on — was registering a massive energy drain in the locomotive supply circuits, indicating that somewhere, in the tunnels of the Command System, a train was moving.