Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan Page A

don’t imagine the lock is the only safeguard on that gate, do you?”
    He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know what the gate is protecting.”
    “No. I’m sorry, Jacey. I’m not keeping you deliberately in the dark.” Though of course I was – or at least in the flicker of an unreliable light, giving him only flashes of insight. “You’re used to the mundane world and the Overworld, and this is something else. This is the underworld, where people tread more carefully.” And pronounce it without a capital, to save confusion. “We have to.” I’m one of these, I was saying, before he even met them, and you’re not.
    You made me this way , I could’ve said, or your family did . I thought I’d leave it, let him figure that out for himself.
    At least the floor was dry, this side of the gate. Here was another sharp turn, and now the light was better; here were steps leading down, and now he had smooth tiling underfoot and everything was clean.
    And now the passage debouched onto a platform just like the one above, only older. No ads, no vending machines, no electronic destination boards. No electronics of any sort, and no announcements. Just the platform, and benches made of wood and cast iron, and us. No other passengers.
    Jacey looked up and down and said, “What happens now?”
    “We wait. Not too long.”
    “And if trouble comes in the meantime? Say if the Corbies followed us regardless, underground or not? A flock of birds could get through that gate, even if a man didn’t have a clever card.”
    I wasn’t so sure; I thought a flock of birds might find itself unexpectedly swallowed. He needed something else, though, so I said, “Well, then I guess we find out if you’re right, when you think you can take a Corbie. Or two. One at a time, I’d recommend. If they both come, I’ll keep one busy as best I can, until you’re ready.”
    He looked at me narrowly. “Are you laughing at me?”
    “Only a little,” and only because I didn’t want to do the other thing. I sat down then and patted the bench beside me. He was still being good; he stopped pacing, and sat beside me.
    “The Tube is full of old abandoned stations,” I said. When in doubt, lecture. “Thirty, forty? I don’t know how many. Some were never finished, some were superseded, some were abandoned because they never had the traffic.”
    “Mornington Crescent,” he said, nodding. Playing along.
    “Exactly – though they reopened that one. People pressure. Anyway. One or two found themselves stranded at the end of a line that didn’t go anywhere, and keeping up a shuttle service back and forth is too expensive, just not worth the trouble.”
    “Except...?”
    “Except,” I said, nodding firmly. “For some of us, it’s worth the trouble. Welcome to the Ghost Train.” Immaculately timed, just as its lights appeared around the bend of the tunnel, with a blast of warm air to herald its arrival.
    “Whoo,” he said, determinedly cheerfully ironic. “Should I be scared?”
    Actually, Jacey? Yes, I think you should. But I didn’t say so. We stood up and moved to the platform edge as the train drew to a halt. It was a short one, just two carriages; it looked out of scale with the platform, stranded almost, like a toy on the wrong gauge of track. But nobody was playing here, and looks weren’t important. It was big enough to take the traffic; that was all that mattered.
    Jacey said, “Christ alive. Did you see the driver?”
    “It’s better not to look. And don’t ask questions. I said that, remember? And keep your voice down” – as the doors slid apart and we stepped aboard – “these are real people. Hurt and frightened people, mostly. They’re entitled to a bit of respect.”
    That would be a new and a strange notion to the people Jacey went around with ordinarily, his clubbing crowd, the gilded youth of the Overworld. He was trying, or at least, prepared to try; he took it on board in silence, as the