2. The Glass Palace

The palace of the Great Exhibition. Rising from the earth and emerging from the sky at the same time, light caught in its two thousand panes of glass, as if it is made out of air itself.

Enough glass to bridge the Neva three times over, Marya's father had said. Glass made in their Petersburg works and shipped by barge to Moscow where all the world would come to gaze and wonder at it, where the Fyodorov name would be celebrated and admired. She has never wept for her father. Only now that she sees this building—this beautiful, ingenious, useless building—only now does she wish to stand and weep at what she has lost. She takes out his letter to the Company, retrieved from where it had been buried in the saloon car, creased but safe. Proof of what he tried to do, evidence enough to clear his name, even if no one else is to read it. Evidence enough for her, alone.

They are slowing down. For the first time since the Wall, since they outran the flood, they are slowing down.

"Surely they will be waiting for us," Marya says to Suzuki. "The Company, the military." All the might of an empire afraid of what lies beyond its walls, waiting with guns and cannons. "Surely we cannot think that we will…" she trails off.

They are travelling on the new rail, built for the Exhibition itself. On either side, there are the well-dressed and the poor, the young and the old; children scampering ahead, pointing in merry delirium at the train and the palace in turn, as their mothers and nurses grab their hands to pull them back. Some stand stock still and stare. Others turn on their heels and run. We are bringing terror with us, she thinks. We are bringing tainted Wastelands air, that's what they think. The Company has taught them to be afraid.

Surely the train must be stopping soon. The palace is rising above them, and she has a dizzying vision of the train barreling straight ahead into the glass, the sound of a thousand shattering panes, all coming down around them. But no, she realizes that they are not simply riding up to the palace but into it, under a high, curved doorway, and with a scream of brakes and clouds of steam they come to a halt in the very center of the astonishing edifice of glass and wrought iron and air.

Through the steam Marya sees the scarlet of the soldiers' uniforms, the gray of gunmetal. But in front of them are the crowds lined up behind the railings surrounding the platform, applauding, staring, pointing, recoiling—at the train transfigured; turned into an exhibit, a monument to the glory of the Trans-Siberia Company. How her father would have hated it.

Further into the hall, she can see other machines; instruments of industry, of science, of military might, their metal arms raised as if to greet the coming century, proud and satisfied and sure.

"So this is what it feels like, to be a marvel of the modern world." The Professor has come to stand beside them, turning his latest pages over and over in his hands.

Alexei has his face pressed to the window.

"I think Dr. Grey would be pleased that we are here," says Marya, putting a hand on his arm.

"Look," says Suzuki.

In front of the glass cases holding machinery and models of the train, unmistakable in their dark suits and grim expressions, stand the representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company.