Death Train to Boston (13 page)

"That is true." The truth of it seemed to make up his
mind, for he bobbed his head up and down in a nod, rubbed his hands together, and said, "Very well. I'll fetch him. As before, it will take two days."

Two days! I had forgotten that little detail, but now I remembered hearing him say it before, eons ago, which in fact had been less than a month. Suddenly I was thinking of all the things I could do in two days, if only my legs would hold up. I wondered if he had horses, but of course he did; no one could survive out here in the wilderness without them. Wondered too if he had a wagon or a carriage or some such conveyance, and if he did, how I might gain access to it.

But I was forgetting my manners. "Thank you, Father, very much," I called after him, inwardly cringing at my own slip of the tongue. He had already reached my bedroom door.

"Humph!" he replied in his all-purpose grump.

As soon as Pratt had closed the door behind him, and I'd waited long enough to be sure none of the wives had been waiting outside, I flung back the covers and turned my body so that both feet swung out over the side of the bed. Then slowly, painfully, for I had not allowed anyone to help me sit up in a chair for many days, I bent my knees until my feet touched the floor.

Two whole days! I was thinking,
If only I can do this, if only my legs will take my weight, everything else will fall into place. There will be a cart, or perhaps even a carriage. There will be horses to spare. Ill go at night, no one will see me, no one will stop me. When he comes back with the doctor two days from now, I'll be long gone.

I shifted, inching my backside farther and farther toward the edge of my mattress. If only I had something to hold on to while I got my balance—but the room's
only
chair was impossibly far away. My knees were stronger, I was so sure. . . .

At last I could wait no longer. I felt it was better to stand quickly and get it over with, so that was what I did. I stood up, my head swam—and everything went black before my eyes.

MEILING LI could be just as stubborn as Fremont Jones, Michael was discovering. He had waited until an hour after sunup to knock on her door, and now they sat in her compartment talking. Arguing, more precisely.

He had told her about running into Hilliard Ramsey in the club car, identifying the man only as "an old enemy"; and since then had been trying to persuade her that although he himself was in no real danger, it would be in Meiling's best interest not to be seen in his company for the rest of the train trip.

Meiling cocked her head to one side and studied him with serious dark eyes. "I think you are not telling me enough of the truth," she stated eventually, but not until her silence had let him know that this observation was most carefully considered.

"What more shall I say? It would take all morning to tell you even half of what has happened between Ramsey and me over all the years I've known him."

"How many years would that be?"

Michael had to stop and think. Their first encounter had been in Hawaii, around the time of annexation, and Hill had been working for the Japanese then too, only Michael hadn't known it. He'd thought Hilliard Ramsey was only an Englishman who liked his Pacific adventures—as indeed did Michael. So the year would have been . . . 1898. He told Meiling, "Ten years. Why do you ask, what difference does it make?"

She shrugged, a pretty gesture the way she did it, especially in her rose silk robe, whose neckline revealed the curve where neck met shoulder. So often Meiling was buttoned clean up to her chin.

"I am trying to make my own decision," she said, "and I have a strong sense of more danger than you say. You carry it upon you this morning almost as a scent, like a strange perfume."

Her words made Michael's skin crawl. He said, untruthfully, "I don't know what you mean."

Again, that slight tip of the head to one side, the scrutiny of those fathoms-deep eyes. She said, "On the heads of my ancestors, Michael Kossoff, many of whom you have known, I swear to you this is true—you carry the scent of danger. And further, you
do
know exactly what I mean. It is not protection I want or need from you now, but information. Ten years is a considerable time for an enmity to be nurtured into dangerous hatred."

Michael rubbed his hand through his hair. He felt honestly perplexed. "Yes, but the last time Ramsey and I were involved in, um, something, he was definitely the winner. There was no physical bloodshed; nevertheless, I was badly beaten. It was a diplomatic matter in which influence was sought in various ways. He worked for Japan. You know, Meiling, what was the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War."

"The Japanese got what they wanted, as they so often do. But this man is British, you said."

"He carries a British passport and speaks the Queen's—beg pardon, the King's—English. I mean to say, with an upper-class accent. But the truth about Hilliard Ramsey is that he has no country, and he is at heart a killer. He hasn't the patience for long, involved intrigues, he would sooner go in the cloak of night and darkness and slit a throat or two."

"If he was the winner of your last encounter, then he has no personal enmity toward you?"

"I believe that to be the case, yes." Michael nodded. "He did say he had been hired to watch me, that's all."

"So you prefer that I not be near you because I will be watched also, is that it? Or"—Meiling held up a long-fingered hand to warn Michael that she was not yet ready for her question to be answered—"could it be that you do not in fact believe this Mr. Ramsey will confine himself to merely watching?"

Michael got to his feet, which in the tight space of the small compartment meant that he towered right over Meiling. "It doesn't matter what I believe, Meiling. What matters is that I want you to be safe and to feel safe, which you will not—nor can I feel safe on your behalf—if we're together on this train."

He was physically crowding her, intentionally, because he was annoyed. He wanted her to give up, to give in.

Meiling's eyes flickered up to him and then away, almost in a disinterested fashion. She said, "I'd like you to leave now. Come back in an hour and I'll give you my decision."

Oh, she was good all right, Michael had to give her that. He supposed it was in her training as well as in her blood. Fremont would have given him some hot reply for looming over her like that, but Meiling simply dismissed him like one of the many servants to which her family background had accustomed her.

Michael clamped his mouth shut lest the heat of his
anger leak out like dragon breath. With an effort of will he took two long steps, all that were required to reach the compartment's door. Then he turned back, unable at last to keep still. "Damn it, Meiling, what could you say in an hour that you can't say now? The matter is not that complicated!"

"Oh, but it is," she replied coolly. "When you asked me to come along, I brought with me my own set of special skills, my own ways to help my friend, Fremont Jones. That is why I'm here. Not to find out who has blown up the railroad, or even who may feel malevolence toward you, Michael, although you are a most honorable friend of the House of Li. To find Fremont and bring her home is my only concern. Before I can tell you how we might best do that in the light of this new development, by which I mean the appearance of your dangerous Mr. Ramsey, there is an action I must perform. It will take about an hour."

"Meiling, I can't have you running off in some direction of your own. We have to work together here."

"Precisely," Meiling said.

She stood now, folded her arms into the sleeves of her silk robe, and gave Michael a small bow such as Chinese women give the men who have some control over their lives—a formality meant to placate, he supposed. It worked, a little.

But he was not yet entirely placated. "What do you mean?" he asked insistently. "What is it you're planning to do with this hour?"

"I will seek the wisdom of my grandmother."

"But your grandmother is dead!"

"Not precisely," said Meiling, with a mysterious smile.

I was lying on the floor when I awoke from whatever spell had overtaken me. Using my arms I pushed myself
up into a sitting position with my legs straight out in front of me; my head was spinning. I supposed I might have stood up too fast. That would sometimes cause a person to lose consciousness, I knew.

Whatever the cause, I hadn't been out of my senses for long.

The passage of time is palpable—I know this from experience. I'd gone for almost two years after the Great Earthquake without a watch; in that disaster I'd lost a pendant watch that had been more to me than just a timepiece, as it had been a gift from my father for my twenty-first birthday. So in a sense the pendant watch was irreplaceable, but it was also true I simply hadn't been able to afford a new one. During all that time without a watch I had learned what our ancestors must have known in the ages before watches and clocks: how to feel time and sense the rate of its passing with one's body. How to ascertain the hour from the movement of shadows across a surface, by the angle of the sunlight falling through any opening, by the slow rotation of stars in the heavens at night—and most of all by some kind of innate built-in mechanism I could not describe. My two watchless years had proven its existence in me.

By now I knew how a minute feels in passing, or five minutes, or ten. And so I judged I had been unconscious for no longer than five minutes, probably less.

With probing fingers I explored my bound-up legs, though I wasn't at all sure I'd be able to tell if I had done any damage. These poor, damaged limbs were tightly wrapped from knee to ankle, with some kind of stiff, board-like brace on either side to keep the whole arrangement immobile. Only the outermost layer of wrapping was ever changed. Thus there arose from my legs a faint, unpleasant odor of unwashed skin. At least, I hoped that was the odor's only source.

I squeezed and poked at my own limbs until I was
satisfied there was no new injury—or at least none that signaled itself by anything other than the constant deep ache with which I had become all too familiar. It appeared, through my risky experimentation, that the sharp pain came only when I tried to force the legs to bear my whole weight. As pain is a sign that something is wrong, I deduced I was not yet able to stand and walk.

Very clever, Holmes,
I said sarcastically to myself.

After a brief pause in which I allowed myself to feel an altogether different kind of pain, the one that came from missing my Watson—in other words, Michael—I turned my attention to the task of getting back into bed before anyone could discover me out of it.

This proved impossible. The bed might as well have been some mountain in the Alps, and I was no mountain climber. I confess mountain climbing for sport has always seemed completely inexplicable to me. I mean, when you have climbed a mountain what is there to do but stand on the top of it? What sort of thrill is that? It's not as if there is really anything up there except, one supposes, a lot of snow; and then when you are done with standing on top, there is nothing to do but come down again. How very tedious.

Just as tedious as all my efforts to get myself back into that bed. There were mountains, one had heard, in India or some such outlandish place, that were unclimbable. Well, so was this bed.

Getting myself into the chair, however, proved merely difficult, not impossible. That is, once I had crawled over there. I was greatly assisted by a fortunate happenstance: The last person to sit in the chair had left it by the window, and so I had both the chair itself and the windowsill to lean on with my hands and arms, to support my weight while I hauled myself upright. Then I plopped into the chair none too gracefully . . . and none too soon.

I had scarcely tidied my hair and arranged the nightgown neatly around my legs and ankles when—after a brief, one might say peremptory knock at my door— Norma came in with a lunch tray.

"Well," she said a bit huffily, "how did you get out of bed? I didn't think you could do that. Or are you a malingerer?"

"No, of course I'm not malingering. Mr. Pratt was here, he helped me into the chair."

"That's funny. I heard you were so sick he had to go for the doctor. That's a long trip, Carrie. That's asking a lot. But then, you don't have any trouble with asking a lot, do you?"

"I
am
sick. Going for the doctor was his decision." This should have been obvious, especially, I would have thought, to one of his wives: Melancthon Pratt never did anything that
wasn't
his decision.

Norma unfolded the gateleg table that had been brought into the room some days earlier as a place to set my meals, and she brought it over to the chair where I sat. Then she went back for the tray, which she had temporarily placed on the dresser.

I decided to take a risk, to play on what I knew of Norma's personality and see how far I might get. "I don't mean to be offensive. In the real world, I mean the world outside this, this—"

"We call our community New Deseret, home of the True Saints," she said, rather smugly I thought.

"Very well," I agreed. "As I was saying, in the real world outside New Deseret, I am a wealthy woman. I know Mr. Pratt doesn't like me to talk about it, but—"

"That's right. He doesn't." Norma sat on the edge of my bed. "But he's not here, and I'd like to hear what you have to say. I may as well keep you company while you eat. That way I won't have to come back for the tray, I can just take it with me."