On the Jump Train
Max Dunbar
For the last quarter (or perhaps longer, or less – time got a bit wonky over there) he had been in the Enlightened Lands fighting the Faith. Battling crazed young martyrs with God on their side and blood on their hands. Now he was drinking Guinness in the Citric station bar. They had the Verve on the sound system.
His train had been delayed for an hour. More and more, when travelling, he got the sense that this was a universe of cancelled trains, missing connections and dead cashpoints; a world slowing down and falling apart.
Citric was somewhere you passed through. No one lived here if they had the cash, connections or wit to leave. And this pub was no more than an extension of the interchange; all around him were businessmen, young Alternatives and ravers hopping from club to club in world to world, and uniformed soldiers like himself.
The bitter uplift of the Verve song – which he was just beginning to enjoy – was cut out by a metallic announcement.
‘ATTENTION! PASSENGERS TRAVELLING ON THE CITRIC-MANCHESTER 33:07!’ Once this voice would have been a smooth Inglaterre-side accent (the kind no one in Inglaterre actually spoke with) but evidently it had become corroded, like everything else. ‘PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO PLATFORM 9! REPEAT, THIS SERVICE IS READY TO BOARD!’
He downed his pint and handed the glass back to the thing behind the bar. That insane mechanical’s voice was still going on. ‘REPEAT, PLATFORM 9! NORTHERN MULTIVERSE APOLOGISES FOR THE LATE RUNNING OF THIS SERVICE!’
Message received and understood, ya cyborg twat, Lossario thought, on his way out of the door.
The interchange was just over the road, but it was still a long journey. The rain was coming down hard, and disseminated wildly by the wind. It had a higher acid content than usual: each drop on his face brought a raw afterpain, like cologne applied to a shaving cut. He looked down at the road as he crossed and was startled to see the tarmac giving off a faint, sizzly smoke as the rain hit it. Thank the gods he wore black glasses; it would not do to have this stuff getting into his eyes.
Then into the interchange and across its concourse. His train was due at an open-air platform with a miserly outcropping of building where other passing-through people huddled from the poison rain.
That hellish announcement was still going on. ‘NORTHERN MULTIVERSE DELAYED 33:07 CITRIC-MANCHESTER SERVICE! APOLOGIES APOLOGIES APOLOGIES FOR THIS LATE SERVICE!’
He could see the carriages, moving at a slow pace out of the darkness.
‘NORTHERN MULTIVERSE A TRIUMPH OF MULTI-AGENCY PARTNERSHIP WORK!’ The voice sounded slightly deranged in the warp and crackle of its static. ‘DELIVERING BEST VALUE SERVICE IN INTER-DIMENSIONAL TRANSIT!’ Then, after a screech of feedback that made several on the platform visibly wince, the voice shrieked: ‘INITIATIVES!’ and fell mercifully silent.
*
There were only two cars – this at rush hour on a major jump route!
Lossario fell into a seat near the back of the carriage. A business-type took the seat opposite him. Lossario rummaged through his pack and found his book – it was called Flashman, by Ingleterre-side author George MacDonald Fraser. He had never thought himself much of a reader, but these days brought so much dead time; in soldiering, and on journeys like this one.
The carriage filled up quick. While Lossario knew he was a good-looking fellow, he did not consider himself particularly arrogant (although few arrogant men ever do). Yet he felt justified in his sense of superiority towards his fellow passengers.
It was so often the case, when travelling between assignations, that a large proportion of his road-mates looked truly fucked up. The wasted bodies and facial disfigurements were only a part of this. The dirty service-uniforms and skewed nametags were a part of this, the litters of squealing children they herded around them were a part of this. But the underlying unity in those sloughing, bitter and sometimes smug faces was of people beaten down by life: beaten down by shitty phone-plant jobs and Federation homes in wartorn afterlands into something less than human, and beaten down until they accepted this state, and revelled in it.
They were already beginning to irritate him.
The train roared into a half-life. Smoke piled outside the reinforced windows. Lossario felt a surge of optimism, as he always did when a journey started. He was thirty-six and he’d been on the road a long time, but that spark of hope never failed to refresh and surprise him. He was done fighting, he had been paid handsomely for his kills, and in Manchester there would be a good half-quarter of drinking and comradeship and the seduction of young Inglaterre-side fillies. As for this train, he could read through it, or sleep through it.
A whipcrack of static. ‘Citric-Manchester, calling at Formless, King’s Folly, Yejin Tan, Carcaterra, Bolton, Manchester Deansgate, Manchester Oxford Road. Have tickets and passes ready for inspection.’
The voice was human, the delivery casual. Odd; they normally had mechanicals doing the ticket checks on this line. The night trains were too dangerous for humans, and robots were cheaper.
He sat back and read his book. He was fifty pages in, and loving it. He approved of kir Flashman. He had the idea kir Flashman would have approved of him.
They were just past King’s Folly when the trouble started.
His feeling of fresh renewal had fallen away, and been replaced by a terse anxiety. He didn’t trust these trains, or the merchants that ran them. Merchants put their coin before effective delivery: why, look at the fucking delays on this line!
If there was trouble, it would happen between Carcaterra and Bolton. Between those stops was the portal. World-travelling was a risky, half-known science even when the portals were in first-rate shape; now, after decades of under-investment, the Big Jump was extremely dangerous. They could end up falling into some limbo between the worlds, all because those Multiverse pigs had cut back on basic maintenance so they could buy second homes in London and Turweg.
As if that was not enough, the cursed acid rain had worked up: battering the windows, making the glass seethe. If the rain and wind heralded a storm, there was not a chance that this train would survive it.
Lossario could have put up with this – after all, risk and death was how he made his living. He could have put up with it if not for the voice of the Alternative halfway down the car.
You could tell he was Alternative from the yellow mohican bobbing above the seat as he talked. And from the music coming from his infernal sound system: all tinny, piping beats and discordant vocal. But the worst was the voice: it drowned out even the noise from his sound-machine. The voice talked on, making facile jokes, spouting ill-informed judgement, and telling moronic anecdotes about the swashbuckling adventures of this Alternative scum.
‘Yeah, t’were reet good. At the Bombsite in’t FARMLESS wi YEJIN ALEX, y’member YEJIN ALEX, right, and I GREW UP IN FARMLESS, so we’re at the BOMBSITE WHICH WERE ARE LOCAL, an this guy walks in, used to tute at t’school, and YEJIN ALEX goes ARE YOU A KIDDY FIDDLER –‘
On and on and on. It was not enough that the Alternative’s clustered sycophants should hear this drivel; apparently, the whole carriage had to hear it too.
The pints had brought Lossario’s blood up, and he found it impossible to read. He wanted to march up there, draw his pistol and blow the Alternative’s head off: ah, to silence that flapping, quacking tongue for ever!
But there would be too much bureaucracy involved.
He looked out the window. The view was almost pitch, and the train was going too fast to make anything out. He glimpsed signs in dead tongues, the rotting infrastructure of old way stations; the odd pair of eyes, fearful lamps in strange undergrowth. The rain came down.
Just before Yejin Tan, the train stopped dead without apology or explanation. Outside was still blackest night, but he swore there were shapes in that blackness. Once something struck the window, making the business-type next to him rear up from his freesheet, and Lossario saw a flash of leathery wing.
He experienced a creeping, frustrated premonition: they were going to be stuck here on this dead train in darkness, listening to the wheeze of its discharge and watching the smoke pile up outside the window, stuck here all night, for ever and ever…
Then, with a sick lurch, the train got moving.
‘So WE WENT UP TO TOWN t’see MY MATE’S BAND ant y’know TOWN PRICES fuckin rip off so what we did it were RIGHT CLEVER smuggled BOTTLE A VODKA in’t this club and we BOUGHT CERKS all night and just POURED T’VODKA IN under table T’WERE RIGHT FUNNY!’
The worst of it was that he could barely see the Alternative; just this wagging, dancing mohican, the head beneath visibly altered by pollution and interbreeding. The rest was that damned voice, really no more than a low slur, skimming over the consonants and drawing out the vowels.
Past Yejin Tan there was another perfunctory announcement, asking them to have tickets and passes ready for inspection. Sure enough, soon Lossario made out the shape of a human conductor, moving down the line with a ticket-machine slung around his neck, nodding at IDs and dispensing change. All went well until he came to the Alternative.
‘N’yar ye cunt, I got a YOUNG PERSON’S DISCOUNT.’ The voice had risen an octave. ‘I dern’t pay RIP-OFF PRICES just to get to MANCHESTER. I’M ERNLY TWE’Y YEARS OLD.’
‘I believe you, kir, but if you want a Young Person’s Discount you need a Multiverse Young Person’s Discount Card.’ The train-man spoke in quavering agitation.
Great, Lossario thought: this is going to go on all night.
Then it occurred to him that there was no better opportunity to rid himself of his irritation. A passenger was verbally abusing a member of Northern’s staff. He was a soldier; it was his duty to solve the dispute. Gallant Master Sergeant David Lossario, to the rescue!
He got up and strode down the aisle. It was only when you were standing did you notice the alarming way in which the train swayed from side to side as it rocketed on. Once Lossario almost lost his balance; a great way to fuck up the white-knight impression. But he marched up there, confident in his own calm authority.
‘What appears to be the trouble here, kir?’
The train-man turned to him. This guy must have been desperate to take this shift. He was about forty or fifty, and looked that fucked-up way old men get when they are forced to work long beyond their ability or energy. His Northern Multiverse uniform made him look like an ageing, resentful schoolchild.
‘This kir refuses to pay the price of his fare.’ The train-man, seeing his stripe, actually bowed. ‘He says he qualifies for a Young Person’s Discount, and I believe him, but he needs a Young Person’s Discount card, do you see, with photographic ID, and –‘
‘N’YAR!’ This was the Alternative. ‘Hell t’wi ya DISCOUNT-CARD! Can’ carry million bullshit paper-pass!’
Lossario nodded to the ticket-man. ‘Leave this to me.’
He turned to the recalcitrant passenger. Gods, here was a specimen. The Alternative was psychotically thin, perhaps from one of the wasting conditions prevalent in the slumlands. He wore a hooded tunic bearing the logo of some elite rock band. He had likely told the truth about his age, but his face held none of the vitality and joy of youth; his expression was a mocking denial that such things existed.
Lossario drew his gun and levelled it at the young man. ‘Pay the damn train-fare, kir, and I’ll let ya live.’
Incredibly – and suicidally – the Alternative laughed. His friends, a group of similarly-dressed mutants, laughed along with him. The sound put Lossario in mind of a pack of dogs chewing on meat.
‘N’yar, war-man!’ the Alternative crowed. ‘Ha-ha, BIG SOLDIER MAN, eh? Fighting t’darkies for their oil! How many kiddies you KILL today, war-man? N’yar!’
Unbelievable. He’d never dared talk like that in his day, especially to a serving soldier. In his day, a uniform had meant respect.
‘As you wish,’ Lossario said, and pulled the trigger. Just before the Alternative’s face exploded in a flash of blood and bone, Lossario saw fear in his eyes, and intelligent realisation. Too late now.
His body held up for a second, then keeled into the lap of an Alternative woman of startling obesity. She flapped at the bloody neck with hands the size of paddles, shrieking like a fucking banshee. Her screams were almost as bad as the Alternative’s voice had been.
Lossario pointed his weapon at her. ‘I’ve got plenty of shot in here, so stop your stupid whore’s whining, or you’ll get the same.’
The woman shut up, and for a few seconds there was no sound but the rocking of the train as it hurtled towards Carcaterra. Lossario anticipated little objection from the other passengers; there were always incidents on the jump trains.
He turned back to the ticket-man. ‘I do apologise for that, kir. You can see the man was going to turn violent.’
The train-man nodded in an eager supplication that repelled Lossario a little. ‘Yes, I would say that’s fair. I see you’re a soldier, kir, I imagine you’ve been in the Faithlands.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I admire you, kir. The Faith would have enslaved us all by now, so they would, if not for good men like you. We all appreciate what you’re doing out there.’
In truth, Lossario was a freelance soldier and would have been as happy fighting with the Faith as against it. It all depended on who was paying, and how much. But of course it was rarely politic to say so.
‘Well, kir, what makes the difference to the lads in the field is that good men like you appreciate what we’re going through.’ He placed an arm on the train-man’s shoulder (and felt a mild disgust as his hand sank a little into the kir’s shirt) and then, for no reason, recalled an old saying his father had had. ‘They also serve who stand and wait.’
‘They also serve who stand and wait. That’s good, kir!’ The train-man was nodding like a toy puppy. ‘That’s good!’
Lossario sneaked a glance at the carriage; they were all still in their seats, trying to ignore what was going on. No trouble from there.
‘Now, about this fellow…’ The ticket-man indicated the Alternative’s bleeding corpse. His friends were deathly quiet now, except for the fat woman, who had settled into hunkering sobs.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it’s a serious incident, begging your pardon, and there’s a form you have to fill in. Civilian Death Form, it’s called. Just a formality, kir, and –‘
‘No problem. I can fill it out now.’
The conductor went into the servile convulsions of weak men forced to tell people what they don’t want to hear. ‘The fact is, kir, I don’t have the forms to hand, it not being something that happens every day, sure you’d agree. You’d have to stay back at Oxford Road, kir, begging your pardon.’
Shit. Lossario could see this simple process spooling out into a bureaucratic nightmare. There would be hours of waiting around, there would be coffee purchased from machines, there would be a great deal of dead time that he wasn’t spending with a pint in his hand and a woman in his lap. There might even be questions. Why had he killed the passenger? Was the passenger armed? Had there been a risk assessment?
Yes, there might be questions, and in his experience questions always led to complications.
‘Sorry, I can’t stand red tape,’ Lossario said, and shot the train-man in the chest. He went down in the aisle, his ticket-machine clattering on the sticky floor. He would work no more night shifts.
Lossario stepped over the dead man and stood at the point where the carriages were bolted together. He could feel the join underneath his feet, and its disconcerting sway. He trained his gun on the air and fired a shot into each of the carriages to get the passengers’ attention.
Looked up. Looked down. They were staring at him. Good.
‘Any of youse feels the need to tell of what happened here, resist temptation, for I’ll track you down and kill you.’ Surveyed rows and rows of fearful, bovine faces. ‘Do you all understand?’
They didn’t want to talk, but then he fired another warning shot and that brought a murmur of terrified assent. They would forget the whole thing as soon as they could.
Now, what was he going to do about the bodies?
The rocking of the train was slowing down. They were reaching Carcaterra. He wanted to get rid of the corpses before the big world-jump. Carcaterra was a token stop; a place devastated by nuclear skirmishes where now only mutants lived and walked. Ideal.
He dragged the train-man to the doors by his feet, then did the same with the Alternative (his friends had pushed the corpse under the double seat; the woman was still crying). He would have a moment at best.
At last the train came to a complete halt. The doors skooshed open; this happened automatically, with no need for human assistance. Lossario lifted the train-man by the waist, then pushed his body out into what remained of Carcaterra Station. Even being this close to the outside made him uneasy; that acid rain came down fast, near enough to make his cheeks burn.
The Alternative was lighter. He lifted the body to his waist like a man carrying his mate over a honeymoon hotel threshold. Then he threw the corpse into the smouldering sheet of rain.
His body-disposal skills had come in useful over the years (most notably in Iraq, where he had worked for an outfit called Blackwater) and he was confident that the rains would dissolve all identifying marks. He stepped back and waited for the glass-perspex doors to close again.
Then something shot over his head, and there was a scream from the upper car.
Lossario wheeled around. He knew there was trouble, but at first he didn’t know what.
Looked up and down the train. A woman screaming, people cringing into the backs of their seats, but what the hell had just happened?
And then it came at him, all eyes and teeth and bony wings. It must have been perched on the ceiling right above where he stood. Lossario cried out in fear – the first real fear he’d known for a while – and slashed at the thing with his pistol.
It was some kind of mutant bat-creature, and Lossario’s gun winged it, throwing it marginally off its course. The yellowish thing uttered a high-pitched yaw – it was like the aural equivalent of biting into tinfoil – and then spread its wings. Even in his panic, Lossario knew it was getting ready to launch at him again.
He raised the gun level with his face and shot again. Even as the creature fell he saw the bare of its teeth, the glare of its pinched eyes, still half convinced these would be his final sights.
But his shot had been true. The bat-thing lay on the floor, one wing curled around its seeping body as if protecting itself for sleep: the posture held so much grace that Lossario felt an absurd sympathy for it. But if the mutant had bit him, then he’d really have something to worry about. Gods, what a night!
He looked to the carriages. The passengers’ attention was still fixed on him. He saw a higher level of awareness in their faces, and one man in daylabour clothes was actually on his feet, as if ready to help Lossario fight the beast off. The soldier shouted: ‘It’s alright! I got it!’
The man gave him a curt, professional nod and sat down. Almost euphoric with relief, Lossario kicked the dead bat out of the doors. It had left a fizzing orangey bloodstain by the bog-compartment. Kir Lossario, mercenary, white knight, and now pest-control operative! They really weren’t paying him enough.
He staggered back to his seat. The businessman, astonishingly, had fallen asleep, which you weren’t advised to do when going through portals.
He geared himself for the Jump and then it came: a bang underneath the carriage like they’d driven over a mine, a buzzing in his teeth and an eerie feeling of floating in an endless blackness where the very concepts of reality were open to question. As soon as he’d registered this sense, it passed.
And they were on Inglaterre-side. That absurd optimism was back in his chest. He could feel the train slowing from its normal speed of something like 400mph (it used to be six hundred, but there had been cutbacks and things had changed) to a more sedate pace. And then he was in Oxford Road.
He disembarked. The station clock said half six; sometimes you gained or lost a few hours on the Multiverse trains, and this time it had worked in his favour. He strolled through the ticket gate and out into Manchester.
Lossario kept a flat in Hulme. He would go there, take a shower, change of clothes. And then the night.
But it had been a long journey, and he deserved a pint first.
He walked down the station approach road, hardly drawing a stare in his leather-canvas uniform; this was Oxford Road, after all. He placed a cigarette to his lips and lit up. Sent smoke up into the crowded skies. Walked down the approach road among the businessmen and government-clerks and tribesmen and emo-goths and fillies of Inglaterre-side, still feeling that anticipatory relish in his heart as if he were a young rover instead of a man who’d fought and travelled for too long; and reaching the street, he let the crowd accept him and swallow him.
