“You don’t have a choice,” McMicking said, just as firmly. “I’m one of them now. Or I will be soon enough.”
“But not for days or weeks,” Losutu said. “Isn’t that right, Compton? We’ve got time to get him to a hospital.”
“A hospital won’t do him any good,” Bayta said, her voice tinged with sadness. “The doctors wouldn’t even know what to look for.”
“What about your Spider friends?” I asked, wondering why I even cared. McMicking was nothing more than an employee of someone I also happened to be working for, after all. “Would they know how to help him?”
She hesitated. Just a split second, but long enough. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“But he still has those days or weeks, right?” I persisted. “Even if we can’t help him, we can take him back with us.”
“And then what?” McMicking demanded. “You’ll still have to kill me eventually.”
“I was thinking that an actual specimen might help prove our story,” I said.
Losutu looked at me, his eyes hard and disbelieving above his mask. “Compton, you are the most callous, heartless—”
“Save it,” McMicking cut him off. “He’s right. Fine, I’ll go. Can we get this hatch open now?”
“We can try,” I said. “Bayta, can you—”
I was interrupted by a clunk from above and a sudden swirling of air whipping around me. I looked up to see a section of the roof sliding down like a rolltop desk. “Bayta?” I called over the hurricane.
“The Spider,” Bayta called back, her voice barely audible as the air rushed out of the compartment.
My ears popped once, painfully, then seemed to settle down. Apparently, seven centuries of leakage from ten thousand Quadrail stations had left the Tube with at least enough air pressure to keep our eardrums from blowing. “I’ll take the tank,” I shouted to them, stepping back to where I’d left it. “McMicking, Losutu—you take the Spider.”
It took all of us to get the Spider up the sides of the stacked crates and through the hatch. Losutu and McMicking scrambled up after it, and I helped Bayta up behind them.
I had made it to the top and had a hand on the hatch when something made me pause and look down.
Rastra’s body was still pinioned beneath the crates I’d pulled over on him. But his face was visible, and his eyes as he stared up at me were burning with impotent fury above his oxygen mask. I could see his beak moving, but the air in the compartment was too thin for whatever he was saying to carry that distance.
“I’m sorry,” I said aloud, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to hear me, either. Knowing, too, that the Tas Rastra who I’d once known and liked and respected wasn’t the one who was staring hatred at me. What I had done had been necessary, but that didn’t diminish the pain and guilt whispering through me.
And even then, it occurred to me, the Modhri had missed a bet. He should have released Rastra to talk to me now, to plead in honest bewilderment for me to help him.
I might even have been tempted to do so.
But I had more pressing matters on my mind than the mourning of an old acquaintance. Turning my back on the thing lying dying on the floor, I made my way the rest of the way onto the roof.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared it would be. The coach roofs were reasonably flat, and while there weren’t any lips or other guardrails at the edges, there were plenty of built-in hooks and anchor points for Spiders and maintenance cranes to attach to. The low air pressure meant only a gentle breeze would be brushing against our faces, and unlike the dazzling light show the Coreline typically put out at Quadrail stations, here it was giving off only a gently undulating glow behind its loose wire mesh, a glow not much brighter than a nice harvest moon.
“I’ll go first,” I instructed the others. “Bayta will come next, then McMicking and Losutu. Bayta can drive this thing if she has to, so if you can’t get the Spider across without risking a fall, leave it.” Bayta stirred at that, but remained silent. “Ready? Let’s do it.”
I set off across the top of the baggage car in an elbows-and-knees commando crawl, moving as quickly as I dared. Bayta had said it was impossible to open the doors outside a station, but I didn’t trust the Modhri not to find a way to do it. I reached the front of the car and eased myself down onto the slightly lower and more flexible top of the vestibule, then crawled across it and up the other side. Checking over my shoulder once to make sure the others were following, I continued on.
I had passed over that car and was just coming up out of the vestibule onto the next when I tilted a little too far to the side and the tank on my back began to roll off.
I stopped instantly, spread-eagling my arms and legs to the sides. The tank was better than half my own weight, and it wouldn’t take much movement on its part to pull me up onto my side and possibly roll me off the train altogether. I held that posture, feeling the rhythmic vibration of the train beneath me, until I was sure the tank had stopped moving. Then, carefully, I pushed up on that side with shoulder and hip to try to shift it back into position over my spine. It started to move, but a few centimeters shy of its proper position it froze up again. I tried jiggling it, but it wouldn’t budge; hung up, most likely, on one of its own straps.
Briefly, I thought about waiting for Bayta to catch up and seeing if she could straighten it out. But there was still the Modhri to worry about, and I didn’t want to waste the time. Besides, there was more than one way to skin a cat. Bracing myself, I hunched my back sharply upward, throwing the cylinder into the air and breaking it loose from its snag. With that much weight in motion my body bounced up with it, and I felt myself lift a fraction of a centimeter off the roof.
And suddenly I found myself skidding helplessly along the top of the car.
I flattened out again, grabbing futilely for the handholds as they whizzed past, fighting to slow down even as I tried to figure out what the hell had happened. My first, horrifying thought was that the Modhri had managed to take control of the engine and had hit the brakes. My second, even more horrible thought was that we’d hit something. Either way, unless I could stop myself, I was going to keep sliding until I ran out of train and tumbled onto the tracks ahead.
Abruptly, the roof dropped out from beneath me. I braced myself for the worst, and had just enough time to realize I had dipped into the next vestibule before I slammed head-first against the edge of the next car forward.
I lay there for the next couple of minutes, watching the stars bouncing around my vision and wondering if I’d broken my neck, split my skull, or both. Fortunately, I’d done neither. The pain subsided to a less pervasive level, allowing my brain to get back to the question of what the hell had happened. There had been no squealing or thudding of brakes, nor had there been the flash or sound of an impact. As far as I could tell, in fact, the Quadrail was still trundling merrily along its way.
I puzzled at it for another minute, but it was clear I wasn’t going to figure it out lying here. Meanwhile, there was still a trainload of walkers to get away from. Giving my neck one last experimental rotation, I pulled myself up onto the next car.
And got the shock of my life. Directly ahead, one car past the one I was on, was the Quadrail’s engine.
I stared at it, wondering if the shimmering glow from the Coreline was playing tricks on my eyes. But it was the engine, all right, all bright and shiny and pulling us through the Tube at its steady pace of one light-year per minute.
Only that was impossible. I’d been on the back of the coach two cars forward from our baggage car, nine back from where I now suddenly found myself. Had I blacked out somehow? Could I have done all those intervening cars in my sleep?
Or could my blackout have had a little help?
My mouth felt suddenly dry behind my mask. A blackout, an attempt to run across the cars instead of crawling across them—yes, it could all fit with a Modhran colony weaving its little spells through my body.