Read Online Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds - Free Book Online

or later - and he’ll know he’s got us cornered. Or take the fight to him.’
    ‘I’m guessing you like the second one best.’
    Meroka concealed the gun back inside her coat, the flap covering her hand and sleeve.
    ‘Stay behind me. Don’t shoot at anyone until I do.’
    They started walking down the corridor, passing compartments on the right. The first two were empty, and the third contained only one passenger, a young woman looking out of the window. Neon Heights slid by in a rain-smeared blur of mingled colours, the succession of advertisements and slogans tending to a rushing electric white as the train gathered speed. The next compartment was empty, and the one after that contained two men who were smoking and laughing. The next and last compartment in that coach was also empty, with only a couple of discarded newspapers on the seats. Quillon could feel the descending grade now, the train winding its anticlockwise way down the long, gentle spiral cut into Spearpoint’s side, losing a league in altitude for every thirty leagues it travelled along the tracks. There was still a long way to go before he reached the ground. He didn’t want to think about exactly how far it was.
    Meroka paused at the bend in the corridor, whipping out her gun and swinging around the blind corner. Quillon waited until she gave him the nod and followed behind, through the swaying connecting bellows between the two carriages. Then she held him back while she swung around into the next corridor.
    ‘Clear,’ she said quietly.
    They moved along the next series of compartments. Again some were empty and some were partially occupied. Only one was anywhere near full, the second along, with five rowdy businessmen trading stories, their shirt collars and ties loosened, the smell of an evening’s hard drinking hanging in the air. In the next compartment sat a mother and daughter, bolt upright in their seats, the girl wearing a bonnet, the mother a veil that covered the upper half of her face, both of them dressed in the elaborate and formal clothes that marked them as respectable citizens of Steamville, returning from what must have been an arduous and costly excursion to Neon Heights. On the mother’s lap, clutched as if it were the most precious artefact in the universe, lay a large brown envelope. The girl was pale of complexion, thinner than she should have been and in the grip of a constant shivering tremor. The mother probably couldn’t have afforded the expense of a full operation in Neon Heights, but she might have had the means to pay for a set of X-rays, the images intended to guide the hand of an affordable surgeon back in Steamville.
    He wanted to talk to them. He had the tools in his bag to perform basic tests of neurological function. Even if he couldn’t do anything for the girl, he could at least settle the mother’s doubts, reassure her that she had done all that she could.
    He must have hesitated. The girl turned to look at him through the partition glass. The mother met his gaze, eyes dark and unreadable behind her veil, but there was inexpressible sadness and resignation in the lines around her mouth. The tendons stood out on the backs of her hands, clutching the envelope with its fearful cargo of medical truth.
    Then Meroka was looking back at him, urging him to follow.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Quillon mouthed, as if that made a difference.
    Then a man came around the bend of the corridor, beyond Meroka. He saw her twitch, ready to bring out the pistol. The man wore the cap and waistcoated uniform of a railway worker. He was shorter and bulkier than the figure they had seen on the platform, his frame filling the width of the corridor. In his hand was a ticket clipper; in the other a pocket timetable.
    ‘Be with you in a minute,’ the man called, before sliding open the first compartment door and vanishing inside.
    Meroka kept moving. There was only one person in the fourth compartment, deeply asleep, and no one in the