Len Vey walked through the vaulted iron archway of the central Tram interchange alone.
He didn’t carry a hooded patrol lantern with its beam narrowed to a sneaky blue slit. He carried an unshielded copper check torch fitted with three broad curved reflectors. He cast an unbroken, ten-yard circle of brilliant greenish-yellow radiance across the four-track junction. The green flame hissed steadily in the cold draft. It burned through a pool of treated sheep fat, the light scouring away the shadows that had clung to the brick abutments since the First Night.
He stopped at the central track switch between Platform Three and Platform Four.
Two hours earlier, when the coalition had staged its raid on the Sump Road oil depot, this switch had been an outer edge of terror. Six bound town doubles—wearing the dark gray guide-rod’s fustian and brass ticket badges of the Municipal Railway Guild—had paced their rigid, circular patrol routes along the wooden platform edges. They had walked with the clockwork, timed together rhythm of iron-puppets, their waxy, featureless faces turned toward the track ballast. Their iron ticket punches were held ready to clip the fingers of any secret citizen crossing the rails.
Now, the platforms were fully empty.
