From a NovelPro critiquer: "You write excellent prose. The characters are well fleshed out,... and the description and setting are great. ...the novel is a pleasure to read. The story itself - an overreaching authority, the forcing of a caste system on the world, the inevitable collapse of these artificial barriers and the love story interwoven into all this - is lovely."

Train to Nowhere

by Gloria Piper

Copyright © 2007, Gloria Piper
All Rights Reserved

PART 1 - ORPHAN

CHAPTER 1

If ever Garland wanted to howl, it was now, for he needed a vacation and had no place to go. Like all members of the Orphan caste he lived in a world created for his kind. The Orphan Train. He should be grateful.

And he was.

Still...

He vented his frustration the best way he knew, in song. He and Little Byte called themselves The Body Singers, for they used themselves as instruments. Presently they gyrated on a ten-foot dais in the Garden Room. The Orphan audience, clad in anything from wispy robes to shimmering body paint, twisted and jerked, like a field of flowers trying to escape their roots.

He screamed at the glass sky, tossed his head, and flung his long hair across his eyes. Little Byte, who barely reached his shoulder, whistled a shrill harmony. Snaking from the waist, he glimpsed the audience pitching like waves in a rainbow-colored ocean. Little Byte leaped, spun, and just missed him. He felt a puff of breeze. Then he gave himself to the music.

The room disappeared, for he rode the chord through the train's ceiling into the sky. His wiry body resonated beneath his drumming hands. He sang with Little Byte's whistle, but in his mind he flew with geese and echoed their call. He swooped low to run with deer, beating the rhythm of their hooves on his skin. His mouth popped and his feet stamped in a counter rhythm to Little Byte's tongue smacking and finger snapping. His hair swirled to form ocean currents where he undulated the way whales do. And they were here, and he with them, part of their water ballet. Then up to soar again, higher, along a rainbow into clouds, warm and diaphanous.

"Outside!" he sang. "Anywhere Outside!"

Little Byte's soprano repeated him. "Outside!"

Oh, to fly forever through boundaries! To explore seas, to race through forests, to circle the moon.

It could not last.

A hawk's cry became their fading song, and Garland gave it a mournful twist. Down he floated, his fantasy a snowflake in the song's wake. He wanted to stay aloft, yet knew his dream must land and melt in the Orphans' world.

Moans of pleasure from the audience brought him completely back from illusion to the platform above the tiered fountain. Again his bare feet felt the soft green carpet; his bare chest the tickle of sweat. His purple hair stuck like feathers to his face, shoulders, and back. Through it, he squinted at hanging and standing plants and the flash of wrist computers above clapping hands. Wrist comps, sensitive to their wearers' appreciation of the performance, transferred audience credits to Garland's and Little Byte's financial accounts. Mentor, the nurturing computer for all Orphans, handled the transaction unnoticed.

Little Byte swiped away tears mingled with sweat and held up her wrist comp to show the points recorded. "Prime, Garland, prime."

Garland stared, like a Nomad plucked from the prairie and dropped into a tiny, mechanical world. No matter that it was a deluxe suntrain, triple wide and an hour's hike long. The Orphan caste occupied only the lowdeck. Prime? He straightened, thumbed the hair from his face.

The performance wasn't prime. It hadn't kept him from returning to the rumors. He should ignore them.

Garland picked up his electric-purple tunic, used it to wipe away the sweat, and pulled it on over his head. Little Byte slipped on an identical outfit and rubbed her stomach.

"Let's refuel," she said. "I'm about to crash from hunger."

A mime was hopping to the dais over tiers of tumbling water when they hustled away from the train-wide garden. Garland, his step flowing, barely noticed Little Byte waving at those who flung compliments.

They entered the avenue. Its mirrored walls multiplied potted greenery and the Orphan crowd, somehow giving a sense of spaciousness. The spaciousness was VR. Definition, illusion. Garland's mind snagged on the term, VR, and marched to the beat of it. He increased his pace, and like a song that wouldn't go away, the idea of VR kept up. Little Byte trotted, her head bobbing by his shoulder. Ordinarily they kept to the right of oncoming walkers, but Garland found that if he rushed down the center of the avenue, oncoming Orphans usually moved aside. He could get away with this if he didn't do it too often and heat emotions. Otherwise Mentor would buzz him through his wrist comp. An Orphan seldom ignored such a warning, lest Mentor should next deliver a shock.

Garland peered at rain silently spattering the glass ceiling. The roof, too, was VR, covered by the updeck. Could those on the highest deck hear the rain?

Odors of onion and vanilla announced the cafeteria's presence. The avenue emptied into an ivory-colored room of plastic tables and chairs, a bland setting that called attention to the colorfully attired occupants, who filled the tables and food line beside the service bar. The avenue resumed on the other side of the cafe.

"Hoo!" Little Byte's black eyes and white smile, the only big things about her, flashed. "I'm gonna download me a cream cake. How about you?"

Garland shook his head. Virus take it! He grabbed a lettuce pate roll and bark tea.

Once through the line, they carried their trays toward a table where a fortyish man in fake Nomad headdress and beaded tunic waved them over. Dos, one of a kind, wore a beard, unusual among Orphans. It was more a dark carpet, for anything longer was forbidden. Dos was a librarian, who said interesting things. He also had a following of physical-fitness buffs. His students stood out for their lithe, functional muscularity. Garland was one of them.

"What're the odds?" Dos said.

This traditional Orphan salutation was meaningless for most. For others like Garland, it conveyed hope of off-train Adoption. He managed a "Humph."

Little Byte did better. "Three percent for me. You see our gig?"

The new arrivals hitched their chairs over the carpet.

"The way you're sparkling, it must've been prime. Sorry I missed it." Dos's crumb littered tray rested to one side. He held a half-empty cup of fizz juice in one hand, a toothpick in the other.

"Got gigacredits. I'm high, but Garland's low."

"Why, Garland?" Dos belched lightly.

Sweet fizz on his breath trespassed over Garland's lettuce roll. Garland crammed the food into his mouth.

"He's always down when we score big. Post-gig depression." Little Byte giggled.

Dos picked his teeth. "If it was prime, why not enjoy it?"

Garland chewed and swallowed, trying to figure it out. "Wasn't real. Just VR."

Little Byte spoke past a handful of oozing cream cake and wafted its fragrance. "What do you mean, VR? We were there, performing."

Garland almost smacked the table. He filled his mouth with more roll, not sure his stomach would accept it.

Dos continued to probe with his toothpick, seemingly more as a meditation than in pursuit of leftovers. "Hear the latest rumors?"

Garland's chewing slowed. There were always rumors, some older than his nineteen years. Like folklore the old rumors hung on, only half believed. New rumors created new fears. "They actual? About Landeds being given the whole suntrain? Where'll we go?"

"The whole suntrain." Little Byte tittered. "That's VR."

"Is it? I got this premonition we're fish in a shrinking pond."

"You're pixilated. Admin's always protected Orphan space. That's why they built the Trains, to give us a world of our own. Admin cares." She tilted her head back to catch a drop of cream on her tongue.

Garland fought to keep his voice down. "Then why did Admin let us believe the suntrain would give us twice the space of a subtrain? All those years we saved to get to the surface, I dreamed of extra room."

Little Byte fingered the cream into her mouth. "No one told us we'd get extra space. Admin just said the suntrain had more'n one deck."

"Affirmative. Then when we get up here, we find Orphans can use only one. Admin and Landeds get the entire updeck, and we're left with the same space as on a subtrain. You were just as crashed as me."

"That was two years ago."

Garland ran out of comments. The uneasiness in his gut persisted. Why?

Dos spoke into the lull. "We've seen nothing to substantiate previous rumors. This latest, though. Did it start before or after Landeds started appearing on our lowdeck?"

Thankful Dos fed his discontent, Garland leaped back into the discussion. "Train's our world. Why can't we get it all? Why are Landeds anywhere on an Orphan Train?"

Little Byte said the obvious. "They're vacationers."

"Why can't they vacation Outside in all that space they got?"

Little Byte scooted her chair back and sprang up, food in hand. "Brood away, you two. I'm surfing." She walked off among the tables with their brilliant huddles of Orphans.

Garland frowned after her and visualized her complaining about him to her confidante. He should catch up with her, apologize, explain. Something inside sagged. She wouldn't understand. She never did.

He started to turn back to Dos, when a momentary hush--a stutter in time--overtook cafe patrons. A slight tension lingered.

Two dull creatures stood at the far entrance. They seemed faceless, enveloped almost completely in plain dark suits, bushy beards, and brimmed hats. They clomped to the food line where Orphans cleared an arm's length around them. Garland noticed their heavy footwear. Orphans wore cloth slippers or went barefoot. All their clothing was delicate. These creatures covered themselves as if hiding.

Landeds. Did they always dress grotesquely? Just yesterday a female friend pranced into the cafeteria to pinch the men's cheeks or kiss them--she kissed Garland deeply. Then she shook her hips and shouted how she was invited upstairs to teach bounce to Landeds. Garland laughed with the rest when she said they were poor players. They knew almost nothing of sex. Nevertheless they wanted more--and actually paid credits. "Uh, my road-uh!" she exclaimed, exaggerating the Landed drawl. "Uh, could you-uh do that-uh again?"

Today it no longer seemed funny.

Dos studied the table beside his cup. What was he thinking? That Landeds visited the Orphan Train because they wanted sex without risk of producing babies? Or did they view Orphans as exhibits in a museum?

Instead, Dos asked, "What do you hear?"

"Nothing--"

"Listen!" Dos held up his finger.

What was he after?

Garland rattled off a list. "Talking. Shuffling. Chair scraping. Train's background hum."

"Train's background hum. With you so long, you close it out. What else? You heard Little Byte say Admin cares."

Garland turned inward and heard a voice so small he'd forgotten its existence. "The subliminal."

"Admin's all powerful," Dos quoted. "Admin cares."

"I hear."

"You believe?" Dos asked.

"Always have. Admin cares for us and protects us."

"You sure?"

Old rumors spoke of how Admin were more machine than human. Of how they didn't sleep but parked themselves upright and turned themselves off. Of how they used frequent power failures on the subtrains to get Orphans to buy wrist comps. Of how they sent incorrigible Orphans to hive trains, to be stacked comatose and used in medicine and research.

Garland didn't want to look at the Landeds in the cafeteria, there by Admin's consent. He glared at the remainder of his roll. The lettuce was bruised, limp. Its pate stuffing leaked, reminding him of a dead animal he'd seen on holo. The onion-soy odor suggested something unclean. He set the roll down, wiped his fingers on his tunic.

"Sometimes," he mumbled around a pain in his throat, "I wonder what it'd be like to surf and never access the end of this train."

Dos examined his toothpick and rubbed a finger through a ring of moisture left on the table by his cup. "For us Orphans, life's as narrow as the Orphan Train. Our world's an hour's walk either way." He paused, mouth warping as if to taste the words before releasing them. "I understand. You sing and you're free. Then when you come down, it backspaces to hit you that you're not free, that it's all VR."

Garland kneaded his hands. The hurt settled from throat to gut. "I dunno what to believe anymore. All I want is more space. What can I do?"

Dos spread one hand on the table. "Follow Little Byte's example. Ignore the rumors, accept the limited space."

A snarl rose like bile from Garland's throat and tasted as bitter.

"I know," Dos said. "No one takes us seriously. 'Artist's temperament,' they call it, or in my case, 'intellectual's mood.'"Heglanced at the Landeds. "Tube through to another train."

Always, the shuttle took the Orphan to other trains, never to Outside, as it did Landeds. Only Landeds tubed on or off. Orphans could only tube through where no extra space existed.

"Or plan your escape."

Garland's insides spasmed.

Dos rose with a quick grin and dropped the toothpick in his cup. "Or sing more. A lot more."

He threaded off among the tables, nodded at the Landeds, and slipped past them.

The two visitors held food trays. Aquick lookabout the room showed Garland's table had empty chairs. He stiffened. They clomped his way. They would take his table. He must be courteous. If he wasn't, Mentor would deliver a mild shock from the wrist comp and expect him to apologize to the visitors. If he didn't, he'd receive a stronger shock.

He almost overturned his chair in his haste to leave. Short of running, he strode down the avenue, dodging past others. His wrist comp tingled for him to read its message. Mentor would tell him to calm down, perhaps suggest a massage, a game of bounce, or a cool shower. He ignored the tingle because he didn't want to be comforted by Mentor, who allowed Orphans their moods, up to a point. The mirrored walls played a holo of a satyr and nymphs cavorting through tall grass beneath oak trees hung with moss. Above, the rain had stopped, and clouds roiled, like Garland's gut. Inside his head he heard, Admin cares.

Did Admin?

Lately his singing turned to screams. What'd happen when he ran out of screams?