Beneath Ceaseless Skies #101 Read online

  Issue #101 • Aug. 9, 2012

  “The Heart of the Rail,” by Mark Teppo

  “The Tale of the Aggrieved Astrologer,” by Jack Nicholls

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE HEART OF THE RAIL

  by Mark Teppo

  “What a waste. A beauty like that.” The old foreman had a face like gravel, and his mouth worked angrily on something like a dog worrying a piece of gristle.

  “It is a beauty,” Henry Durant agreed. In the twelve years he had been with the company, he had lost track of the number of locomotives he had seen—three, maybe four, hundred all together. Hulking smokers who could haul a hundred cars up the steepest passes; streamlined passenger engines, shining bullets that in the blink of an eye could transport a thousand people from one city to another; proud and baroque transports who pulled the sacristies of the mobile temples; and the elegant electrics, filled with the mystery of the black batteries and the tight Tesla coils. Each had been distinct, uniquely numbered and painstakingly cataloged in the company’s records; each had a specific track it was assigned, a specific job to which it had been designed.

  This one was a passenger engine, an ancient coal-burner recently converted to the clean coils, and its engineers had kept its rococo exterior intact. Henry knew how the conversions were done—coal bins replaced with batteries and coils, smoke stacks with exhaust vents, and furnaces with piston assemblies—and he was impressed by the seamlessness of this engine’s reconstruction. Its name was the Victorian Starlight, and it had been doing the coastal run—daily, to Vancouver and back—for more than seventy years. Since before the war.

  The engine looked half its physical age, and it wasn’t just the careful attention to the conversion to electric power. The chrome of the shell was smooth and bright in the afternoon light, her wheels rode the trail true, and the sweeping plume of her back was unmarked by soot and rust. She had been painted recently too—in the last year was Henry’s guess, maybe less due to the constant wind and rain that plagued the west coast—and her lamps were all bright and their glass unblemished.

  The foreman hawked and spat, and Henry’s examination of the grand engine was interrupted. He glanced down at the fresh stain on his shoe.

  “You’re a union man,” Henry said. “You know how this works. You know what happens to engines who are no longer able to perform.” He had said the words so many times, they had lost any meaning. He no longer tried to inject sympathy into them.

  The foreman nodded. “They send fucking ghouls like you.”

  Henry nodded absently. It was always the same–this grieving ritual they had to go through. He was the monster sent by the company; they were the compassionate engineers who resolutely believed the trains could be saved. She just needs a few parts. Surely the company can spare a new engine? Isn’t there a wheel assembly that could be shipped out? Couldn’t the batteries be replaced? There was always something more that could be done, some desperate measure that hadn’t been tried yet. Just a few more parts; let me work on her for a few more days.

  Henry had seen it, time and again, this desire to hold on, to keep something running. It was hard to let go.

  The yard was quiet. The clatter of wheels on steel, the shivering thunder of cars coupling, the birdsong of the track signals: all the regular noises of the yard were suspended, as if all attention was focused on Henry and the foreman. Some of the railway workers had seen a specialist before. Henry had read it on their knotted faces as the foreman had led him across the yard. Some of them knew.

  Henry held out his hand. “Give me the key,” he said.

  The foreman spat again, and Henry felt hot wetness spatter across his open palm. “Her key is in the cab,” the foreman said. “We don’t switch her off.”

  Henry felt the knot in his shoulder tighten, and as calmly as he could—how many times now, this devotion to the machine, this desperate belief there was something more in the coils—he stepped close to the old foreman and wiped his hand clean on the other man’s uniform. “Well, then,” he said, letting the ache in his shoulder shape his words, “I guess it’s time to put this old bitch down.”

  The lines on the old man’s face went white with tension, and Henry bunched his fist in the foreman’s uniform. “I don’t need your blessing,” he hissed. “I am here at the company’s direction. I am their tool. Like you. Like every man here. Like every engine, and this one has outlived its usefulness.”

  The foreman’s jaw stopped working and an ugly smile pulled at his mouth. “Is that right?”

  Henry’s hand spasmed, his knuckles standing out against his skin as the knot in his shoulder sent pulsating waves of nervous tension down his arm. With some difficulty, he let go, and he wiped his palm one last time on the foreman’s uniform.

  He walked across the cold yard, the gravel crunching like small bones beneath his shoes. It was getting late in the day, the sun weak in the west, and it was going to be even colder out on the rail. Henry knew he should wait until morning before taking the locomotive out and completing the task he had been sent to do, but the mood in the yard was ugly enough that he didn’t dare wait. Once, in his first year as a specialist, he had let the engineers sway him with their passionate pleas; he had let them talk him into allowing them one final vigil for their engine. When he had arrived at the yard the next morning, he discovered that the engineers had spent the entire night welding the cab shut. He hadn’t been able to retrieve the key. The company had fined him the cost of cutting the train open—most of his salary for the remainder of the year.

  He put his hand on one of her massive driver wheels and felt the warmth of the steel. He hated the way it made him shiver. Just switch it off, he thought. Do it here, in the yard. Don’t take it out on the rail. It wasn’t safe to be out on the rail, alone.

  But he wasn’t that sort of company man. He wouldn’t put down a train in front of the men who cared for it. They deserved that much, at least—a show of respect for their years of service.

  Steam vented from the stack at the front of the engine, and through the warm metal of the wheel, Henry felt the train moan.

  * * *

  The first engine Henry had retired had been a coal-burning Beregen Ulphander, a Brussels-built freight engine. Cattle, mainly, along the north-south route. The track was old, some of the rail dating back to when the route was first carved through the mountains a century and a half ago. Some of the grades were cogged and still treacherous, and for some time the company had been forced to run shorter trains along this route. Single engines only, no double-enders, with a maximum of thirty cars behind.

  The trouble with single-engine trains, as Olyphant had warned him, was that they developed strong personalities. Arrogant and bullish, many would refuse to work in tandem, especially with the newer electrics.

  Henry was four years into his apprenticeship with legendary specialist Pastor Olyphant when they had arrived at the yard in Denver, and his mentor had laughed at the sight of the engine they had been sent to retire. “He’s all yours, kid,” Olyphant had said.

  The hauler was a black beast, filthy with soot and grime. Only one of its headlamps worked; the other was twisted back on itself, the glass gone from the frame. Its pilot was a malformed wedge, a gnarled knot of twisted metal. There was something caught between several of the plates like a piece of meat stuck between two teeth. It didn’t ride the track so much as crouch on the steel lines. Waiting for Henry to walk in front of it, waiting for him to make the mistake of thinking it was a dumb machine.

  “Why is he mine?” Henry had asked. “I’m not ready.”

&n
bsp; “You are now,” Olyphant had said, clapping a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I just retired. That son of a bitch will shake me so hard my guts will come out my ears.”

  Two hours later, after being rattled around the cab like a loose tooth for the last hundred miles, Henry had climbed down into the bar frame and—his heart in his throat the entire time—punctured the brake hoses on the left side. He fed the black beast all the remaining coal, stoked its firebox red-hot, and when they reached the peak of the next pass, he left the sanctuary of the cab and stood on the running board.

  “Is that all you have?” he yelled at the train engine. He kicked its hot firebox, and its whistle screamed at him, steam shrieking from the full boiler. “That’s right!” he shouted back. “Shake me. Come on, you ugly bastard. Shake me.”

  The train, spitting a thick spume of greasy smoke, hurled itself down the far side of the mountain. Its wheels sparked and shrieked against the steel rails, and on the first curve, when Henry felt the first fluttering pulse of the engine’s brakes, he jumped off the train.

  The beast realized what Henry had done, and on the next curve, it tried to compensate for its dead side. But its momentum was too great, and the engine left the track. The black beast tried to fly, but gravity pulled it out of the sky.

  Long after it had hit the rocks, Henry stood on the rail, listening to the lingering echo of its coal-stoked howl.

  * * *

  The Victorian Starlight ran on the rails like water. Henry let her find her own pace on the track—this route was hers, after all, and she knew it better than he ever could. She had the frame of a coal-burner—a Falais-Yylmann 212 C-Class, model 43.08a, in fact—and she had been upgraded to electric. The 212s had come into service shortly before switch to full-coil, and the company—in a moment of surprising empathy—had upgraded most of the 212s instead of retiring them outright like they had the 208s.

  Since she didn’t need his direction, Henry familiarized himself with the arrangement of controls and equipment in the cab. The paneling was polished walnut and the instruments were as shiny as the exterior chrome. Loved in and out, he thought, running his fingers across the warm wood of the inner wall. The train barely vibrated out of true so tight was her grip on the rails. Hard to believe she’s as old as she is.

  Henry had expected to see more distress and wear on the Starlight. Many an engineer tried to hide the signs, but Henry knew all the usual tricks, and he was surprised to find the cab in not only pristine condition but handsomely refurbished. The metalwork at the back, where the coal tender had been replaced by the battery cages, was not only seamless but elegant. Whoever the welder had been, he had the steadiest hand Henry had ever seen. And this cabling, Henry thought as he lifted the access panel and looked beneath the floor of the cab, there’s no buildup. No rust. It’s like she’s been doing milk runs, and not a regular route.

  He let her go for two hours, charging up the track toward Vancouver, as he crawled over every accessible inch of the engine. Looking for some sign of decay, some sign of decrepitude. Some reason why he had been sent to retire her. Finally, as the rail cut away from the coast and started to climb, he had to admit defeat. There was no flaw to be found.

  She was, as the foreman had said, a rare beauty.

  If the flaw wasn’t in the train, then where was it?

  He peered out through the front window, but as the moon had not yet risen over the mountains in the east, visibility was limited to a half-mile of rail in a cone of light ahead of the train. He got down the chart book and, comparing the number on the trip odometer to the tiny hash marks on the map, found their position on the route.

  Ahead, the map showed a winding line of a river, the Silkenskin, and two promontories of land like an index finger and thumb nearly that nearly touched. The rail bridged the gap between the two points on a high deck truss bridge. The map called it “Desolation Gap.”

  The flaw is in the track. The engine began to slow, a note of caution creeping into the song of her wheels.

  His hand shaking slightly, Henry closed the chart book and put it back on the shelf. The skin of his right shoulder was prickling. Olyphant had said it would happen: eventually the trains would talk to him.

  * * *

  “They’re just machines,” Henry had argued. “We make them. Out of steel and wood and wire. They may be willful, but they’re not alive.”

  Olyphant nodded sagely, staring out the window of the hospital room as if he hadn’t heard. “Do you know why the company selects us? Do you think it is random?” His eyes moved restlessly. “Do you think this job is a reward?” His lips moved into a sad smile, and he glanced over at Henry.

  Henry clumsily moved the cast immobilizing his right shoulder. “The company rewards proficiencies. We all advance according to our skills.” The argument sounded as hollow as he felt, but there wasn’t anything else. Nothing but the possibility that his mentor was speaking true.

  Olyphant leaned over and helped Henry settle the heavy cast more comfortably. “I heard him,” he said softly, his crooked hands resting on the bed beside the cast. “We walked into the yard, and I could hear him laughing. He said he was going to kill me.”

  Henry felt the flush of blood beneath the healing skin on his right shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me? If he was so dangerous, why did you let me retire him by myself?”

  “Would you have believed me if I had told you?”

  Henry rubbed the cast, remembering the rocks and the numbing pain of the impact against his shoulder and arm. Remembering that unholy howl that had rang in his head for hours after the train had left the tracks. Remembering the churning sensations in the pit of his stomach: elation, horror, disgust—he had just killed something.... “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t have. I don’t.”

  Olyphant removed his hands from the bed. “I’m sorry, Henry,” he said, dropping his hands into his lap. “I thought you were ready. You’ve been in my shadow too long. I thought—”

  “We are tools,” Henry cut him off. “And we are applied where we are needed, where we can be effective. That is why the company chooses us, and—.”

  Olyphant’s face became a mask. “Henry, I—”

  “—that’s why you sent me out on that train. Because you were afraid, and I was a tool you could use.”

  Olyphant’s face crumbled, like rock sliding down a hillside. “That’s not true,” he whispered.

  “Give me another reason then,” Henry asked, his resolve faltering. “Give me something.”

  Olyphant leaned forward, his hands clasped between his legs to hide their tremors. “I’m just.... You’re right,” he said softly. “Forgive me, Henry. I made a mistake. They’re just machines. I’m an old fool.”

  Henry turned away, burying his face in the pillows. He lay still until Olyphant was gone before he let the tears out.

  When the grief had wrung him dry, he took what was left—the cold hard nugget of his outrage, much like a piece of coal—and buried it deep, down where he could still hear the echo of the black train’s scream, as it lay on the canyon floor with its back broken.

  Like he was. A tool—easily used, easily discarded.

  * * *

  The wind bit through his wool coat and made the old scars on his shoulder burn. Henry flexed his fingers to keep them warm as he crawled along the track. The trusses were discolored and pitted from years of exposure to the wind and the rain; there was no protection from either out here on the open bridge.

  It was old—pre-War tech, before refined steel and old-growth timber had become scarce. The ties were the color of muddy blood, darker than any Henry had seen but for some of the oldest lines between Boston and New York, and thicker than required by regulation by more than three thumbwidths. The value of all the ties on the bridge was probably more than his annual salary.

  Henry crept forward slowly, running first one hand then the other along the steel, feeling for a crack, a spur, some evidence of damage in the rail.

  The rep
ort that had brought him west said the train had slipped a wheel, somewhere along this bridge, and the resultant shock had nearly derailed the passenger cars. There wasn’t more than a foot of extra tie on either side of the rail. A derailment here would have pulled everything down in the gorge. While the company could absorb the loss of a freight hauler and its cargo, the loss of human life, regrettable as always, was costly.

  The steel pinched his finger, and he bent closer to the track. Running his hand back and forth across the rail, he felt the break, and he repositioned himself so that her lights could better illuminate the steel. It was a thin fracture, not much wider than a woman’s hair, and if he ran his hand quickly across the track—at a speed more in keeping with that of a train engine—he didn’t even notice it. He had seen ones wider than it on other rails and they hadn’t caused the engines any grief. It was well within acceptable standards.

  He glanced up at the train. “Are you that fussy?” he asked, the wind stealing his words.

  The train’s lights flickered, and the bank on the left went dark, obscuring the side of the track where he crouched. The other lights remained strong, and they flickered again. Almost as if they were trying to draw his attention.

  Henry slid across the railroad ties and looked at the other rail. Another break, just as fine and just as straight. A suspicion growing in his gut, Henry lined up the butt of his flashlight on the inside of the right rail, and then returned to the left rail. He crouched and looked across the rails. The thin break in the foreground lined up with the end of his flashlight.

  Henry retrieved his light and carefully played its light off the edge of the track. The massive shape of the support pier disappeared into the gloom beyond the weak beam. He couldn’t see far enough to make out any details, certainly not well enough to trace a hairline fracture in the stone pier. He sighed and went back to the engine for some rope.

  It was only after he had tied it off to the track and started to climb down that he realized how stupid and exposed he was.