The City's Son Read Online Free PDF

heart was thumping like a pneumatic drill. Slowly her vision dissolved back through the glare. What is it , she thought, a train?
    No – not a train, not quite. It was train- like , but more animal , somehow. Its whistle was a howl, it was draped in a pelt of tangled cables and its chassis was scabbed with rust and graffiti. Cataracts of smashed glass covered its windows. Great rents had been torn from its hull as though by massive claws.
    The train-thing emitted a hydraulic snort and impatiently shifted its wheels.
    Beth wriggled back on her bum, still staring at it, until she felt the wall behind her. She pulled herself up – and then froze.
    The headlights were tracking her like the eyes of a suspicious beast. It sounded again, more quietly this time, and turned up at the end like a question, like it was curious.
    What are you? Beth squinted through the glare and stumbled forwards. On an impulse she reached hesitantly up past its wheels and patted its side. A whickering sound emerged from the train-thing, a sound of pleasure.
    What am I supposed to do? she thought incredulously. Scratch you behind the ears? Where the hell are your ears, and how am I supposed to scratch ’em? She wondered if this waswhat a total psychotic break felt like. You’ve snapped , she told herself. This can’t be real.
    A sinuous curve of blue electricity danced over the surface of the train-beast and Beth jumped back. For an instant it looked new, its chassis gleaming pristine and bright – but only for an instant, and then the pitted metal skin washed back.
    ‘What are you?’ Beth said softly to it. ‘What do you want ? ’
    The train-thing lowed again, as if in answer and the doors of the front carriage hissed open.
    Beth steeled herself and thrust a hand inside. She half expected it to burst into blue flame. It didn’t. She felt like she was in a trance, adrift on a tide of total unreality. She placed her hands palm-down on the floor of the carriage, ready to push herself on board.
    A cold thought jarred her: What if I can’t get back?
    She remembered Gorecastle looking down at her, and her dad staring up, and Pen, most of all Pen, huddled in her wounded fury.
    Beth looked over her shoulder. From the wall, her mum looked back. She pulled herself inside.

CHAPTER 6
    The doors beeped and slid quietly shut. Beth rolled to her feet and looked around. She wasn’t alone. Dozens of figures crowded together on the seats: men and women dressed in business suits, teens ignoring everything but their flickering phones, an OAP half-buried under plastic bags.
    ‘Er— Er, excuse me,’ Beth started, forcing a way down the aisle between them, ‘excuse me, but what is this? Where are we?’
    No one answered; no one reacted to Beth at all. She approached one girl who looked about the same age as her. She was wearing a posh school uniform and blowing bubble-gum like a manga fantasy. ‘Hey,’ said Beth, ‘what’s going on?’
    The girl didn’t look at her but just kept blowing her bubbles, popping them and starting over: blow out, pop, suck back, chew; blow out, pop, suck back, chew.
    As Beth watched she realised every bubble was identical , and each one was popping exactly the same distance past the girl’s heavily glossed lips.
    A thrill of understanding ran through her. They’re all the same bubble , she thought.
    She looked around her, and now she could see all of the carriage’s other occupants were also doing one thing, over and over: scratching a nose, crossing their legs, tapping a mobile phone, turning a page. She hadn’t seen it at first in the dim, flickering light, but looking closely, she could see the fraction of a second’s discrepancy as each person reset. As Beth stared, the girl in front of her wavered, faded, until Beth could see the stained fabric of her seat through her stomach, then she was back again, blowing her single perfect bubble.
    ‘You’re not real, are you?’ Beth said quietly, her whole body thrumming with