Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson

said not to worry, that he had held back more than enough scrip to guarantee us a ready place.
    We waited while Sam went inside the timber building which housed the offices of the Rail Trust. Sam spent a considerable time in there, and Julian and I wandered a little among the vendors' stalls, inspecting dyed blankets and alcohol stoves, pocket knives and lucky pig's-knuckles. I was tempted by a vendor who sold morsels of skewered meat grilled over a charcoal fire—the smell, after days of trail food, was intoxicating—but Julian reminded me that the quality of the meat might not be good, given that it was almost certainly derived from animals Mr. Winslow couldn't profitably ship east: el der ly mules and tubercular cattle.
    My appetite, powerful as it was, retreated before the suggestion.
    Then Sam came out of the Rail Trust office looking grimly satisfied. He had bought us a place on the very next train, he said, and we would only have to spend one more night in Bad Jump, with any luck.
    We passed the night in the loft of one of Mr. Winslow's barns, a crude accommodation. Sam divided the hours of darkness into three watches. Julian took the first, Sam the second, and I the last—the early-morning watch, which was the coldest. When Sam woke me to attend to these duties I wrapped my blanket around myself and took his place at the loft door, which was open to the wind, and heaped loose hay about myself until I was little more than a pair of eyes contained in a haybale.
    An eventless three hours passed in which I struggled against cold and the temptation of sleep. Then the sky lightened with the pearlescent glow that announces the dawn. The western horizon revealed itself in a wintry silhouette, and I saw something that interested me deeply: an inky column of smoke, distant but steadily approaching. It was the train. (Most trains in those days burned soft coal rather than anthracite, and on a clear day their smudgy signatures were unmistakable.)
    I climbed out of the hay meaning to wake the others, but I was pre-empted by the appearance of Mr. Winslow's wife, who came up a ladder from the barn below and said briskly, "Train from the west, boys! Cavalry from the north! Best be on your way!"
    The news of approaching cavalry seemed to have spread widely in Bad Jump, for by the time we had packed our possessions and left the barn the whole town was in turmoil.
    We hurried down to the vicinity of the tracks, where we stood as the train approached.
    Anxious as I was about the threat from the north, I was captivated by the arrival of the engine and its im mense chain of freight cars. Some of the cars were labeled sulfur or bauxite or nitre, and must have come by way of California, Cascadia, or the fearful mines of the Desert Southwest. Some bore goods imported from Asia to our Pacific ports, and were inscribed with Chinese characters like arrangements of tumbled sticks. There were cars that stank of cattle, goats, and sheep, followed by cars that smelled of wood and cold iron.
    The engine at the head of it all was a very fine one, in my estimation—what the lease-boys back in Williams Ford would have called a "prime charger." Its iron and brass and steel parts shone as if freshly polished. The crew had attached a rack of caribou antlers to the span between the headlight and the smokestack, giving it a fierce appearance; and it arrived at the coaling station with such a hissing of steam and clanging of muscular metal parts that I was almost paralyzed with awe. Its shadow fell over the prairie like a giant's fist.
    Sam and Julian, who had seen more trains than I had, hauled me out of my trance by the collar of my coat, as the flood of would-be pilgrims rushed to the "Phantom Cars." These cars were manned by Travel Agents, as they were called—minor employees of the Rail Trust who supplemented their incomes by riding herd over black-market passengers.
    Not all of the transients at Bad Jump had bought passage, but all of them were