The Train is in your blood, my mother would have said, if she had lived. She’d said it of my father often enough. She would curl up on their bunk in our cramped residence-coupé and stare out into the Undertow night after night until we pulled into the next Station. Envara to Andalus Minor via Kazimir — that was our route, the only route I have ever traveled. Even through the Undertow it takes three months to traverse the Spur end to end. I celebrated my twelfth birthday halfway between Andalus and Kazimir and my thirteenth on-station at Envara. My mother braided ribbons into my heavy black hair.
Some people, I know, live their entire lives groundside, or on the concourses and resupply hubs between planets. Stationary lives, we say, smiling at our own pun to cover up disdain. My mother was born on Remera Segunda, just one stop beyond Envara on the Orion-Cygnus line. She never loved the Train, but she had loved my father. Me, I can’t imagine staying in one place, can’t fathom waking up day after day with the same landscape on my doorstep. On Remera Segunda, my mother said, one could walk for weeks and never leave the grain fields nor come out from the shadow of the mountain.
The Train is in your blood, she would have said, and my father would have agreed. Home is the space in between Stations, the motion of the Train, the ever-changing landscape of the Undertow. I was a born Engineer, like him.
Sometimes, when I was small, my father would take me with him to the control car. I would sit on his knee and watch the dials and blinking lights.
“Steady, girl,” he would caution when I reached for the levers. “Trust the Train. He knows the way.” And so I learned to sit, to watch and listen, to feel the hum and sway of the engine and hear the faint hiss of the mags against the force-rails. Groundside trains are different, I’ve heard. They clack and clatter, squeal and groan from city to city, shackled by gravity and friction and other limitations of subsonic speed. Union Galactic Trains are nearly silent, unless you know what to listen for.
And outside, between Stations, there is the Undertow.
They say the Undertow is like an ocean, though I have never seen the sea, only this infinite expanse above or below or overlaying the space between the stars, separated from our own reality by a barrier both impermeable and fragile. It shifts and seethes; it swallows. It is non-traversable by ship or shuttle or any other means that requires set coordinates, bearings and lines of position. One might as well fix one’s nav-system on a stick floating on the waves. Countless ships had been lost before the force-rails were invented. And now Trains crisscross the Undertow from Station to Station on routes opened and fixed generations ago by the Switchman’s Corps. We used to be explorers, we humans.
—— «» ——
I checked my timepiece. Even without it, I could tell by the pulse of the force-rails through the floor that my Train was waking up from his on-station nap. I say his, as my father did, though a Train is not alive. Trains don’t even have artificial intelligence. They’re just machines, vehicles. This particular Train was the property of Union Galactic, even though I called him mine.
Affection and a familiar impatience settled in my belly and I bounced on my toes a little, waiting for the doors to slide open. Next stop: the resupply hub at EA-51, and then four more weeks along the Spur to Andalus Minor itself — the End of the Line, colloquially. There was nothing beyond, nothing we could reach, not without a Switch to open a new path and an Engineer to guide the Train. Nowadays, Union Galactic was not interested in expanding into the Arm. Nowadays, we stuck to the schedule.
At least Andalus Minor had plenty to recommend it, including the best teahouse I had found along the Spur, where I’d met a girl with violet eyes and long, elegant fingers. I wondered if she was still there, if she would remember me after so much time or if she’d found a more permanent liaison. A hazard of the traveling life, I suppose. Not everyone was as lucky as my father.
My job was a simple one, a sinecure, really; I stood on the platform as passenger after passenger presented wrist or claw or pinion for the scan, each Citizen’s data uploaded to the Station’s network to be passed along to Central. The job didn’t pay much, but it didn’t need to; Union Galactic’s insurance policy was one of the best. They had offered to re-home me, after my father died, to house me with the crèche children on Envara, or to send me to my mother’s family on Remera Segunda. They had promised a steady income and a one-time pass to anywhere the Trains ran. I had refused everything but a monthly stipend in exchange for my parents’ coupé and the run of the Train. This Train, my Train, was already too much in my blood. Union Galactic let me stay; a relic, if a young one, of an earlier time when Conductors were necessary personnel, and Engineers, too.
You’d have thought the passengers would interest me as much as the places we visited, but people were ephemeral — no matter how exotic, they passed in and out of the Train unremarked and unremembered. I noticed the girl now only because of how she glared at me when I reached for her arm. The boarding process was so routine that most people barely gave me a second glance, but this girl stiffened and looked me right in the eye.
“Apologies, Dama,” I said, taking her for one of the Sky-Touched. But no, she wore no gloves, nor the enveloping robes of the Order. She was just a girl, and a nervous one. I’d seen those nerves before, gotten used to reassuring first-time riders. It’s perfectly safe, now. Even the Sirens are few and far between, these days.
The couple in the line behind her stirred impatiently, the woman opening her fan with a loud snap. The girl started and thrust her wrist toward me.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
I ran my scanner over the invisible chip lodged under her skin until it beeped softly.
“Welcome aboard.” I sketched a half-bow. My mother had taught me to be polite.
Her gaze did not soften, but she favored me with a stiff nod. “Could you tell me, please, which way is my room?” she asked. Definitely a first-timer, then. Her consonants were soft, muffled, like the whisper of the mag-wheels.
I checked the scanner again. Stena au’Tenebrae, it read. Private coupé, second class. “Your coupé,” I stressed the word, and gestured. “One flight down, fifteen cars to the fore.” First class was closest to the locomotives on either end, third class in the middle where the sway was most noticeable and gravity had a tendency to play tricks. “Mind your step in the vestibules.”
She nodded again and brushed by me. Her scent lingered, ozone and something else, something sweet. I watched her glide down the corridor, her fingers trailing along the brass handrail, until the fan snapped again and I turned back to the line.
—— «» ——
I might have forgotten her had it not been for the fragrance. It seemed there were traces of it wherever I went. In the corridors, in the dining car, on the observation deck. It was insidious, like a Siren’s song; it drew me into unfamiliar waters. I had always been content to let people drift by, unmarked and quickly forgotten.
Now I found myself watching for the girl. I didn’t dare loiter outside her coupé, but I looked for her at breakfast, at supper, in the lounges. I imagined what I might say when I caught up to her, what she might answer. The observation deck was always crowded, but there were other places I could have shown her, where the passengers did not go and where one could drown in the beauty of the Undertow. Only, I rarely even caught glimpses of her, and when I did she was never looking at me, no matter how much I wished she might. I thought of her hand on the rail. Had her fingers drawn sparks? I did not think so, but I imagined they could, at times.
Her data record was oddly sparse. I shouldn’t have looked — it was against UG policy — but I was curious.
Citizen ID: N70056886-49AC.
Date of birth: 2901-352 Standard.
Birthplace: Alpha Crucis
Nothing else. No travel history, no employment data, no medical records or family chronicle. Even the holo that accompanied her file was unconvincingly bland: a flat, blurry image of a somewhat younger girl, perhaps thirteen years Standard, with pale skin and hair. There was no mention of her perfume.
A week after leaving Kazimir I finally came upon her in one of the observation lounges on the upper deck. She sat cross-legged in an armchair, cradling a cup of kaf in both hands and watching the Undertow. Our surroundings pulsed blue and green, like pictures I had seen of the oceans on Envara.
The girl looked up at me, her eyes heavy-lidded and bruised with weariness. At least she didn’t look anxious anymore. Whatever fear had held her, she had left it on-station.
“Careful,” I said, gesturing at the cup. “They brew it strong here. Stuff’ll keep you up for days.”
“Good.” She spoke softly. I resisted the urge to lean in close to hear her better. “I would rather sleep a little less.”
“Ah.” I took the chair next to hers, as if it was the most ordinary thing to do. Me, little more than a Train-thralled mendicant, and her a mystery. “Is it vertigo? It does take some people like that, Train travel. We have a medic—”
“No, no, it is only bad dreams. The kaf helps. I’m called Stena.” She held out her hand and I braced myself for the shock of electricity. There was none, of course, just her palm warm against mine. When she turned the full force of her smile on me, I forgot the medic and the Undertow and almost my own name.
I released her hand, curled my fingers around the lingering sensation of heat. “I’m Adeet. I’m the Train’s resident vagabond,” I explained with a grin that had charmed other girls often enough but could not possibly match hers for intensity.
That surprised her, I could see. “You live here? On the Train? How novel.”
I shrugged. “I like to travel. Besides, I like to think he’d be lonely without me. The Train,” I clarified. “He’s like family.”
Stena was silent a long moment, and my cheeks grew hot. It had just slipped out, that last bit; I didn’t usually invite strangers into that piece of my heart.
“Look.” I tapped the window. Outside, a nebulous, undulating shape kept pace with the Train, fell back, reappeared. Another shot ahead, crossed the tracks, and dropped back alongside its fellow. “Sirens. They’re not usually so daring, these days.”
They would be singing, I knew, hoping to lure the Train to a standstill. They hated us, the Sirens did, for intruding into their demesne. For the violence of our passing, of punching through. I couldn’t hear them — had never heard them, despite my years of crossing the Undertow — but my father had described their song to me.
“It’s not a song, exactly,” he had said, one hand flat against the window. “It’s like … if you took a melody, wrapped it in the scent of jasmine, and tied it around your heart. It pulls on a body.” He had cleared his throat then and sent me back to the coupé to “keep your mother company.” My father was too gruff to be a poet, but that night he had come close.
“They say the Sirens’ song is irresistible,” I told her. I had leaned close enough that her breath stirred the fine hairs on my cheek, sent a pleasant shiver down my spine. “The longer one spends near them, the harder it is to ignore.”
“I’m sorry,” Stena said. A shadow crossed her face. She set the cup down on the window ledge as she stood. “I ought to try to sleep after all, I think.” And then she was gone.
Her cup, I saw, was nearly half-full.
—— «» ——
I thought I’d missed my chance, but the next night she was there, in the same chair by the same window, with the same circles under her eyes. I took it for a good sign and sat down with her again, pulling my chair just a little closer. We talked for hours, or rather I did. She wanted stories of the places I’d been, anecdotes about the passengers. She wanted to know about my parents and what it was like, growing up on the Train. She had grown up on Envara, herself, in a crèche until Union Galactic sponsored her admission to the Academy. To study astronavigation, she said.
“Wow. They don’t do that for just anybody. You must be pretty smart.” I shoved her gently. It was a risk, teasing her.
She just shrugged. “They never said.” And shoved me back, surprising a laugh out of me.
We found each other the next day. And the next night, and the next. After a while, I didn’t even have to look for her. We pretended it was coincidence when she ended up behind me at the buffet or browsing the same shelves in the library car. It was an unspoken arrangement, that we would take meals together. She walked with me on my rounds to check on the passengers. She wanted to see the locomotive, but I said no; I was breaking enough rules already. The expression on her face was nearly enough for me to break that one, too.
“I was hoping to meet the Engineer.”
I blinked in surprise. “This Train doesn’t have one. The line is automated. You didn’t know?”
She cocked her head, then, and I saw that her eyes were nearly the color of the rails. “The Union directory listed a name.”
“Your information is old. The last Engineer died five years ago.” Went off the rails; that’s what they call it when an Engineer gives in to the Undertow and steps into the abyss. They were automating the route, they had said; they didn’t need an Engineer anymore. They had wanted him to retire. “My father,” I clarified, and left it at that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s so sad.” She put her hand on my cheek, then, and kissed me.
Later, I introduced her to the other staff: Jera, the day cook; Lorn, the head of security; Anfis, the medic. Stena made polite conversation, a proper passenger standing a proper hands-breadth apart, until she could draw me away someplace private — and I knew all the private places on this Train where we could make another sort of conversation, less polite, more honest.
Not her coupé, though, nor mine. It wouldn’t do, she said, and I respected that. Respected her privacy the way she respected mine. Besides, who would settle for a narrow bunk and tiny porthole when one might have a pile of blankets in the forward cupola and all of the Undertow limning a woman’s skin in blue and gold?
—— «» ——
At Resupply we took on a new passenger. Staas Endreche was a Union rep and an old friend, practically a brother. It was Staas who had taught me the dials and displays, after my father died.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you till Andalus,” I said, unfolding myself from his bear hug.
This close to the Station, the Train was still running slow. Most of our departures took place in the morning hours, Train-time, but tonight the passengers would go to bed watching the stars flash by their windows, and they’d wake up to the swirling colors of the Undertow. It was a few more hours yet before we would punch through at the prescribed coordinates.
He shrugged. “Union got word of contraband on the Line and sent a few of us to look into it. A Switch, somewhere this side of Envara. UG’s checking all the hubs.”
Train lore said Sirens could smell a Switch; that they’d chew through metal to reach one, to stop a Train from punching new holes in the Undertow. It’s why UG had retired them; it’s why we only travel the established routes. We used to be explorers, we humans.
I glanced outside. Some immeasurable distance away, a Siren rode the crest of a copper-green wave of light, then vanished into the depths. “Wow. You find anything?”
“Not yet.” His gaze followed mine. “But we will. There are only so many routes, ya’know?”
We made small talk for a while, light, comfortable conversation. I liked that I never had to try too hard with Staas. If I didn’t feel like talking, he was perfectly happy to rattle on about whatever came into his head. He had a big, easy laugh, and he liked to tease me in a way that never hurt.
“Too bad you didn’t overnight at Resupply,” he said, in the middle of a story about some new restaurant he’d discovered there. “Moira was asking after you. You remember Moira?” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember Moira. She’s gonna be pissed.”
“Well. You know me. A bunk on every Station.” It was an old joke. Only, somehow it wasn’t funny anymore.
“And none of ‘em your own, yeah, Addy?” Staas grinned and made a rude gesture. I rolled my eyes.
Which is when I caught sight of Stena over Staas’s shoulder. Her naturally pale face had gone bone-white, and I swore under my breath. She was already hurrying out of the car before I could explain that Moira wasn’t, that I wasn’t—
Staas turned. His eyes followed the sway of Stena’s hips, and I balled my hands into fists. I had never been jealous before, not on account of a lover.
Steady, girl, I chided myself.
“Friend of yours?” Staas asked, his voice as bland as protein paste.
I loosened my hands and reached for my cup as I sat back down. “She’s interested in the Train.”
“The Train, eh?” If you didn’t know him, you’d think Staas was just making conversation. But I heard a thread of something else in his voice. “Union doesn’t condone liaisons with paying passengers, you know that, Addy. They’ll bounce you faster’n a penny floater in zero-g.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s nothing.” I could still feel the electricity in her touch, the pleasant shock of her lips on mine. Her fingers, I had discovered, did indeed draw sparks, or near enough. “It’s nothing.”
Staas looked at me for a heartbeat, two, before his shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, you love this bucket of bolts too much to fuck it up. Me, I can’t wait to get to Andalus. I’ve been traveling too long.”
“No such thing.” I grinned, on a more stable platform now. “I’ve been traveling as long as you have, and I’m not bored yet.”
The conversation turned to more comfortable topics: mutual acquaintances, upgrades in nav-tech, the latest news from Central. All the while I kept sniffing the air for ozone until Staas asked if I was feeling all right.
“Allergies,” I mumbled, and made a show of blowing my nose. “I should maybe get home, take some meds. Catch you tomorrow?” I made my escape amid promises of breakfast and a beer over lunch.
When I knocked on Stena’s door, she didn’t answer.
—— «» ——
The pattern of my days changed abruptly. I kept company with Staas instead of Stena, eating tasteless food and trying not to show that I was only half-listening to his stories. Stena herself was nowhere to be found, and I heard from Jera that she had started taking meals in her coupé. When I finally gathered the nerve to try her door again, I was honestly startled at the sight of her face in the viewpanel. But she only shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.” And the viewpanel went dark.
In the evenings, I sat in the Engineer’s chair and watched the Undertow. Outside the force-rails glowed faintly, two silver lines converging some immeasurable distance away. They did not need to glow — it was a concession to the Engineer, when the Train had one. How else could a person tell up from down in this formless place? It was easy to lose oneself in the Undertow.
Just like, somewhere between Kazimir and the hub, I had lost myself in Stena.
Staas finally caught on that something was different, but I couldn’t exactly tell him. He was right; I’d be bounced for sure if UG found out. Station time was our own, but on the Train we were employees first. Even me.
A week Standard after Resupply, a week of silences and solitary cups of kaf, I smelled electricity again. I knew she was there before I even stepped into the cab. She was perched on the Engineer’s chair — my chair, I thought jealously — gazing out at the rails. My face made a dark smudge in the window past her shoulder.
“This car is off limits to passengers,” I said, with perhaps more acidity than was warranted. Still, it was true and I was heart-sore and a little angry.
She spoke not to me, but to my reflection. “I’m sorry,” she said.
She was made of apologies, it seemed.
Outside the window, I caught a flash of jaws, a shimmer of blue: the biggest Siren I had ever seen, racing the Train.
“For what? For this?” I gestured at my chair. “Or for pulling a disappearing act? It was stupid, what Staas said. What I said. But you didn’t even let me explain. You just—”
“I should never have boarded this Train.” Her words were so soft, I only fully understood them by reading her reflection’s lips.
“If you hadn’t,” I said, “I would never have met you.”
“Exactly,” she said. One word, one resounding note, and it pulled at my heart like nothing I’d ever felt before. I let it draw me into the cab, to the chair.
“Don’t say that,” I said, and leaned over the back of the chair to nuzzle her cheek. “Stena—”
Her hand was resting on the brake lever.
I froze. “What are you doing?”
“She’s trying to kill us,” came a voice from the doorway. Staas, and he was holding a gun. “She’s the Switch.”
She’s the Switch.
Stena’s apologies fell into place, started to make sense. Already I had spotted a third Siren, and a fourth appeared just at the edge of my range of vision.
“Get out,” Stena said, and her voice was firm now, unwavering. “Both of you, get out or I’ll stop the Train right here and we’ll all be lost.” Something slid up and past the window: a pale underbelly, a flickering tail. The Sirens would be waiting, if we stopped. I imagined I heard a faint melody, felt a gentle tug.
“Stena, please.” This Train was my home. My family. This locomotive was my heartbeat, my breath — or had been, until I met her. “You don’t want to do this. It’s just the Sirens. Stay with me; fight them off.”
“Do you know what they do to Switches? To people like me?” She was speaking to me, but looking at Staas. He had something in his other hand. A collar, I realized. I put a hand to my own throat.
“Switches are unpredictable, Addy. Dangerous.” The Train rocked. The enormous blue Siren flashed by again. “See? There’s a reason we keep them apart. Controlled. Move, Addy. Get behind me. Let me take her, and I won’t mention any of this to Central. They might even let you stay on the Train.”
“I needed an Engineer. I found you. Any other Train…” She trailed off, met my eyes in the window. “It’s not the Sirens. I never wanted to hurt you, or him.” She lay her free hand on the control panel, patted it gently. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know if she was apologizing to me or my Train.
The Sirens’ songs were irresistible, I had told her. Odysseus in the ancient epics had his sailors stop up their ears with wax so they wouldn’t go mad and jump into the sea, but Odysseus wanted to hear it for himself. My father had never denied the pull of the Sirens’ song. It was part of the traveling life, part of the Train. Whether or not he had finally succumbed, as UG said, I still don’t know. Maybe he had, or maybe he had just missed my mother that much. A melody wrapped in perfume and tied to your heart.
Four steps took me from the Engineer’s chair to the door of the cab. I kept myself between Staas and Stena the whole time.
I looked at Staas a long, long moment. Staas, my near-brother, my friend.
“Go. If you hurry,” I told him, “you can power up the tail. Take the Train back to Resupply. You’ve got thirty seconds to get to the next car and decouple.” And I slapped the panel, shutting the door between us. Staas looked at me wide-eyed, then turned and bolted down the corridor.
I watched him go, counting under my breath.
Five.
Five steps back to the control panel.
Ten.
I was ten years old when I met Staas.
Fifteen.
I was fifteen when my father went off the rails.
Twenty.
I was twenty years old when Stena kissed me.
Twenty-five.
My Train had twenty-five passenger cars. The first one behind the locomotive had been my father’s, until it was mine.
Thirty.
Stena pulled the brake.
The Train shuddered and jolted; worse, he screamed. Trains weren’t meant to stop in the Undertow. Trains drowned here. I felt his aversion in the pit of my belly, a nauseating twist that had nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with the utter wrongness of what was happening.
I lost my grip on the chair back, lost my footing, too, and slid into the opposite wall. I sat there, dazed, as the engine fell silent and the floorboards grew still under my palms.
The light of the force-rails wavered and diffused into sparks as I watched. Blinking, I scanned the depths for something to latch my gaze onto, some sort of anchor or buoy, but there was none. Just the slow rolling waves of pale light that told me we were still in the Undertow. In the Undertow and stilled.
Lost, I thought. There were no rails. There was no path out of the Undertow. Panic bubbled up, and I shoved it back down, covered it with something not unlike wonder.
“You really are. You’re a Switch.”
“And you’re an Engineer,” she said. Her teeth were bared; it was not a smile. “Or you could be. Your Train will die if you can’t get him moving again. Or the Sirens will take us.” Outside, an enormous shape slid by the window, followed by another. The Train lurched. Something scraped against the hull.
“I can’t see the rails.” The air in the cab felt close, stale. My words scratched against my throat.
“An Engineer doesn’t need rails. Don’t you know anything?”
I bristled. “I know that you can’t get back on the rails once you’ve gone off.”
“You don’t need them,” she insisted. “You just need to get him moving again. I’ll do the rest.” She stroked the control panel again. The hair on my arms stood up as the cab filled with the scent of ozone.
Trains are not living ships; they do not breathe, think, move independently. Still, they are more than machines, or I have always thought so. A stalled Train is little more than a corpse. And my Train, right now, was dying.
“Move,” I said, and she did, sliding out of the chair to stand at my elbow as I took her place. The instrument panel glowed faintly; various displays blinked and flashed. This wasn’t my job; I wasn’t an Engineer, had never trained for this. But I had watched my father often enough, spent enough time in the cab with him and without him. I knew what to do. I released the brake and started adjusting dials.
Had Staas reached the tail before the Sirens caught up to the severed body of the Train? I couldn’t be sure. I could only hope. The rear camera feed showed only static.
The engine began to spin up, a hum that started at the crown of my head and vibrated through my bones until it steadied and faded into the background. I checked each dial twice before I realized I was missing the thrum of the mag-wheels against the rails.
“Where are we going?” A question I had never needed to ask before. Envara to Andalus Minor via Kazimir. My pulse quickened.
“Wherever we want,” she said, and smiled. Her fingers crackled with static, and the Undertow flashed in response.
—— «» ——
The Train is in our blood, or the traveling is. Our Train is seven cars long now, including the residence-coupé that Staas had left us — a kindness, that. We take passengers, sometimes, and goods. If the authorities ever seize us, if Union Galactic manages to track us down, we’ll be grounded. Worse, they’ll collar Stena again, make sure I quietly disappear. Went off the rails, they’ll say, like her father, and it would be true. I won’t let that happen.
“Steady,” I tell my daughter as we prepare to punch through. “Trust the Train.” And I cover her tiny fingers with mine so we can release the brake together. The Train is in her blood, too.
—— « o » ——
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She serves on the editorial staff of the online writing community YeahWrite, where her main portfolio includes microprose, flash fiction, and poetry. She completed her first novel—The Copper Dragon, a post-technological pseudo-steampunk sci-fi adventure—in 2018, and is currently writing its sequel. Christine lives in the Pacific Northwest with her wife and their two sons. She blogs at christinehanolsy.com and can be found on Facebook (facebook.com/hanolsy) and Twitter (@hanolsy).