brave. I promise I will. I'll die before I let another of my passengers come to harm.'
'Don't try and comfort him,' said the Goat, when Edwin's voice became choked with tears. 'He just gets morbid, and tears make him rust. Pick up the speed, Edwin. The sooner we get to Toystown, the happier I'll be. This is disputed territory, and you humans wouldn't believe some of the things that are disputing it.'
'Don't you listen to him, Edwin,' Bruin Bear said firmly. 'You're going quite fast enough as it is. We'll have no showing off your sudden accelerations this trip. Remember what happened last time.'
'Don't worry, Bear,' said the train. 'I'll be good. I've got people on board again.' And he sang a merry song and chuffed and tootled his way across the grassy plain.
He kept his speed at a constant twenty, and after a while the rebels became somewhat accustomed to the lurching motion of the carriages. Giles even came close to dozing off. There was nothing to do, and very little to look at. One grassy plain looks much like another. There were no trees, no vegetation, and no sign the war had ever got this far. Just endless oceans of waving grass, cut through by silver tracks. Flynn suggested a friendly game of cards, but after seeing the more than professional way he shuffled the cards, everyone politely declined. And so the rebels and the toys maintained a polite silence, each deep in his own thoughts. Finlay suddenly remembered something he'd been meaning to ask and leaned forward so his face was opposite the Bear's.
'Who buried the recon team's pinnace? And why?'
'We did,' said the Bear. 'The Goat and I. We arrived too late to save the humans, but we were able to drive the bad toys off before they could get to the ship. The Goat can be quite ferocious when he has to be. And he was almost mad with rage then, to see so many humans dead again. We wrecked the ship's engines, and then buried it, to put it out of temptation's way. The bad toys are desperate to get offworld, you see, and take their war to Humanity. I'd like to have buried or at least concealed your ship, but there wasn't time. We can always do it later.'
'Don't worry,' said Finlay. 'There are all kinds of unpleasant booby traps waiting for anyone who doesn't have the right warm-up codes.'
Bruin Bear shook his head admiringly. 'You humans. So tricky. But I wouldn't be too confident. Some toys have learned to be tricky, too.'
He didn't seem to have anything to add to that, so Finlay sat back in his seat. Somehow Julian had managed to get the seat next to him, rather than Evangeline, and the younger esper leaned over and murmured urgently in Finlay's ear.
'Pardon me for being paranoid, but aren't we being just a tiny bit too trusting here, Finlay? I mean, how do we know these are the good guys? Just because they say so, and look cuddly? Just because this thing opposite us looks like a character we all knew and loved in our childhood, we shouldn't forget that it is by its own admission basically just a rogue AI originally created and programmed by Shub. For all we know, he could be taking us to some mass sacrificial slaughter, where they could all take turns at us, while we lasted.'
'No,' said Finlay calmly. 'I don't think so. Bruin Bear wouldn't do that. If he wanted us dead, he and the Goat have had plenty of opportunities. All they've done so far is talk and smile us to death. Besides, if you can't trust Bruin Bear, who can you trust?'
And then they both rocked in their seats as Edwin cut his speed suddenly, slowing almost to a crawl. All the humans looked ahead, but couldn't see anything. Bruin Bear stood up in his seat, and stared ahead, one paw shading his eyes. 'What is it, Edwin?'
'The tracks are out, some way ahead. Someone's dug them up again.'
'I can't see anything,' said Finlay.
'Our eyes were designed to be more than human,' said the Sea Goat. 'We can see for miles.'
'I can see it,' said Giles. 'It doesn't look too bad. Can we repair it?'
'Oh sure,' said Edwin. 'I always carry spares these days. Just in case. With you humans to help, we should be finished inside an hour.'
'Okay,' said Bruin Bear. 'Take us as far as you safely can, and then stop.' He sat down again, frowning heavily. The expression looked out of place on his round furry face. 'I don't like this,' he said suddenly to Finlay and Julian. 'There's no reason for anyone to dig up the tracks all the way out here, except to interrupt our journey. And since Edwin, the Goat, and I are not all that important, it can only mean that the bad toys know about you. Which could mean we are in deep doo-doo.'
Finlay looked around him. The grassy plains stretched away in every direction, open and empty and innocent. 'Seems safe enough.'
The Bear growled suddenly, deep in his throat. It was a dark, disturbing sound. 'Never take that for granted. Not in Summerland. Nothing is necessarily what it seems anymore.'
'Including you?'
'Including me. I'm not innocent anymore.'
The train slowly eased to a halt, in a cloud of steam. Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat jumped off and hurried forward. The humans got off more slowly, secretly glad for a chance to stretch their legs and ease aching posteriors. The train and its carriages had not been designed for long journeys. The Bear signaled for them to stay where they were while he and the Goat examined the damage. Edwin vented steam nervously, and then apologized. Bruin Bear leaned over the dug-up tracks and studied them thoughtfully. Half a dozen sleepers had been broken apart, and the pieces scattered. Where they had been was now a shallow pit in the grass. Dark loose earth showed clearly, rough and disturbed. The Bear knelt beside it. The Sea Goat frowned, and half reached out a hand to pull his friend back.
'Not too close. Bear. I've got a bad feeling about this.'
'You've always got a bad feeling about things.'
'And I'm usually right.'
The Bear looked back at the Goat, exasperated, and that was when the cloth hand burst up out of the broken earth and fastened around his ankle. Bruin Bear cried out in shock and alarm, and then toppled over backwards. He tried to scramble away, and the owner of the hand came rising up out of the pit it had dug under the tracks, squirming out of the loose earth like a maggot from an apple. It was a rag doll, stitched together from hundreds of different-colored patches, but there was metal in it, too, great steel staples holding it together like some ragged Frankenstein creature. Its cloth face crumpled with rage and hatred as it looked across at the humans by the train, and then its mouth stretched wide, stitches tearing apart, and it screamed. There was enough human emotion in the artificial voice—a horrid implacable howl of fury and eternal enmity—to chill the soul.
Bruin Bear kicked his foot as hard as he could, but couldn't break free. The rag doll pulled itself over him as he struggled, and raised a cloth hand holding a long machete. The doll snarled at the Bear, and then swung the machete down with savage speed. It was only a few inches from Bear's head when the energy bolt from a disrupter tore the cloth arm away from its body, and sent the burning arm flying through the air, still clutching its machete. The Sea Goat stuffed the gun back inside his trench coat, and hurried forward. The Bear and the doll were still struggling furiously. Bruin Bear rolled over suddenly, pulling the doll beneath him, and sharp metal claws erupted from his paws. He tore into the rag doll with vicious strength, and shreds of cloth flew through the air. The Goat had almost reached them when the earth under the broken tracks boiled and seethed, and a dozen more rag dolls came clawing up out of the ground, like the undead from their graves.
'Don't just stand there!' Edwin the train cried to the stunned humans. 'Do something! Help them!'
'What the hell,' said Finlay, starting forward with his sword in his hand. 'Anyone who hates Bruin Bear has to be one of the bad guys.'
The others moved quickly after him, and soon a battle was raging furiously around the dug-up tracks. The rag dolls were incredibly strong and unbelievably limber, their limbs and bodies bending at impossible angles as they launched their attacks. They all had swords and machetes of some kind, the jagged blades crusted with old dried blood. The rebels' swords cut deep into the cloth bodies and out again, but did no harm. Stuffing flew on the air, but the rag dolls just smiled their awful smiles and kept pressing forward. They bobbed and weaved in horrible contortions, attacking without pause for breath, filled with an endless savagery. Julian stabbed one where its heart should have been, and the doll just snarled at him, pulling itself along the blade to get at him. Julian put his foot against the doll's yielding chest and forced it away as he withdrew his blade. The doll grabbed at his ankle, and he had to jump back to avoid its grasp. It came after him, grinning remorselessly, and Julian wondered where the hell he could hit the damned thing and do some damage.
Finlay and Evangeline fought back-to-back. Evangeline's skill with a sword was strictly limited, but Finlay's
