The Chosen

Pia shivered and nodded. John turned his head slightly.

'Sinders,' he said, 'didn't you say you worked for the North Central Rail before you joined the corps?'

Sinders blinked at him. 'Lord love you, sir, so I did,' he said. 'Locomotive driver. Had a bit of a falling out with the section foreman, like.'

Someone spoke sotto voce: 'Had a bit of a falling down with his daughter, you mean.'

'Follow me,' John said. He hopped down from the platform; cinders crunched under his boots. They handed down the women and walked over the tracks to the other side of the vast shed. 'There, that one. Could you drive it?'

A steam engine and its fuel car stood pointing eastward; vapor leaked from several places, hiding the green- and-gold livery of the Imperial Pada Valley line.

'Sure, sir. It's Santander made, anyway-standard 4-4-2, rebuilt for the Imperial broad gauge. That's if we got time to raise steam, that could take a while.'

'It has steam up,' John said. Center drew a thermal schematic over his sight.

'But where would we go on it, sir?'

'East a ways, at least.'

The Marines looked uncertain. 'Ah, beggin' yer pardon, sir,' the corporal said 'But ain't those Land buggers all around?'

'Maybe not to the east. And if we do run into them, we've got a better chance of standing on diplomatic immunity when they're in the field and under control by their officers than when they're turned loose on the city. I can speak Landisch and I've got the necessary papers.'

And code words to prove he was a double agent working for Land Military Intelligence, if it came to that. Useful with the army, although the Fourth Bureau would probably kill him. Military Intelligence was as much the Fourth Bureau's enemy as anything in Santander was.

'Let's go,' he finished.

They jogged over to the engine, grateful when its clean smell of hot iron, oil and soot overcame the slaughterhouse stink of the abandoned dying. John lifted Pia up with both hands on her waist, then her friend. Three of the Marines scrambled up onto the heap of broken coal that filled the fuel car; the rest of the party jammed themselves into the cab.

'Going to be a bit crowded,' Sinders said, tapping at gauges and studying the swing of dials and the level of fluid in segmented glass tubes. 'She's hot, though-plenty of steam. Could use a little coal. . not that way, ye daft pennyworth!'

One of the marines jerked his hand back from the handle of the firebox set into the forward arch of the cab's surface.

'Use the shovel!' Sinders said. 'Lay me down some, and I'll get this bitch movin'-beggin' your pardon, ma'am,' he said to Pia.

John took the worn, long-handled tool down from the rack, sliding through the press of men and women. The ashwood was silky-smooth under his hands; he flicked the handle of the firedoor up and to the side, swinging the tray-sized oblong of cast iron open until it caught on the hook opposite. Hot dry air blasted back into the cab of the locomotive, with a smell of sulfur and scorched metal.

'Wilton, you get back with the others on the fuel car, I'm going to need some room here. Darling, could you and-'

'Lola. Lola Chiavri,' the other woman said.

'Miss Chiavri get on those benches.' Short iron seats were bolted under the angled windows at the rear sides of the cab, so that an off-duty fireman or stoker could sit and watch the track ahead.

John spat on his hands and dug the shovel into the coal that puddled out of the transfer chute at the very rear of the cab.

'Spread it around, like, sir,' Sinders said, turning valve wheels and laying a hand on one of the long levers. 'Not too much. Kind of bounce it off that-there arch of firebrick at the front of the furnace, you know?'

John grunted in reply. The second and third shovelfuls showed him the trick of it, a flicking turn of the wrists. Have to get someone to spell me, he thought. He was amply strong and fit for the task, but his hands didn't have the inch-thick crust of callus that anyone who did this for a living would develop.

WHUFF. WHUFF. Steam billowed out from the driving cylinders at the front of the locomotive.

'Keep it comin', sir. She's about ready.' Sinders braced a foot and hauled back on another of the levers. 'Damn, they shoulda greased this fresh days ago. Goddam wop maintenance.'

There was a tooth-grating squeal of metal on metal as the driving wheels spun once against the rails, the smell of ozone, a quick shower of sparks. Then the engine lurched forward, slowed, lurched again and gathered speed with a regular chuff. . chuff. . of escaping steam. Pia grinned at John as he turned for another shovelful of coal; he found himself grinning back.

'Did it, by God,' he said, then rapped his knuckles against the haft of the shovel in propitiation.

Sunlight fell bright across them as they pulled out of the train station; he flipped the firedoor shut and slapped Sinders on the shoulder.

'Halt just before that signal tower and let me down for a moment,' he half-shouted over the noise into the Marines ear. 'I'll switch us onto the mainline.'

The trooper looked dubiously at the complex web of rail. 'Sure you. . yessir.'

John leaped down with the prybar in hand. The gravel crunched under his feet, pungent with tar and ash. A film of it settled across the filthy surface of what had once been dress shoes; he found himself smiling wryly at that. He looked up for an instant and met Pia's eyes. She was smiling too, and he knew it was at the same jape.

That's some woman, he told himself, as he turned and let Center's glowing map settle over his vision. She recovered fast.

connections are here. . and here.

Thanks, he thought absently.

you are welcome.

He drove the steel into the gap between the rails and heaved. After all these years, I'm still not sure if Center has a sense of humor.

Neither am I, if it's any consolation, Raj replied.

Chunk. The points slid into contact. He sprinted down the line a hundred yards and repeated the process, then waved. The locomotive responded with a puff of steam and a screech of steel on steel as Sinders let out the throttle. At his wave, it kept going; he sprinted alongside and grabbed at the bracket, grunted, took two more steps and swung himself up into the crowded cabin.

He looked ahead, southeastward. The track was clear. 'Let's go home,' he said.

'Home,' Pia whispered. She buried her head against John's chest, and his arm went around her shoulders.

* * *

Pia went pale as she slid down from the saddle, biting her lip against the pain. Lola was weeping, but silently, and he was feeling the effects of days of hard riding himself. The Marines were in worse condition than John; they were fit men, but they were footsoldiers, not accustomed to spending much time in the saddle.

'See to the horses,' John said, looking upslope to the copse of evergreen oaks.

They were only a hundred miles from the Gut, and the landscape was getting hillier; the deep-soiled plain of the central lowlands was behind them, and they were in a harder, drier land. Thyme and arbutus scented the air as he climbed quickly to the crest of the hill; the other side showed rolling hills, mostly covered in scrub with an occasional olive grove or terraced vineyard or hollow filled with pale barley stubble. Occasional stands of spike grass waved ten meters in the air. The rhizome-spread native plant was almost impossible to eradicate, but individual clumps never expanded beyond pockets where the moisture level and soil minerals were precisely correct. And a dusty gray-white road, winding a couple of thousand yards below them. On it, coming down from the north. .

John relaxed. That was no Chosen column. A shapeless clot of humanity grouped around half a dozen two- wheeled ox carts, a few men on horseback, mostly civilians on foot, some pulling handcarts heaped with their possessions.

'Refugees,' he said, as Pia and several of the Marines came up. 'We can cut-wait.'