"It is the new American drink," said Martineau, from his seat by the sliding door of the compartment. He then seemed to realize what he"d done - spoken directly to Roz - and his face froze over, waxed moustache on waxy features.
Roz groaned. It was going to be a long five hours.
Chris took the straw out of his mouth and offered the bottle to Roz. "Try it!"
"Are you sure I won"t grow horns?"
"Course not! There aren"t any morphic agents in it, it"s just -" he began to quote from the label ""- a truly refreshing -""
"Then what are those b.u.mps on your forehead?"
interrupted Roz.
"b.u.mps?" Chris extended a hand towards his forehead, then stopped, looking at the grin on her face. He blushed.
From the corner of her eye, Roz saw a small, tight smile appear on Martineau"s lips, and equally quickly disappear.
She felt a little bit better for that.
The carriage shuddered slightly and an embankment rose outside the window, the rapid pa.s.sage of little bushes and tufts of gra.s.s on the bank giving at least an illusion of speed. The bank was quickly replaced by a wall of purple-red bricks, then by darkness. The sound of the train"s progress became louder, amplified and distorted by the hollow roar of air displaced along the walls of the tunnel. Roz wondered why they didn"t use evacuated tunnels with tuned-field shields to keep the air out. She supposed that, yet again, they hadn"t been invented yet.
As they emerged from the tunnel, the train began to slow down. High brick walls topped with grey houses drifted by.
The end of a station platform appeared: for a moment Roz thought that they"d arrived in Paris, but then she saw the name "Macon" on the wooden painted signs and grimaced.
As the train pulled up, Roz idly scanned the crowd. Cheaply dressed, most of them, with tired looks on their faces. Amalie had said that the war had worn out France, worn out the world: three-quarters of Frenchmen between eighteen and thirty were dead. "Where will the next generation of leaders come from? And the scientists, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, craftsmen - all dead! It is a tragedy - it is worse than a tragedy, it is madness!"
Roz remembered the words of the dead woman as her eyes moved from face to face in the crowd. Factory workers, she supposed, going home at the end of the day.
"Why aren"t they getting on the train?" asked Chris suddenly.
Roz realized that it was true: none of them were moving towards the train. She shrugged. "Perhaps they can"t afford it.
Perhaps they"ve just come to watch." She remembered similar crowds in the Undertown back home, staring as lines of construction flitters drifted by, off to build another Overcity, a galaxy of towers from which they would be forever excluded. Some things, she decided, didn"t change.
But Martineau said: "It is the wrong platform. They get on from the other side." He was looking at Chris curiously: obviously, thought Roz, anyone from this time would have travelled on trains a lot, and would have known that. Now that Martineau had mentioned it, she could see that the gap between the train and the platform was far too wide to jump across and that there were no steps or boarding tubes; in fact, peering down, she could see that there was another set of tracks in the gap, where the workers" train would presumably draw up. And from the other side of their own train - beyond the sliding door of the compartment - she could hear the clattering and banging of pa.s.sengers getting aboard. After a moment the wooden door to the compartment slid open, and a heavy, elderly man with a long, spade-shaped beard and curling moustaches looked in. He glanced at Roz, then at Martineau, froze for a moment as if in indecision, then nodded and withdrew.
Roz frowned. There had been something familiar about the man - about the hunted look in his eyes - "Parmentier!" she said aloud.
Martineau stared at her, but Roz was already on her feet, heading for the door. She looked over her shoulder at Chris, said, "In disguise. He"s following us."
"But that"s impossible!" said Martineau. "No one could be following. There is no quicker train - "
"Then he"s followed us from Lyons and he"s using the cover of everyone getting on board to check out the compartments. I expect he was hoping you weren"t with us."
Roz opened the door, checked up and down the corridor.
There was no sign of the man in the beard and moustaches.
"I wonder why he"s followed us?" asked Chris.
Roz shrugged. "There are two possible things he might do. He might shoot us first and asks questions afterwards, or he might ask the questions first and then shoot us."
"Not necessarily. He might just be a ""tec", like us," said Chris.
"You say it"s Parmentier?" asked Martineau. "The toy shop man? But he"s - "
"The mayor"s friend, right," said Roz without looking round. "And I"m the first cousin of the Empress of All Earth, didn"t you know?" She stepped out into the corridor, pulled Chris with her. "We need to find him, Chris," she said. "You go forward, I"ll go back. Check every compartment, but don"t challenge him - just fetch me, OK?"
"Wait a moment!" Martineau"s voice. "I didn"t say you could go!"
Roz turned round, saw that the policeman was standing, his hand on the holster of his gun.
"You"d better stay here," she said to him. "If Parmentier comes back, hold him. Long black beard, curly moustache.
Right?" She shoved Chris in the back. "Go, Chris."
Chris gave her an anxious glance, then went.
The train was pulling out of the station: Roz saw a well-dressed man running alongside it, red-faced and shouting, saw him falling behind with grey steam wreathing his body.
The corridor forward was clear, and Chris was already looking through the door of the next compartment. In the other direction an elderly woman was sitting on a pile of suitcases, engaged in an argument with a uniformed railway official. Roz pushed past them with a muttered, "Sorry - places to go."
"Who is that?" snapped the old woman. "How dare you push past me like that?" Roz recognized the familiar tones of a born complainer, decided to risk it and push on.
"Here, you, darkie - come back here!" The official"s voice.
"Who"re you calling a darkie?" snapped Roz, wrenching open a compartment door. She wasn"t sure what the word meant, but it was clearly an insult.
A family of five - parents, three children - stared up at her from inside the compartment. The father was stowing luggage on the rack.
""Scuse me," said Roz politely, closing the door on them.
A hand caught her arm: the official. Long supercilious nose, weak watery eyes, peaked cap. "What are you doing?
Where is your master?"
Roz glared at the man. "What master?" She shook off his grip with a rapid movement of her arm. "Look, I"ve got a job to do, OK?" "You should throw her off the train! Wretched African - she"s no business here!" Behind the woman, Roz could see Martineau trotting up.
"I told you to stay put!" she snapped.
"I am a member of the Police Force!" snapped Martineau in return. "I give the orders, not you!"
"What"s going on?" asked the official feebly, addressing the policeman. "Who is she?"
"She"s in my custody," said Martineau calmly.
"Custody!" shouted Roz. She couldn"t believe it. "I thought you said you were going to help us!"
There was a moment"s silence: Roz and Martineau glared at each other across the mountain of luggage guarded by the old woman. In the corner of Roz"s vision, the grey shapes of houses moved past the window as the train gathered speed.
The old woman said, "Wretched African! I don"t care whose custody she"s in, get her off the train." She added quietly, as if to an unseen companion, "They smell, you know."
Roz transferred her gaze to the woman, met a wrinkled frown, angry blue eyes that quickly looked away. Suddenly it dawned on her: Jean-Pierre"s barely concealed dislike, increasing on each visit as she and Amalie grew closer; Martineau"s refusal to speak to her; and now this woman"s anger, and the official"s insult, "darkie". And the kid in the street, jumping up and down like a monkey. Roz knew the stories of Nomgquase and Mandela, of course, of the long fight against racism, but it had never occurred to her to think about the dates of that African story and apply them to this European setting.
Now she realized she was living in that time: the time when her darker-than-average skin was the signal for prejudice, even hatred, from those of a lighter skin colour. It was absurd; it was inconceivable; but it was .happening.
For once in her life, she couldn"t think of anything to say.
"If you could return to the compartment, madame," said Martineau. His tone was polite, but his expression was smug.
"Perhaps everyone will be - "
There was the sound of a gunshot, followed by a woman"s scream. Martineau broke off in mid word, whirled round and began to run towards the sound.
Without hesitation, Roz followed, leaping over the heap of luggage. Her injured leg gave a stab of pain, but she ignored it.
There was a second shot. Roz accelerated to a flat-out run, saw Chris standing in the corridor at the end of the carriage, clutching a long black object which she realized with a start was a false beard. There was a small silvery gun in his other hand. Martineau had drawn his own gun, was pointing it at Chris.
"What happened?" she yelled. A woman was screaming: Roz saw her standing there, young, her white dress spattered with blood. "Chris, I told you not to challenge -"
Then she saw Parmentier. He was kneeling in the carriage doorway, clutching his hip, his face white with pain.
"He tried to kill me," said Chris. He was addressing Martineau, who was covering him with the gun from a distance of about two metres. "He shot me, but my armour stopped the bullet. I tried to get the gun away from him and it went off."
s.h.i.t, thought Roz. Not another one. Does everyone in this era carry these stupid weapons?
Ignoring Martineau, who was gesturing at Chris with his own gun, she went up to Parmentier and took his hand.
"What weren"t you telling us, back at the toy shop?" she asked.
He looked up into her eyes. "No - no, you don"t understand," he moaned.
"What don"t I understand?" asked Roz.
Chris, also ignoring Martineau, was getting out the medikit, kneeling down to get a scan on the wound.
Parmentier was breathing fast, and his eyes were rolling
- Roz knew he was going to lose consciousness any second.
"What don"t I understand?" she repeated, urgently, trying to hold his drifting eyes with hers. She glanced at the medikit scan: it showed a deep leg wound, blood loss, shock.
But Parmentier was too far gone to hear. "We are so close to it now," he said, his voice little more than a croak. "So close you would not believe it. You cannot prevent it now.
The whole world will be transformed -" He swallowed. "I die, but long live the Bolshevik Revolution!"
The effect of these last words on Martineau was extraordinary. His eyes bulged, his face flushed with anger, and he stared at Parmentier as if the man had suddenly turned out to be an alien in disguise. He strode forward, pushing past Roz, and put his gun to Parmentier"s head.
"In the name of the Republic of France," he said. "I place you under arrest."
But Parmentier was beyond hearing. With a shudder, he fell sideways and dropped limp into Roz"s arms.
"OK," said Roz, folding her arms and leaning back against the window. "Let"s start at the beginning: what"s a Bolshevik?"
She put a hand against the wooden ledge of the window, to steady herself against the motion of the train. Her leg was hurting: it had been healing up nicely under the plastaform, but it hadn"t been ready for that sudden sprint down the corridor.
Parmentier stared up at her from the floor of the compartment, where she and Chris had wrapped him in a grey blanket provided by the railway official. His grey eyes were watery and red-rimmed. He was still wearing the ridiculous false moustache: it quivered slightly as his lips trembled. But he didn"t speak.
Roz glanced at Chris, who was sitting on the seat above Parmentier"s head, the medikit in his hand. "Let me help you,"
he said softly. "Just now, you said you were a supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution. Now Monsieur Martineau has told me that the Bolsheviks aim to "overthrow the government, to destroy the rule of reasonable and decent-thinking people, and to subst.i.tute anarchy based on the rule of brute force". Is that a fair description of them?"
Parmentier did not reply, but closed his eyes as if asleep.
Martineau, standing by the door of the compartment, flicked a sour glance at Roz and snorted. "He won"t tell you anything," he said. "These people never do. He only said he was a revolutionary at all because he thought he was dying."
Roz didn"t bother to reply. She knew that Parmentier wouldn"t say anything with a member of the gendarmerie around, but Martineau had only agreed to let them perform an interrogation at all on the condition that he be present throughout, and there wasn"t much that she could do about that. She even grudgingly admitted to herself that it was understandable. She"d have felt the same if strangers demanded to interrogate a prisoner of hers, back home.
But the fact remained that Martineau was in the way.
"We"re not asking you to give anyone away," Chris was saying. "We just want you to explain who they are. To give us your side of the story."
Silence.