10. Mutations

Weiwei's face aches with the effort of keeping a mask of innocence in place. She desperately wants to be left alone, but the doctor insists on asking her interminable questions about how she feels and if she took her helmet or protective suit off at any point (she says that of course she did not), and if she is experiencing any nausea or headaches. He seems rather disappointed when she assures him that she feels completely normal and tells her to come back later for another examination. The kitchen boys follow her around, demanding to know what it's like, out there. She keeps the mask on, gives them just enough hair-raising details to send them away happy. She tries to find Alexei but he is nowhere to be seen.

In the confusion of their return to the train she had rushed to the crew quarters and stowed the jars and bags in her own bunk, covering them with her blankets. She can only hope that, with all the excitement, any thought of spot inspections will have vanished, at least for the time being. Now, she has retreated back here, to escape the questions and stares, and to make the most of the fact that her decision to go after Grey is being seen as heroic, and as such she is being allowed, for the time being, to leave her chores undone. But she wishes she could enjoy such unexpected freedom. Instead, a wave of loneliness washes over her. How quickly she had become accustomed to Elena's presence. To racing through her chores so that she could join her in her explorations; to sitting in the dark, reading out chapters from Rostov's guide, Elena interrupting with questions she usually couldn't answer. She runs her fingers across the silvery-blue scales of the lichen, half expecting them to dissolve into water. This she will not return to Grey. It is for her alone, her piece of the Wastelands, of Elena.

But the guilt of her theft weighs on her. Was this what Rostov wanted? Something he could not have? She wonders if the forest creature will find what is missing, if it will open its huge jaws in fury. She wonders if Elena feels the theft like a wound.

Her reverie is broken by the crackle of the speakers and she is about to bury her head in her pillow when she hears her own name. "Zhang Weiwei… Report to the Captain's quarters… immediately." She sits bolt upright, while the message comes through again. The Captain knows, she thinks, wildly. She knows about Elena, she knows about the stolen specimens. What punishment would possibly be enough?

"Zhang, are you really going to keep her waiting?" a steward yells up to her, and when she climbs down from her bunk it is to a gaggle of expectant faces, staring at her with a mixture of apprehension and envy.

Her legs feel unsteady. The water the train has taken on means they can increase speed, though they still proceed carefully, on the unfamiliar line. Yet the sound of the rail seems louder than usual, the rhythm of the train distracting, as if the boundary between her body and the rails is thinning, as if the pistons and cogs, the intricate puzzle of moving pieces that Alexei understands so well, are mirroring the beating of her own heart, the pumping of her blood.

When she knocks on the door she does not quite believe it will be opened, despite the summons, yet the Captain opens the door herself. She looks Weiwei up and down, then goes over to the table, pours something out of a brown bottle and hands her the glass, nodding to an armchair. "You're looking peaky, drink this."

Weiwei sits and sips the fiery liquid, coughing as it burns.

The Captain raises her eyebrows. "Better?"

"Better," she splutters, though if anything it has only made the sensation of thinness worse. Her bones are humming still. Is the Wastelands air working its changes after all?

The Captain doesn't pour herself a glass. She stands at the window and Weiwei thinks how rarely she has seen her sit, as though she cannot bear to let herself soften enough to sink into a chair.

Go on. Get it over with.It will come as a relief, after all these secrets. It will be a deserved punishment, whatever it is, for a traitor to the train, for a thief.

Finally, the Captain turns; abruptly, as if she has just come to a decision. "I trust you are undamaged by your earlier adventure?"

Weiwei tries to nod and shrug at the same time and spills her drink onto her uniform.

"If I were to ask you who helped Grey leave the train, I assume you would say you do not know, so I won't insult your loyalty." The lines across her forehead have deepened during this crossing, thinks Weiwei. Her cheekbones have sharpened, her skin thin and papery. Yet Weiwei had felt her strength, when she had hauled her and Grey back onto the train.

Weiwei opens her mouth, then closes it again. Trying to read the Captain's thoughts is an impossible task, but she feels that there is something hiding behind her words that she should understand, currents of meaning that she should be able to grasp, but can't. Even when she was very young she was aware that the Captain never treated her like a child, but sometimes she wishes she would. She wishes that she would tell her that everything will be well.

The Captain goes over to the table and picks up the brown bottle then puts it down again. "The Company has requested that I stand down," she says.

Weiwei sits very still. She doesn't trust herself to move.

"I will take us to the Moscow Exhibition, of course, after which a new Captain will step up. This is not how I wish my time on this train to end, but… I have not guided us well of late. It will be in the best interest of the train."

The blood pounds in her ears. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I will share it with the rest of the crew when the time is right, but I am telling you now because you have a right to know. Because you and this train are connected in a way that…" She hesitates. "In a way that I think none of us quite understand."

"Then why won't you just be our Captain?" Her voice shakes but she no longer cares. "You are connected to this train too, but where have you been? Why have you let them push you out, why haven't you fought them?" She wants to stamp her feet, to cry angry tears, to make the ground burst into flame like the fury of Valentin's Fire.

The Captain turns back to the window. "That is all," she says.

She is barely aware of leaving the Captain's quarters, walking numbly down the corridor back toward the safety of her bunk. She cannot force her thoughts into order, it is impossible to imagine the train without the Captain, it makes no sense. She must tell the crew—if they band together they could force the Company not to accept her resignation; they could refuse to work, they could go to the newspapers…

But here, before she can think any further, is the clink of buckles, and the Crows are descending as if drawn by the stench of disloyalty. They sit her down on a lower bunk while they stand, eyeing her hungrily, and though she knows it is simply an effect of her tiredness and worry, their suits seem to hang more loosely from their arms, their shoulder blades jutting more sharply from their backs; not crows anymore, nor men, but a poor mimicry of both.

"We see that the Captain has spoken to you, Miss Zhang. It is unfortunate that she did not consult with us first."

"We would have asked her not to upset you needlessly."

She can't read their faces. Looking up at them, she struggles even to tell them apart, to make out who is speaking. "I'm not upset," she mutters.

"We are sure you understand that what she said must remain between us."

"Our secret."

"We would not like to complicate matters by revealing more detail than is absolutely necessary. We of course value Alexei Stepanovich and his role on the train. One foolish action should not imperil a career, we are sure you would agree, but if word of the Captain's decision were to get out—"

"If the crew felt that she was treated unfairly—"

"Then the truth must of course be told."

Weiwei tries to keep control of her expression. How do they know it was Alexei? But of course they know—his guilt had been written all over him, he had never been as good as she is at deception and pretense. She feels a rising nausea. There is no one she can talk to. Nothing she can do.

That night, curled in her bunk, she wants to close her eyes and fall into blissful forgetfulness. She wants to wake up and find that everything that hurt her has melted away; that there is no more talk of leaving; that they are back on the right rails, that all this time on the ghost rails has been nothing more than a bad dream, a Wastelands trick. At some point in the night she feels the warm weight of Dima flexing his paws on the mattress, but even he seems unable to find rest beside her and springs away.

She has taken the specimens from where they were hidden, beneath the blankets, and lined them up on the little shelf that runs along the wall. That's what she has taken to calling them already, specimens, like Dr. Grey does. Her own, though, the lichen fan, is different. Not a specimen of anything but all its own, all her own, that nothing and no one can take away. She has placed it closest to her, so that when she lies on her side with her head on her pillow it is closest to her line of sight. The insects that he collected she has placed furthest away and covered with cloth. She doesn't like the way they tap at the glass with their forelegs, or the way the thin stalks on their heads wave as if they are tasting the air, tasting her. In one of the muslin bags is a roll of moss, a deep, shadowy green. This she likes. She imagines lying down on it, sinking into its earthy coolness. Sleeping.

When she wakes again she can hear unfamiliar sounds in the darkness, as if something is tapping against glass. As if something is growing.