On the Train by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: travel, train, magic
Publisher: Phoenix Pick

More passengers than usual boarded at the Dongor depot. Javan wondered whether they were planning to settle in some place where the mechanical arts held sway. If they hoped such places were immune to disaster, they would end up disappointed.

Or perhaps they simply wanted to get on The Train and ride it for as long as their money and their wits held out. That was what Javan had had in mind when he came aboard, as much as he’d had anything in mind at all. You got on. You found some way to keep yourself fed while The Train made its steady way round and round the world. You didn’t worry about what would happen farther along The Railroad. When it happened, whatever it turned out to be, you found some way to deal with it. And you went on riding till the next it came along.

Some people, on The Train and off it, wondered what the point of a ride like that was. Javan was more interested in getting along than in fine points of philosophy. He had no idea what the point to riding The Train was, or whether there was any. Most of the time, he didn’t much worry about it, either.

Round and round, round and round. Often, a circuit of the world on The Train seemed pretty much like the one that had come before it or the one that came right after. Often, but not always. Every once in a while, you came back to discover that the city where you’d boarded had lost its collective mind. Or an earthquake knocked everything all out of kilter.

Or you helped your spouse to the first-aid car and, before too long, the midwife put your daughter in your clumsy arms. Yes, that circuit would stick in your mind for the rest of your days. Javan wondered if he’d recall the birth of his second child so vividly.

And life went on whether or not you would remember a particular moment, a particular day, fifty years from now. Regardless of whether it stuck in your mind, you had to go through it. No, you had to get on with it. It seemed to go better when you tried to make things happen and didn’t just let them happen. Maybe it didn’t—how could you know for sure?—but it seemed to.

Here in Dongorland, the people got what answers they had from magic. That had seemed pretty wonderful to Javan the first time he came here. Dealing with the smiling salamander in the grill and the blue-green elemental in the ice chest was different from fiddling with a gas burner or an electrical cooling unit, all right.

But the people of Dongorland, from everything Javan had seen on The Train and out the window, were just that—people. They fell in love and fell out of love. They quarreled. They made up. They did what they could for themselves and for other people they cared about. They had different tools, but they used them for the same reasons and to get the same kinds of things people everywhere else craved.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.