Chapter 22For a moment, Hiroshi could see the eyes of the driver staring straight ahead before the train blurred into a flash and shot on. The whoosh of the massive steel, solid as a building, blasted a wall of air that made him step back to brace himself. The express train was so close he could touch it. And it was gone, though its slipstream sucked him a step toward the tracks and let him go.
After a few minutes, the local slowed alongside the platform. Hiroshi got on the front car, right behind the driver’s cabin. The doors shut, and he looked in. The driver’s hand rested on a silver accelerator lever that eased the train forward at a steady pace. On the driver’s control panel, the speedometer and pressure gauge sprang and climbed. An old-style, wind-up train watch set firmly in a fram
