Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,71
third and fourth railcar had been added. One was a sleek metal thing with no windows and a big double door. It didn’t look like a baggage car, more like something meant to hold a lot of cargo. And behind that was one of those container cars stacked two high. There were people loading the cargo car when they arrived, but it looked as if they had just started—and they were packing it tight.
The townies were already there, waiting; Mr. Krandal unlocked the doors to the passenger cars; he went into the rear car, and they all settled into their seats, but the train showed no signs of moving as the light faded.
The townies stirred restlessly, and Spirit was beginning to feel hungry. That was when Mr. Krandal came into their car from the rear car.
He rubbed his hand unconsciously over his bald spot. “As you can see, we’re taking this opportunity to get in some supplies for the school, and in addition, a generous Alumnus is getting us some new equipment we’re sure you’ll appreciate. However, since this is causing something of a delay in leaving, I’ve unlocked a game feed to your seat consoles, and…” A pizza delivery van pulled up to the platform. “… ah, there we are, right on time. We have some hot food for you.”
There were cheers at that, and a tall stack of pizza boxes was unloaded into each car. There was a little grumbling from the townies to discover that most of the toppings were “healthy”—a lot of veggies were involved, including shredded broccoli and “pepperoni” made of tofu. But there wasn’t too much complaining. Everyone was very hungry. These were gourmet pizzas, not stuff from a chain, delivered so hot the cheese was still bubbling. Spirit overheard Adam saying with awe that he’d heard one of these pies cost more than he made in two days at his job. That couldn’t be true, but it impressed the townies. There was contented silence, broken only when someone got up to get another slice. Then there was more silence as people put on headsets and plugged into the promised video game.
Out of curiosity, Spirit called it up, and was unsurprised to see that it was from Breakthrough. The game didn’t interest her; it was a futuristic combat game, and you were fighting what looked like alien Nazis in powered armor, big spherical flying things with tentacles and energy beams, and robotic wolves and eagles. It allowed several players to form a team and either take on things in the game or fight one another. You could be either some kind of soldier, or people in black bodysuits with all kinds of powers. Soldiers could only fight the Nazis or the people in the black bodysuits; people in black bodysuits could only fight the Nazis or the soldiers. Or both could team up to fight the Nazis. Interestingly, a lot of the powers involved magic that seemed to work exactly like the magic being taught at Oakhurst. It was very pretty, very fast moving, and as far as she could tell, very inventive, but she wasn’t in the mood to fight anything. Judging by the antics of most of the others, though, it was immediately popular with everyone playing.
The car was warm, the seat was comfortable, and Loch, Burke, and even Muirin were deep in the game. Elizabeth wasn’t playing, but she was staring at the screen, watching the others. With a mental shrug, Spirit pulled out one of her carefully considered purchases—a book—and pulled out her iPod, glad that she’d loaded it with music she liked, not the Music Appreciation stuff.
It was nearly 8 P.M. by the time the train lurched into motion. Spirit looked up when it did, but the others didn’t notice. She pulled up the game briefly to see what had them so immersed, but couldn’t tell which little figure was which person and shut it off again.
They had to detour to a siding halfway to Oakhurst to let an express freight go by and that delayed them further. By the time they got to the school, it was almost midnight and Spirit was too tired to think. The others were even more tired than she was, and they all shuffled like zombies into the tiny train station, where there were four more teachers waiting to check their purchases. The three chaperones didn’t stop at the station, and she was pretty sure they’d gone straight to their own quarters. She