«No, I mean really fast. Just look at her.» Now the rails were roaring and Runa, sitting on the guiderail, could feel the vibration through her buttocks.
She looked up from her scrutiny of a young bachelor to see Rayo coming towards them faster than she’d ever seen anything travel before.
«Mordecai!» she shouted, jumping to the ground. «Let’s get out of here!»
There was something different about this car, and this trip.
Astrud sat at the forward end of the hold, just behind Tonio. The wind funnelled like a hurricane through Rayo’s nose and Astrud would have gone on deck except that it was bedlam up there, the crew fighting with the sheets while the ground sped past at an insane speed. It wasn’t right for anything to travel so fast. It was against nature. And it was surely against the Examples, although Astrud couldn’t quite work out why.
Anyway, she was quite certain they would be punished.
She’d even worked out how it would happen. The whole cargo of tortugas would suddenly explode, scattering Rayo and its inhabitants across the pampas.
«Tonio.… Do we have to go so fast?»
But her words were whisked away by the wind, drowned in the terrible noise. Not that Tonio would have paid any attention, even if he’d heard.… That was another thing. He’d been behaving so strangely. He seemed to lose control of himself at the slightest setback. And just before they’d finally got away from the yards, he’d vomited.
She caught hold of the ladder and, with difficulty, climbed to the deck. It was like climbing a tree in a gale. And just as she reached the top of the ladder, Rayo passed the hill they called Camelback, and a gust of wind almost lifted the mast out of its tabernacle. She actually heard fibers parting. As she staggered, Raoul caught her. His eyes were bright with excitement.
«Steady, mother!»
«And just what would we do if the mast broke?» she asked shrilly, fear making her snappish. «Where would we be then? What’s the point of all this speed?»
«If the mast broke we’d jury-rig it.» He pointed to a locker full of crimson lianas. «It’s a chance we have to take, if we want to catch the others.»
«And the way those felinos looked at us, at Rangua. Shouldn’t we have stopped? The things they shouted after us! I’ve never heard of a car not stopping before!»
«Rayois no ordinary car.»
Even on the swaying deck, with the noise beating at her mind, Astrud sensed something odd in Raoul’s tone. He might not be her real son, but she’d known him a long time. «What are you saying?»
«Nothing, mother.»
«Raoul!» She clung to him. The car was flying across the plain like a thing possessed. This was the work of Agni! It had to be! There was evil in this speed! «How is Rayo different?»
Her stepson was silent.…
In the fulness of intuition, she said, «There’s something in this car which is against the Examples.»
He didn’t reply. He moved away, face averted, and began to help the crew replace a fraying line.
Astrud leaned against the deck rail, weeping with terror, while the hellish car bore her headlong into perdition. Her head whirled with the terrible speed of the ground beneath, and when the voice of Tonio snapped commands from the pipe nearby, she felt it was not her husband but the Fire-god Agni himself who sat in the nose, the wind forcing his lips back into a fierce, hungry grin.
She was hardly aware of Raoul running past her some time later, grabbing the voicepipe and yelling into it.
The Fire-god yelled back, unintelligibly.
Raoul was dragging at some kind of lever, and after a moment she was dimly aware of the rest of the crew bunched there, adding their strength to his. It was of no consequence, because a few seconds later Agni struck, as she’d known he would.
Smoke rose from below, acrid and evil.
Something was screaming inhumanly, stabbing into her ears.
And finally the Wrath of Agni, crimson and yellow and painful to look at, blossomed around the nose of Rayo.
This was what burned into Astrud’s brain. The Wrath was crawling towards her, reaching for her with scarlet tentacles so fearful that she hardly noticed the screaming had stopped, hardly heard the great crash of parting timbers, hardly knew that Rayo had left the track and was leaping blindly towards destruction.
«Let’s get out of here!» shouted Runa.
Karina and Teressa disentangled themselves and began to run. All around, people were scattering as Rayo bore down on them, swift and terrible, her vast sails filling the sky like thunderclouds.
«Mordecai!» someone exclaimed. «The Wrath of Agni is upon her!»
«She’s going too fast! She’s —”
Down by the bend Karina ran on, bounding over the coarse scrub, reaching the pebbles of the beach. She was aware of Teressa at her shoulder, Runa panting behind her, others near, all running.
Saba!
She halted so suddenly that Runa ran into her and she staggered, scanning the fleeing people for a sign of Saba.
She heard an enormous, splintering crash.
Rayohit the curve and the outside guiderail snapped like a dry stick. The car leaped from the running rail, trailing smoke and flames, and flew thirty meters through the air before landing with an impact that toppled the mainmast.
Embedded in Karina’s mind was the vision of a small figure hurled through space and striking the ground under the very wheels of Rayo.
The great ship ploughed on, her decks a tangle of sailcloth and ropes, the flames sweeping aft and flaring over the waxed fabric. The mizzenmast still stood, catching the wind and tilting the ship. The nose, already a skeleton of smoking timbers, crashed through the first of the vampiro tents and the huge bats reared up, screeching, teeth bared as they were swept aside.
Karina ran forward. «Saba!»
The crowd further up the hill realized, too late, that they were not safe. They began to run. Rayo slid on, slowing now and toppling so that the mizzenmast cut a swathe through stalls and huts, flinging aside pots and fabrics, jugs of ale, fruit and other merchandise. In her wake, shrugleggers and humans struggled to their feet, but some lay still. Then the vampiros, crazed with fear and pain, staggered in among them and began to strike viciously with tooth and claw, great wings flapping loosely like tarpaulins in a gale.
Karina ran among them, ignoring their thrusts, searching for her sister. The injured lay around screaming, arms held up to ward off vampiros. The shrugleggers were easy meat, tangled in their harness.
Rayoshed parts of her structure as she ploughed on. The mainmast jammed in the doorway of the community hut and twisted the entire building around before snapping off. Flames from the sail spread into the thatch, and people tore their way out through a wall, jumping clear and running. The mizzenmast caught against a tree, sending a cloud of screeching macaws into the sky as tongues of flame licked into the branches. The deckrails lay scattered on the ground like broken ladders, smouldering. The blazing brake shoes snapped off against a rock outcropping, and lay in a growing pool of fire.
Karina saw Saba.
The whole camp was in motion now, as the spreading fire sent everybody into a frenzy of superstitious terror. Rayo, now a blazing cylinder unrecognizable as a sailcar, struck rocks and slewed around, beginning to roll down the hillside towards the sea, gathering speed and crushing vampires as she went. One animal, brushed by fire, rose clumsily into the sky on burning wings before tilting and sideslipping into the sea to flap for a while on the surface, raising wisps of steam before disappearing. Finally Rayo came to rest on the beach, the fabric of her hull totally consumed. She lay there smoking like the blackened skeleton of some huge marine mammal. The tortugas began to explode with a popping, growing to a roar.