Doctor Who: Transit Read Free

ghost train towards the tunnel's vanishing point, retained any solidity. Lambada said that looking too closely at infinity could turn your brain inside out. Dogface slouched in the cockpit, staring around him at the hallucinatory patterns of the tunnel wall with studied nonchalance. Lambada called that 'bad acid macho', but Blondie noticed that she went up front just the same when she rode the flat tops. The shifting streams of colour were punctuated by blasts of reality as they flashed through the stations on their way to Pluto and the edge of the system.
    Lowell Depot was stuck in the middle of a low-rent housing project known to the media as 'Aryan Heights' and locally as 'the Stop'. Dogface coasted the engine into the freight dock just ahead of a cargo flatbed. Blondie watched as the robot handlers unshipped plywood crates of food and drink, all of them the cheapest possible generic brands. With eighty per cent of the Stop's inhabitants on welfare, even the crates would be cannibalized for furniture and firewood. The flatbed would run back empty. Nothing of any value came out of the Stop.
    Dogface grabbed his kit and they walked down the narrow connecting corridor towards the passenger platforms. It terminated in a security door to keep people from hitching free rides on the flatbeds. Dogface unlocked it with his index finger and the door hissed open. The platform beyond was clean. Platforms for the InterWorld lines usually were. It was the feeder lines that got knee-deep in garbage. A small group of people in dowdy overwashed clothes waited with quiet resignation for the next train. They were body servants, cooks, cleaners, the Stop's second biggest export. Further up the platform stood young men and women with feet jammed into high-heeled boots, thighs into fishnets, breasts overflowing bra cups, buttocks wrapped in lycra, the white flesh crammed into the selling clothes - the Stop's principal export waiting to go to work. As they walked past Blondie tried keeping his head down but it didn't work. Someone called his name, his real name, and he turned to look without thinking.
    'Hey Zak, wait up!'
    He almost didn't recognize Zamina as she clicked towards him, face hidden under a layer of skin tone. Blondie looked at Dogface who shrugged and walked on - he could catch up in a minute.
    'Well, look at you,' said Zamina, looking him up and down, her tongue clicking on her teeth. 'Pretty drab.'
    'Not like you,' said Blondie. He could see faint lines on her pale skin running over the neckline of her halter top. An implant job, he realized, and a sloppy one at that. Zamina caught him looking and adjusted the top a bit to cover the scars.
    'They said you'd got out, but I figured you for catfood by now.'
    'I got lucky,' he said.
    Zamina licked her lips. Stop protocol said you didn't ask questions but they'd been friends once, lovers even in a mindless adolescent fashion. Blondie could feel her need to escape as an almost physical force dragging at him. How long did Zamina have? Two, three years? You got old fast in the Stop.
    Dogface whistled at him from the far end of the station.
    'Gotta go, Zimmy,' he said.
    'Give us a call sometime,' she said as he turned away.
    'Sure,' he said but he knew he wouldn't. When you got out of the Stop you never went back. You never called and you tried not to think about the people you left behind.
    Dogface had the access panel open and was probing inside with his finger sensors. 'When's the next train?'
    Blondie checked the hologram hanging over the platform. 'Two minutes.'
    'We'll see how the next one runs through,' said Dogface, 'and take it from there. See if you can get Lambada.'
    Blondie plugged into the maintenance link. The implants still itched when he did it but he'd been told that was normal for the first six months or so. Some of the Stoppers on the platform were watching them. Blondie could make out Zimmy standing with her back to him.
    'Wake up, Blondie,' said Lambada on the link