Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [127]
Both the business-woman and the brute reacted to Ricky’s presence. They didn’t know what was going on, but they both sensed some subliminal disturbance and both grew uneasy. The business-woman typed ever more quickly on her keyboard, and the brute restlessly massaged his knuckles, as though itching for a fight.
For a few moments the tension kept growing, but then Ricky realized that it was his own attention that was creating this reaction. So he stopped concentrating on the passengers and tried to forget that they were there.
It worked. The fat woman was the first to react. A look of great happiness and childlike contentment spread across her face.
Soon the business-woman’s typing had slowed down and Ricky sneaked a glance at her. She was casually slouched over her computer, the bright colours of a game flashing on its screen.
The brute had also relaxed. He was laboriously working on crossword puzzles in a much-thumbed book that he’d dug out of his pocket.
Soon, like the fat woman, they had sunk into a state of serene calm. They didn’t know why, they just felt peaceful and relaxed. Ricky had spent years making everyone around him feel tense. Now he had learned how to do the opposite.
And he discovered that calm could be as infectious as panic. The mood spread through the passengers crowding into the train and soon the whole carriage was quiet and peaceful, a serene little zone. Even people hurrying through noticed it, slowing down in respect for the mood of the carriage, as if they’d blundered into the silent communal prayer of a church-service.
Ricky felt safe and relaxed at last. He let himself slump in his seat. His face pressed against the cool reinforced glass of the window, and he slept.
As soon as he woke up, Ricky knew something had gone badly wrong.
His face ached where it had been pressed against the window. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and peered blearily at his watch. The train should have departed long ago but it was still sitting at the platform. Ricky wondered fuzzily why the other passengers hadn’t raised a fuss.
Then he looked around the carriage.
Everyone was asleep. The fat woman snored gently in the seat opposite him, mouth open like a baby bird waiting to be fed. The business-woman and the brute were both collapsed in their seats, their bodies almost intertwined in the lack of inhibition deep sleep had conferred upon them.
The other passengers in the carriage were all in similar states. Ricky saw them as he got up and hurried out. He jogged along the train corridor into first class and found a white-coated barman collapsed at his post, dozing beside a gleaming cocktail shaker and a bowl of melting ice. In the dining car well-dressed men and women were sleeping face down on the tables or slumped upright in their chairs.
Ricky got off the train. People were lying sprawled on the platform. A uniformed porter was unconscious at the wheel of a small electric trolley which had nosed forward into a tall stack of canvas mail-sacks; it was stalled there, engine gently purring.
Ricky ran the whole length of the train and peered through the glass of the driver’s cockpit. The man was slumped there at the controls of the train, audibly snoring.
That was when Ricky finally accepted that he wouldn’t be going to Galveston, Texas.
He left the platform. He tried running, but soon slowed to a relaxed walking pace. He wanted to flee but somehow it was impossible to move with haste past all these sleeping bodies. It seemed almost sacrilegious.
The entire station had sunk into a deep sleep. It was like an explosion with the train he’d abandoned at its epicentre.
Ricky strolled through the eerie stillness feeling lost and helpless. In the ticket hall passengers were asleep on the benches and clerks were slumped behind their windows. A drunk and a security guard both lay asleep on the floor on either side of the revolving doors, neatly placed like symmetrical heraldic