Chapter 18 - The Kraken Gate
The exclusivity of the air-train was such that there were no queues at the sales office, so we collected our tickets with little inconvenience. Inigo found a brochure all about the air-train and studied it very carefully while a steam lift in one of the huge golden pillars swooped us and our belongings up to the platform high above the concourse.
Platforms one and three were empty beneath their girders, but five sleek metal gondolas waited in a row at platform two, suspended from the hang-rail. Plumes of steam rose from the lead gondola, but its double propeller was motionless. Each carriage had a row of twelve round, glass windows, except the engine which had four towards the rear and then a bulbous glass cockpit just behind the propellers. The sulphurous stench and the grime of coal smoke I associated with land trains was almost entirely absent. I mentioned it to Inigo who read out a section from the brochure which proudly described re-burn chimneys, whatever they were, and innovative ductwork.
Porters transferred our luggage to the gondola behind the engine, then showed us to our compartment, a room of lacquered wood panels and four comfortable looking, forward-facing fauteuil, upholstered in pale-blue silk. A carpet covered the walkable area of the floor, held in place with brass edging.
We made ourselves comfortable while an inspector worked his way along the length of the train, checking that the doors were firmly locked, and that everything had been safely stowed out of harms way.
‘Take your seats please,’ he said, with a smile that could have come from Inigo’s brochure. ‘The departure can be quite abrupt.’ He repeated the warning in the forward-most compartment of our carriage. After a brief pause, a whistle was blown; three shrill blasts. There was a rumble, and a hiss of steam released under pressure. Long, accelerator pistons mounted beneath the platform engaged with blocks that had hinged out from under the engine. They began to push us forward. The noise of the propeller roared to a crescendo, buffeting our carriage, and we were pushed back into our seats as the air-train accelerated away from the platform.
‘Different to the land-train, isn’t it?’ said Inigo, raising his voice above the din. Inigo had already read and absorbed the content of the brochure. ‘It will quieten down soon. It needs a lot of power to get moving.’ The young man was a sponge for information. He understood more about the Koulomb Gate than I did, and he had explained some of the concepts to me that I hadn’t grasped when Professors Renny and Maddison had first tried to explain it.
Na-Su was looking out of the window in rapt fascination as the train glided from the opening in the terminus building. I heard her gasp at the sight of Emberly’s rooftops stretched out below us. The train seemed to fly between the pillars from which the hang-rail was suspended, with nothing visible supporting it. It was disconcerting, and at the same time, exhilarating. I peered at the iron framework as we passed through the next tower, wondering if the rivets would hold.
Sunlight glinted from the twin spires of the cathedrals of Draxil and Aripole as we glided overhead. To the left was the gaping hole in Rostov Park, and from our vantage point high above the rooftops, I noticed the cloak of pale dust that had spread out over a huge area, blown by the prevailing wind on the night of the explosion. It would last until the next rain, which was some way off, judging by the clear blue sky above. Soon we were soaring over the factories, slicing through their rising plumes of smoke and clouds of vapour.
‘It’s quieter now,’ I croaked. The bruising around my windpipe was settling in for the long-haul. ‘You were right.’ The air-train had picked up speed, but the noise from the engine ahead of us had faded. It was as different from the chakatta-chakatta, suck-and-spew noise of the land train as it could be, almost magical, even to my cynical eye
‘The steam powers something called a turbine,’ continued Inigo, determined that we would benefit from the brochure to the same degree as he had. As he spoke, he got up and released a catch on his seat and swivelled it so that it faced the one behind it. I guessed this was a safety feature, the seats intended to face forwards while the train accelerated. ‘It drives the propeller faster than pistons could, but apparently it uses almost half the water it holds just to get up to full speed.’ Inigo sat down again, facing away from the direction of travel.
‘Are we going to have to stop at water towers, like the land-train does?’
‘Yes. There are two between here and Lannerville. That’s the beauty of this invention,’ added Inigo. ‘Amazingly efficient. We’re hanging from one rail whereas the land-train runs on two, so this has half the friction.’
‘So the land-train’s days are numbered?’ my voice a mere whisper. Inigo looked concerned but I waved him on.
‘I don’t think so, boss. It’s expensive and difficult to support the heavier loads on these frames, not to mention the effort of raising them up to this height. Freight will probably always have to travel on the ground.’
I nodded and turned to watch the cityscape give way to farms and countryside. Green fields and copses slid by beneath us. We banked sometimes, following the curve of the hang-rail above us, and everything tilted so that we were staring down at the ground or up at the blue sky. Na-Su eventually dozed off in her armchair. She was sitting behind us, still facing forwards. Her felt hat had slipped down over her eyes and a soft snoring emerged from beneath the brim. Inigo and I were too entranced with the experience of the air-train to sleep just then.
‘I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a bird.’
I decided to conserve my voice. Also, I didn’t want to disappoint Inigo. No self-respecting bird would swap their freedom to roam the skies for life on a fixed rail.
‘It’s a shame Ellen is missing out on this,’ Inigo observed. ‘She would have enjoyed it.’
‘We may need to return to Emberly for supplies and such like, so the others may still get a chance if they want.’
Inigo nodded. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ He glanced out of the window. If the vista unsettled him, he showed no sign of discomfort.
‘Ellen and James seem…’ I paused to cough, ‘…quite friendly at the moment.’ Ridiculous! I’d tried to sound casual, but it sounded clumsy. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I sounded like an old crone in the street trying to sell lucky charm posies. Inigo didn’t notice or perhaps he chose not to show me up.
‘Yeah. I noticed.’ Inigo’s reply was curt, but I didn’t detect any bitterness.
‘I wonder what they talk about,’ I mused. ‘Not sure how much they have in common apart from the work.’ My tone was neutral. I didn’t want to push Inigo where he didn’t want to tread, but he had other ideas.
‘There was a time it would have mattered,’ he said. He’d slid down on the fauteuil until he was almost horizontal. ‘You remember that party we had, after the job for the Gulreimian Prince? We’d had a few drinks and I managed to get her to myself for half the evening. I thought the world of her back then. Still do, I guess, but things have changed. She’s so focused on her work, you know? I tried to get her talking about other things, but she didn’t seem interested.’
I remembered how Inigo had been in the weeks after. Cool, professional detachment. I hadn’t read much into it at the time. Emotions ebb and flow around the kind of work we do. High pressure and real danger in your job had to have some consequences.
‘I saw how things changed between you,’ I said. ‘It must have hurt.’
Inigo shrugged. ‘It’s funny, you know. I thought it was going to hurt more, but then I realised that the person I had fallen for was…wasn’t real. Ellen, when I saw her…when I really saw who she was, I realised that she was someone else. She was lovely…is lovely, but no.’ Inigo looked directly at me. ‘She’s not the one for me.’
‘Well, let’s wait and see how James gets on.’ I wasn’t at all sure how that would work out. I’d seen some of the men who were attracted to Ellen. We’d worked a few venues with some eligible bachelors, and they were always drawn to Ellen like moths round a flame. I felt a momentary pang of sympathy for them. We women have to use the assets we’ve got wisely. Some of us only get one shot. Some of us don’t even get that. Ellen was one of the lucky ones; she had a whole bandolier of shots.
‘I wish him the best of luck,’ said Inigo. ‘I really do.’
He’d need some luck, and yet something told me that he had a chance. He wasn’t pretentious. He wasn’t a fraud, or a fop. He was strong, courageous, and principled. There would be no hidden agenda with James. I wondered if Ellen would broach the subject with me.
‘…need you to take a look at the inventory.’ Inigo was still talking and I’d lost track. ‘We’ll only have a few moments to shuttle packs through the gate, so we need to keep it tight.’ He had changed topic and was thinking about our next trip.’
‘Alright, Inigo, but can we do it at Lannerville? I’ve had a run of bad nights and I’m a little tired.’ I would have said more, but my throat hurt. Inigo nodded. He pulled a newspaper from his briefcase and began to read. The last thing I remember was a glimpse of the snow capped Kingsridge Mountains in the far distance.
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