She watched the trees thin and disappear; when the wind-torn clouds parted above, it was to reveal distant peaks, sharp and brilliant white. The air in the cell became cold and her breathing became laboured. Then they were through the pass and descending into trees again. The Lesson Learned had entered Yadayeypon Province.
She sat in the steeply tipped cell, swallowing and yawning now and again to clear her ears as the air pressure increased, and thought of how she might kill herself.
But she could not see suicide as a way of cheating them; rather it would feel like giving in. It was probably the sensible thing to do, but it would be ignominious. She thought she understood now the old warrior codes which held that when every other choice and freedom had been removed from one, it was still possible to confound the enemy by dying well, no matter how terrified one felt. Certainly she had not felt so without hope since her ship had been tumbling powerless towards Nachtel’s Ghost, fifteen years earlier, but she had survived that. At a cost, perhaps, but she had survived.
She hadn’t slept well during the night, as every revolution of these great wheels brought her closer to Yadayeypon, and the fear and despair grew inside her. She sat cross-legged on the bunk, trying to cheer herself up, until the very desperation of her attempts became pathetic and she wept.
After a while she fell asleep again, wan and exhausted, against the slope of trembling bulkhead behind her narrow cot.
She woke suddenly and didn’t dare hope it was what she thought it might be. An explosion shook the cell, jarring her teeth; she passed through fear, elation and back to fear again in a second.
A jolt sent her flying off the bunk; she landed on all fours on the floor. She could hear gunfire. The cell tipped as the carriage rattled and bounced along an incline, jarring her and everything in it. She struggled up the slope to the bunk and grabbed the window bars, trying to see outside.
The Land Car’s tall shadow was flung up a steep, grassy hillside towards a distant line of trees; the vehicle was crashing over and through what looked like dry stone walls. A smoky trail appeared suddenly from underneath the carriage in front, crossed a small field and detonated against a wall in a dirty fountain of earth and stone. A ripple shook the cell and vibrated through the bars in her hands as a part of the Lesson Learned’s shadow five or six carriages along was suddenly obscured in a dark, blossoming cloud. There was a flash of light from one end of the stand of trees. Something burst from the carriage in front of her, spraying wreckage: the cell leapt around her. A light tank in dazzle camouflage appeared from the trees, tearing down the hillside towards the Land Car; earth exploded into the air in front of it.
There was a terrific crash from behind her, she had a brief impression of the front of the Land Car’s shadow twisting and of the light tank firing again, then the cell whipped and heaved around her, shaking her like a dice in a cup.
The carriage rolled right over six times. She was conscious through it all. She fought the urge to brace herself and just went limp, crashing round the cell with the cot’s mattress and sleeping bag flopping and falling continually around her; it was like being trapped in a tumble drier. She had time to reflect that there was something to be said for padded cells, and that you could tell each time the wheels hit the ground because the bounce was slightly different.
It stopped; she was weightless for a moment, then slammed into the padded cell door, hurting her left shoulder.
The mattress and sleeping bag fell on top of her.
Another massive crash shook the whole carriage.
There was silence.
She stood awkwardly, rubbing her shoulder and feeling her head, looking for bruises or blood. Gunfire sounded in the distance.
She tried to climb up to the bunk but there was nothing to hold on to. She jumped, caught the window bars and pulled herself up, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, but all she could see was dark-blue evening sky. She dropped to the canted floor that the cell door and corridor wall had become. More firing. It went on for a while; a couple of thudding detonations shook the carriage.
She tried the door buzzer but it didn’t seem to be working.
After a while she heard movement outside the cell, then the lock buzzed. She drew to one side, away from the door. Voices.
“Blow it,” she heard a man say.
She buried herself under the cot mattress and stuck her fingers in her ears; the explosion clanged round the cell, leaving her ears ringing.
She looked up into a grey haze. The door had disappeared. She started coughing in the acrid fumes of the blast. A gun and a man’s face appeared where the door had been.
The man wore an armoured helmet painted in a hallucinatory purple and green design. He wore matt-black multi-sights over his eyes and had a little roundel painted on his forehead with the words AIM HERE printed underneath, and an arrow. He frowned at her.
“Haven’t we met?” he said.
She coughed, then laughed. “I was wondering who could be crazy enough to attack a Land Car.”
Another man appeared. He had a dark round face, and was bare-headed apart from a bright yellow bandana with the word REAL smeared on it in what looked like dried blood. He frowned strenuously.
She waved. “Politeness,” she said.
“Politeness,” Elson Roa replied, nodding.
It was warm and humid in the late afternoon air; they were in the tropics and the altitude was less than five hundred metres, though the prevailing winds-spilling down from the glaciers of the continent’s core-kept the temperature moderate.
She stood on what had been the side of one of the Lesson Learned’s cell-block sections; another carriage lay up-ended against its roof. The thin prison overalls flapped in the warm breeze, and she could feel the air moving over her naked scalp. She looked around, smiling, watching Thrial disappear over the mountain ridge to the west.
Segments of the smashed Land Car lay strewn around the bottom of a dry, steep-sided valley like pieces of a toy after a child’s tantrum. Some carriages had turned on their backs, their suspension components looking naked and vulnerable and their wheels pointing pathetically upwards to the patchily clouded sky. Smoke and steam drifted down the valley on the wind.
Solipsists in gaudy uniforms crawled all over the tangled necklace of torn-open boxes that was the Lesson Learned. A couple of light tanks and five half-tracks sat tilted on the grassy banks around the central valley, engines idling noisily.
A group of stunned Sons of Depletion sat on the grass, hands clasped at their necks, guarded by two Solipsists who appeared to be naked apart from skin-paint. Bodies lay near one of the still-smoking carriages.
Roa’s head appeared from a smashed window; she reached down and helped pull him out. He carried a small briefcase and her satchel.
“This is yours,” he said, handing the satchel to her.
“Thank you,” she said, putting the strap over her head.
Roa and the other Solipsist who had rescued her stood looking round the scene, then Roa shrugged.
“Let us go,” he said.
They climbed down through the carriage’s suspension components to the ground. All around, men in gaudy uniforms and body-paint were staggering from the wreck to their own vehicles, loaded with booty.
She followed Roa as he ducked under one of the Land Car’s buckled connecting corridors to the other side of the wreck, where a big, open half-track was waiting; a radar unit revolved on a thin mast above the vehicle. A blonde face grinned down from the rear of the vehicle as Sharrow approached.
“Okay, I believe you about the Solipsists now,” Zefla called.