Night Train to Rigel

“Would the system’s name tell you anything?” Bayta countered as the hatchway above us closed and we dropped away from the Tube.

“Probably not,” I conceded. There was a click, and all around us cabin panels irised open into viewports.

It was a typical starscape, the kind you could see from any of a thousand systems across the galaxy. In the center of our view was a small star, mostly white but with a strange greenish tinge. “Welcome to Viccai,” Bayta said, pointing toward a dark circle with a bright edge directly ahead. “It means ‘hope’ in our language.”

“I take it this isn’t your people’s original home?”

“No, we moved here after the Great Revolt, after we and the Spiders built the Tube,” she said. “There was no other life here, and no worlds anyone could ever want or use. It was the safest place we could be.”

“You might be surprised at what Humans want,” I said. “Whether or not we can actually use it.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Trust me,” I assured her. “How long ago was this Great Revolt?”

“Sixteen hundred years,” she said. “But that’s a subject better left to the Elders.”

“I suppose,” I said, frowning as another piece fell into place. “The messenger who brought me my Quadrail ticket was another one like you, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said, and I could hear the quiet pain in her voice. “We were sent to Earth to bring you to Hermod. He went off to meet you, while I made preparations at the skyport. We were supposed to all ride out to the Quadrail together.” She closed her eyes briefly. “And then you showed up at the skyport alone, and I didn’t have time to try to find him before I had to leave with you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If it helps any, there was probably nothing you could have done to save him. If you’d been there, it would have been two of you dead instead of one.”

“I know that.” She took a deep breath, let it out tiredly. “But all the logic and reason in the world doesn’t help when someone was your friend.”

I turned away. “I’ll take your word for it.”

I could feel her eyes on me. “You have friends, Frank,” she said. “Or at least, they’re there if you want them.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said again, a little more brusquely this time. I didn’t need her sympathy. “So how exactly does the Modhri fit into all this?”

“The Elders will explain,” she said. “They’re the ones who best know the history.” She hesitated. “And they’re the only ones who can make bargains with you,” she added. “If they choose to do so.”

The planet Viccai, when we reached it, was every bit as cold and dark and cheerless as it had looked from a distance. If this was the Chahwyn’s idea of hope, I decided as we flew over the bleak landscape, I’d hate to see what they considered depressing.

But like Bayta herself, things here were not exactly as they seemed. We touched down, and even before Bayta had finished shutting off the systems the landing area began to sink into the ground. Within a few minutes we’d reached a subterranean city filled with lights and music and strange but pleasant aromas. Bayta led me to a nearby building and into a small room with sculpted walls and a ceiling designed to look like a normal daytime sky, complete with drifting clouds and a bright yellow sun. In the center of the room were nine chairs arranged in an inward-facing triangle.

“Sit there,” Bayta told me, pointing to one of the corner chairs as she sat down in one of the others. “The Elder who will speak to you is coming.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when a door I hadn’t noticed opened in the wall behind the third corner of the triangle and a single figure wearing soft shoes and an elaborately draped toga sort of robe strode in to join us.

I had been expecting some sort of alien being, something never before seen by mortal man. To my surprise and vague disappointment, the Elder was as human as the kid next door. He was of average height and build, with brown hair and eyes and a calm, almost beatific expression. “Good day, Frank Compton,” he said, inclining his head as he stepped into the triangle and seated himself in the third corner. His voice was as melodious as that of a trained Shakespearean actor. “Welcome to Viccai.”

“Thank you,” I said. Very Human… but not quite Human enough. Now, with a more careful look, I could see the vagueness of the details around his lips and ears, the false way the wrinkles at his eyes and mouth fell into place, the slight misjointedness of his wrists and fingers as he settled his hands into his lap. “But please,” I added. “Don’t go to all this trouble just for me.”

The Elder inclined his head. “Hermod was right,” he said. “You were indeed an excellent choice.” He smiled; and as he did so his skin seemed to melt, the facial features smoothing out, the fingers and arms thinning and lengthening. Most of the brown hair flattened and slid back out of sight beneath the flesh, while a handful of the tufts above the eyes stretched out into clusters of catlike whiskers.

And when the transformation was finished, he was every bit as alien as I had first expected.

“Thank you,” he said. Oddly enough, his voice was still melodious. Probably he’d decided to keep whatever adjustments he’d made to his vocal system. “It is so very difficult to maintain an unfamiliar form.” He gestured two bony fingers toward Bayta. “Which is why it was necessary to have genuine humans to walk among you.”

“Bayta said you would tell me about the Modhri,” I said, deciding to let that one pass for the moment.

The Elder nodded. “The story begins four thousand years ago, with the rise of a race called the Shonkla-raa,” he said. “It was they who first discovered the secret of interstellar travel and began expanding their influence across the galaxy. Within fourteen hundred years they had mapped out the locations of all inhabited and inhabitable systems and begun a thousand years of conquest.” He paused. “I’m told you claim to know their secret.”

“I know your secret,” I told him. “I can only assume it’s the same as theirs.”

The Elder inclined his head. “Tell me.”

They couldn’t afford to kill me, I reminded myself firmly. “In a nutshell, your glorious Quadrail is a fraud,” I said. “The whole thing: the trains with their intriguingly mysterious fourth rail, the fancy laser connections bouncing off the front bumpers, even the big light show from the Coreline. It’s nothing but a carefully arranged set of window dressing designed to misdirect and obscure what’s really going on.”

The Elder had gone very still. “Which is?”

“That it’s nothing but the Coreline,” I said. “There’s something inside that fancy packaging that makes the whole thing work. Some kind of quantum thread, I’d guess—I don’t know enough physics to even take a stab as to what kind. The point is that once you’re in motion, the closer you get to the Coreline the faster you move. Quadrails move at a light-year per minute; information cylinders, which I gather get somehow kicked up onto that mesh framework around the Coreline, go a hell of a lot faster.”

I looked at Bayta. “You saw it, didn’t you? My accidental hop, when I was briefly disconnected from direct contact with the Quadrail. Even a fraction of a centimeter closer to the Coreline sent me leapfrogging nine cars ahead before I came back down.”

She nodded soberly. “I was hoping you wouldn’t realize what had happened.”

“So it’s true,” the Elder said, a strange melancholy in his voice. “The secret is lost.”

“Well, no, not necessarily,” I cautioned him. “There’s no reason that information has to leave this room. Because I think I also know why you went to all this trouble in the first place.” I waved a hand out toward the stars. “Back on the Quadrail, the Modhri tried to spin me a nice little spindrift about how he wanted peace for the galaxy. You Chahwyn, on the other hand, have actually done something to create it.”

“We had no choice,” the Elder said in a low voice. “We’d seen what uncontrolled access to the Thread led to. The Shonkla-raa were conquerors, arrogant and violent. Once they gained control of the Thread and learned how to ravel bits of it off to other star systems, there was no stopping them. They built huge warships and sent them rushing between worlds, dominating or destroying all other life.”

“So what finally stopped them?” I frowned as a sudden thought struck me. “Or is the Modhri the Shonkla-raa?”

The Elder’s eye-ridge tufts quivered. “Not at all,” he said. “The Modhri was merely the Shonkla-raa’s final weapon.”

Weapon. The word hung in the air for a moment like a scattering of black dust. I looked at Bayta, back at the Elder. “Maybe we’d better take this from the top.”

The Elder nodded. “Sixteen hundred years ago, after a thousand years of slavery, there was a carefully