Quirrenbach paused to catch his breath, standing beneath a clattering destination board. It showed departures to Chasm City, Ferrisville, Loreanville, New Europa and beyond, but only about one train a day was leaving to anywhere other than Chasm City.
‘So they did the best they could,’ Quirrenbach said. ‘Some technology had survived the plague, of course. That’s why you’ll still see relics, even here — servitors, vehicles — but they tend to be owned by the rich. They’ve got all the nuclear generators, and the few antimatter power-plants left in the city. Down in the Mulch it’ll be a different story, I think. It’ll be dangerous, too.’
While he talked I looked at the destination board. It would have made my job a lot easier if Reivich had taken a train to one of the smaller settlements, where he would have been both conspicuous and trapped, but I thought the chances were good that he’d have taken the first train to Chasm City.
Quirrenbach and I paid our fares and boarded the train. The carriages strung behind the locomotive looked much older than the rest of it, and therefore much more modern, salvaged from the old levitating train and mounted on wheels. The doors irised shut, and then the whole procession clanked into motion, creeping forward at a walking pace and then gathering speed laboriously. There was an intermittent squeal of slipping wheels, and then the ride became smoother, steam billowing past us. The train threaded its way through one of the narrow-bored tunnels faced with an enormous irising door, and then we passed through a further series of pressure locks, until we must have been moving through near-vacuum.
The ride became ghostly quiet.
The passenger compartment was as cramped as a prison transport, and the passengers seemed subdued to the point of somnolence, like drugged prisoners being carried to a detention centre. Screens had dropped down from the ceiling and were now cycling through adverts, but they referred to products and services which were very unlikely to have survived the plague. Near one end I could see a huddle of palanquins, grouped together like a collection of coffins in an undertaker’s backroom.
‘The first thing we’ve got to do is get these implants out,’ Quirrenbach said, leaning conspiratorially towards me. ‘I can’t bear the idea of the things still sitting in my head now.’
‘We should be able to find someone who’ll do it quickly,’ I said.
‘And safely, too — the one’s not much good without the other.’
I smiled. ‘I think it’s probably a little late to worry about safely, don’t you?’
Quirrenbach pursed his lips.
The screen next to us was showing an advert for a particularly sleek-looking flying machine, something like one of our volantors, except it seemed to have been made out of insect parts. But then the screen flashed with static and a geisha-like woman appeared on it instead.
‘Welcome aboard the Chasm City Zephyr.’ The woman’s face resembled a china doll with painted lips and rosy cheeks. She wore an absurdly elaborate silver outfit which curved up behind her head. ‘We are currently transiting the Trans-Caldera Tunnel and will be arriving at Grand Central Station in eight minutes. We hope you will enjoy your journey with us and that your time in Chasm City will be both pleasant and prosperous. In the meantime, in anticipation of our arrival, we invite you to share some of our city’s highlights.’
‘This’ll be interesting,’ Quirrenbach said.
The windows of the train carriage flickered and became holographic displays, no longer showing the rushing walls, but an impressive vista of the city, just as if the train had tunnelled through seven years of history. The train was threading between dreamlike structures, rising vertiginously on either side like mountains sculpted out of solid opal or obsidian. Below us was a series of stepped levels, landscaped with beautiful gardens and lakes, entwined with walkways and civic transit tubes. They dwindled into a haze of blue depth, riven by plunging abysses full of neon light, immense tiered plazas and rockfaces. The air was thick with a constant swarm of colourful aerial vehicles, some of which were shaped like exotic dragonflies or hummingbirds. Passenger dirigibles nosed indolently through the swarms; scores of tiny revellers peered over the railed edges of their gondolas. Above them, the largest buildings loomed like geometric clouds. The sky was a pure electric blue woven with the fine, regular matrix of the dome.
And all around the city marched into terrible distance, wonder upon wonder receding as far as the eye could see. It was only sixty kilometres, but it could have been infinity. There appeared to be enough marvels in Chasm City to last a lifetime. Even a modern one.
But no one had told the simulation about the plague. I had to remind myself that we were still rushing through the tunnel under the crater wall; that in fact we had yet to arrive in the city itself.
‘I can see why they called it a Belle Epoque,’ I said.
Quirrenbach nodded. ‘They had it all. And you know the worst of it? They damn well knew it. Unlike any other golden age in history… they knew they were living through it.’
‘It must have made them pretty insufferable.’
‘Well, they certainly paid for it.’
It was round about then that we burst into what passed for daylight in Chasm City. The train must have crossed under the crater rim and passed through the boundary of the dome. It was racing through a suspended tube just like the one which had been suggested by the hologram, but this tube was covered in dirt which only gave way fleetingly; just enough to show that we were passing through what looked like a series of densely packed slums. The holographic recording was still playing, so that the old city was superimposed on the new one like a faint ghost. Ahead, the tube curved round and vanished into a tiered cylindrical building from which other tubes radiated, threading out across the city. The train was slowing as we approached the tiered building.
Grand Central Station, Chasm City.
As we entered the building, the holographic mirage faded, taking with it the last faint memory of the Belle Epoque. Yet for all its glory, only Quirrenbach and I seemed to have taken much notice of the hologram. The other passengers stood silent, scrutinising the scorched and littered floor.
‘Still think you can make it here?’ I asked Quirrenbach. ‘After what you’ve seen now?’
He gave the question a lot of thought before answering.
‘Who’s to say I won’t? Maybe there are more opportunities now than ever before. Maybe it’s just a question of adaptation. One thing’s for sure, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Whatever music I write here, it isn’t going to cheer anyone up.’
Grand Central Station was as humid as deep Peninsula jungle, just as starved of light as the forest floor. Sweltering, I removed Vadim’s coat and bundled it under one arm.
‘We’ve got to get these implants out,’ Quirrenbach said yet again, tugging at my sleeve.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It hadn’t slipped my mind.’
The roof was supported by fluted pillars which rose up like hamadryad trees before thrusting their fingers through the roof into the brown gloom beyond. In between these pillars was a densely packed bazaar: a motley city of tents and stalls, through which passed only the narrowest and most twisting of passageways. Stalls had been built or piled above each other, so that some of the passageways became backbreakingly low, lamplit tunnels through which people were forced to stoop like hunchbacks. There were several dozen vendors and many hundreds of people, very few of whom were accompanied by servitors. There were exotic pets on leashes; genetically enhanced servants; caged birds and snakes. A few hermetics had made the error of trying to force their way through the bazaar rather than finding a route around it, and now their palanquins were mired, harried by traders and tricksters.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘Do we risk it, or find a way around?’
Quirrenbach clutched his briefcase closer to his chest. ‘Much against my better judgement, I think we should risk it. I have a hunch — merely a hunch, mind — that we may be pointed towards the services we both so urgently require.’
‘It might be a mistake.’
‘And it probably won’t be the first of the day, either. I’m somewhat on the ravenous side, anyway. There’s bound to be something edible around here — and it might not be immediately toxic.’
We pushed our way into the bazaar. Quirrenbach and I had taken barely a dozen steps before we had attracted a mob of optimistic kids and surly beggars.
