They were also beautiful. Peerless tracts of blue-white ice, unblemished leagues of snow, sharp sunshine that almost twinkled like starlight in a vacuum.
Until, before nightfall, it all vanished. Freezing fog and vapour descended like a stage curtain, sealing out the light and dropping visibility to a few dozen metres. Then snow began to flutter again and our speed decreased. The weather had caught up with us.
'Gregor?' I had been watching the snowstorm. 'Come in here/
Crezia beckoned me through the connecting door. Medea was awake.
The cyberskulls hovered back to give me room as I sat down beside her cot. She looked tired and drawn, faded almost. But her eyes were half open and she managed a thin smile as she saw me.
'Everything's okay. You're in safe hands/
Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
'Don't try to speak/ Crezia whispered.
I saw curiosity in Medea's eyes as she focused on Crezia.
'This is Doctor Berschilde. A good friend. She saved your life/
'…long…'
'What?'
'How long been sleep?'
'The best part of a week. You were wounded in the back/
'Ribs sore/
'That will pass/ said Crezia.
'They… they get us?'
'No, they didn't get us/ I said. And they're not going to get us either/
Shrouded by the bitter blizzards and maintaining no more than sixty kilometres an hour, we journeyed on across the roof of the world. I ventured out into the public areas and even to the salon a few times, and found that diverting entertainments had been laid on: buffet meals, music, card schools, a regicide tournament, screenings of popular hololithic extravaganzas. Uniformed Trans-Continental personnel were out in force, keeping everybody happy and volubly disseminating the notion that being caught in an Atenate icestorm was all part of the romance of the famous rail line.
And not a potentially lethal misfortune.
If the locomotive derailed, or the power plant malfunctioned, and the train became stranded in the midst of a blizzard that lasted more than a couple of days, we'd freeze to death and they'd have to wait until spring to dig us out.
Of course, in the nine hundred and ninety years of the Trans-Atenate Express's operation, that had never happened. The train had always got through. It was a remarkably secure form of transport, given the terrain it crossed.
But there is a first time for anything, as people can be forgiven for thinking. Years of experience warned the train staff to start reassuring and distracting the passengers the moment weather closed in, or they'd have a panic on their hands. The idle rich can be such worriers.