Railsea

  “It’s alive?”

  “Sham. It fell out of the upsky. No it’s not alive. But they keep it in vinegar or something.”

  “But anyway you know that ain’t what I meant,” Sham said. “Which is your train?”

  “Oh,” said Robalson. “Never you mind.”

  “Yeah,” Sham said. “Whatever.” Fine. Let him play his mystery-boy games. “The upsky,” Sham said distractedly. “The grundnorm. The horizon. All these edges. What stories d’you know about, y’know, the edge of the whole world?”

  Robalson blinked. “Stories?” he said. “You mean, like, Heaven? Same as you, probably. Why?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know if they was true?” Sham said, with sudden fervour, an intensity that took him quite by surprise.

  “Not really,” said Robalson. “For a start, they ain’t, they’re just stories. For a second, if they are true, some of them you don’t want to be. What if it’s true that you should shun it? What is it they say’s there? A universe of sobbing, is it? Or, a crying treasure?” He shook his head. “It don’t have to make much sense to know it ain’t good. Angry ghosts? Crying forever?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE OWNERS OF THE MEDES WANTED THE COIN & credit that molemeat & fur & oils would bring. They didn’t care whether or not Naphi caught this, that, or the other particular mole. Except just perhaps that certain events would mean an increase in the power of her name, & that kind of brand recognition might mean income for them.

  They were passing rare, captains who not only had their ultimate quarries, their nemeses, but who actually snared them. Like all Streggeye youth, Sham had been to the Museum of Completion, seen the famous flatographs of women & men standing on the mountainous carcases of philosophies: Haberstam on his beetle; ap Mograve on her mole; Ptarmeen on the sinuous mutant badger Brock the Nihil, beaming like a schoolchild with his dead nothing-symbol under his foot.

  The Medes crew had three days to turn a middling moletrain into a travelling fortress of philosophy-hunting. Hammers hammered, spanners spanned. The trainsfolk ran tests on the engines & the backup engines. Sharpened harpoons, stocked up on gunpowder. They patched up leaks in the cladding. The Medes hadn’t looked so good for years. It hadn’t looked this good when it was first made.

  “You know what the stakes of this are,” Naphi said. She wasn’t much of a one for speechifying, but she couldn’t not. As her officers had told her, the crew needed to hear something. “We may be at railsea a long time,” the captain said, voice cracking through the tubes. “Months. Years. This hunt will take us far. I am prepared. Will you come with me?” Ooh, nice touch, Sham thought.

  “There are no trainspeople I’d rather have with me. We hunt for the glory of Streggeye, for the owners of this fine train.” A few knowing smirks at that. “For knowledge. & if you will, you hunt for me. & I won’t forget it. We go south—& then we go where knowledge takes us. Gentlemen & ladies of the rails—shall we?”

  The crew cheered. They raised raucous support for the hunt, for the end of the uncertainty. “For the captain’s philosophy!” The shout was taken up across the decks, from every carriage of the train. Really? Sham thought.

  “Sham,” said Dr. Fremlo as the crew went to their tasks. “The harbourmaster delivered this.” The doctor handed over a sealed letter, at which Sham stared in consternation. He muttered thanks—not every crewmember would have handed it over, certainly not so honourably refusing to read it first. Sam Saroop, the letter said. Close enough, he supposed. Honourable or not, the doctor was not uncurious, & waited while Sham split the seal.

  SPECIAL OFFER! Sham read. TO THE VISITOR TO THE SHROAKES. GOOD RATES PAID FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR PLANS! VISIT HARBOURMASTER TO FIND OUT MORE. ACT NOW TO RECEIVE FREE GIFTS!

  “What is it?” Dr. Fremlo said, as Sham scrunched the paper up & curled his lip.

  “Nothing,” Sham said. “Junk mail. Rubbish.”

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME,” Sham said, “that I just don’t feel it.” He’d been telling the Shroakes of Naphi’s rhetoric, her galvanising the crew.

  Caldera shrugged. “Neither do I,” she said. “But maybe you’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Not to want to throw your hat in the air.” Caldera was counting what looked like pins or screws or something on the kitchen table. Dero was packing tins into suitcases.

  Sham was getting better at sneaking away from the Medes. When he had turned up at the Shroake House, the siblings had greeted him without surprise.

  “Come in.” Caldera smiled. “We’re just at the end of lessons.”

  “Lessons” turned out to be Dero & Caldera sitting opposite each other in the library, amid a scree of books, ordinator tablets & printouts. On the shelves around them were as many bones & bizarreries as books. Dero was sorting & stashing the materials of learning, according to some incomprehensible system. “What are your lessons like in Streggeye?” Caldera said. “What’s your school like?” She blinked under Sham’s gaze. “Don’t know that many people your age here, let alone elsewhere,” she said. “I’m curious.” Was she blushing? Well, no. But she was a bit bashful.

  “We went to Streggeye,” Dero said. “Didn’t we?”

  “Oh, they took us all over,” said Caldera. “But I can’t remember. I can’t say we know anywhere.”

  So Sham told her a little about Streggeye Land. He was blushing, even if she was not. He stumblingly turned an anecdote or two from his quite ordinary childhood into stories of an exotic land, while Dero finished putting away the bits & pieces.

  Sham continued, & Caldera listened without looking at him, & Dero left the room. Sham heard the door to Byro’s room open & close. & he kept talking, & after a minute it opened again, & Dero returned. His face was set & his eyes red. Dero stood between Sham & Caldera. Sham’s stories faltered at last. The young man from Streggeye & the quasisalvors’ daughter turned away from each other.

  “My turn,” said Caldera, & slipped out of the room.

  “Turn for what?” said Sham. He did not expect Dero to explain, & Dero did not. He just stood with his lip out as if ready for a fight, in increasingly lengthy & uncomfortable silence, until Caldera came back. She carried a picture of Dad Byro, a scarf, a battered old foldable ordinator from his desk.

  Her face was as stricken as her brother’s, but when she spoke, she made her voice sound normal. “Where’s your bat?” she said.

  “Hunting somewhere.” Sham steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “Someone sent me a message,” he said. “Offering me stuff if I’d tell things about you.”

  “What did you say?” Caldera said.

  “What do you think? I threw it away. & I came here the back ways you told me. But seems like there’s more & more rumours about you. & I know there’s rumours about the Medes.”

  Caldera put a fingertip thoughtfully to her lips. “There are lots of rumours about your train, yes,” she said. “Rails & rumours. How you got here, where you’re going, what you’ve found on the way.”

  “I been asking people what they think of when they hear about this end-of-the-world stuff,” Sham said, “& I have to tell you, it don’t sound pretty.”

  “Are you coming with us, Sham ap Soorap?” Dero said.

  “Wh-What?” Sham said.

  “Not now, Dero,” Caldera said.

  “Wait, what does he mean?” Sham said.

  “Not now,” Caldera said again. “What is it you were saying about your captain’s speech, Sham?”

  “Oh, well. Just that it didn’t … work on me. I really don’t think I want to get on another moletrain.” Sham looked around the house, at all the salvage.

  “There are people,” Caldera said, “who say all of us have a Task—they’d say it like that, they wouldn’t say task, they’d say Task—& you’ll know what it is when you hear it. That it’s out there, waiting for you.”

  “Maybe,” Sham said thoughtfully.

  “I think that’s rubbish myself,” Calder
a said. Dero giggled. Sham blinked.

  “So none of us have tasks,” Sham said.

  “I didn’t say that. Did I say that? I said maybe you don’t have a task. My task right now is to carry stuff.” She lifted various bits of luggage. “No, Dero, your task right now is to stay here & sort through this all. What do you think yours is, Sham?”

  Dero tutted & grumbled as Sham followed Caldera, past boxes tied with string & strapped into place, past trunks distended from within like glutted snakes, out into the drossland garden. In sight of the landmark white metal arch, she placed a key in a coffee tin, under a polished tortoise-shell, under a bucket.

  “I’m glad it was so important to you to find us & tell us,” Caldera said. “What was it happened to your parents?”

  Sham looked up at her. “What?” he said. “Why?” She looked at him until he slumped. Sham pushed after her through the salvagey garden, & muttered a brief version of the story of his father’s disappearance & mother’s grief. “Voam & Troose look after me, though,” he said.

  “I believe you,” Caldera said.

  “They’re well pleased I got to work on a moler,” he said. “Get to see the world.”

  “Some of it,” she said. “I knew what you were going to tell us the moment I opened the door, you know. I mean about our parents. & I hadn’t known until then how much I’d been waiting. I wish someone could’ve found your dad’s wreck. Or where your mum is. Told you. Done that for you, like you done for us.”

  She smiled at him. Very quickly & kindly. It was gone almost immediately. Caldera held the ragged weed aside for him. “The world’s fine,” she said. “But you got to wonder what comes after it.”

  They were, Sham realised with a start, on the shore. The earth a few yards off became flat & dusty & abruptly less fertile, crammed with intertwined rails. A wooden walkway extended some yards over the rails, at its end a jollycart. Big slabby rock teeth shielded the garden from sight.

  “You have a private beach?” Sham said.

  Caldera walked onto the jetty. The slats were old, & through their gaps Sham could see paint flakes falling onto earth churned by ferocious little mammals.

  “Out there,” she said, “there’s so many things. There are people miles out who roll with the wind, you know, on trains that ain’t changed for centuries. Our parents found their hunt-grounds, & found them. They went with them, learned from them. How to travel without engines. All their stories about the railsea & Heaven & how to get there & the weeping. Everything. Everyone knows something worth learning.”

  “Not everyone,” Sham said.

  “Alright, not everyone. Most people, though.”

  Clouds momentarily parted, & Sham glimpsed the yellow upsky. He heard a plane.

  “Do you believe there’s all them riches?” Sham said. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Caldera shrugged. “I don’t know if I believe it or not. But it ain’t why we’re going.”

  “You’re exploring,” said Sham. “You just want to know.”

  She nodded. “We were waiting for them,” she said. “& as much as you could, you brought them back. What else would we do but go where they went? & it ain’t just duty. I promise you that. You showed me a picture. Well, I’ll show you a picture back.”

  Caldera took a print from her pocket. Rock weathered into snarls, hillocks supporting scraggy hardland animals, cactus & ivy. Railsea miles. & a staircase.

  A staircase. It emerged from the ground, as high as a house, jutting at 45 degrees, ending in the air. A salvage overhang! Sham stared.

  “It’s an escalator,” Caldera said. “Way out there.” She pointed to railsea. Below the apex of the stairs’ rise was a cone of dirt & rubbish. What fell from it was not even salvage, but true useless rubbish, rejectamenta beyond reclamation, hauled up out of the innards of the world.

  THIRTY-NINE

  OH MY STONEFACES,” SHAM SAID. “WHERE IS that?”

  Caldera glanced back at the house. “Dero’ll be going spare, me leaving him there like that. I just needed a moment.” She looked at Sham. “Just listen. Let me tell you about what’s under there.” She cleared her throat. Caldera told him:

  THE STAIRS KEEP GRINDING. They move up, all the time. So when you land on them—& the rails don’t go that close, you have to jump!—you have to race down against the motion so the old escalator powered by who knows what current down there doesn’t deposit you with the garbage—

  “How DO YOU KNOW?” Sham said. Caldera blinked.

  “They took me once,” she said. “My parents. They were changing their plans. They knew how to use salvage, they just … took me there when they didn’t love doing it anymore. To tell me why. Shhh.”

  Caldera continued:

  —WITH THE GARBAGE.

  So down you run against it carrying your pack, down the metal stairs, into the darkness under the railsea. I know what you’re thinking: that’s where the animals live, & why would you ever do that? But mostly they don’t come into these tunnels & no I don’t know why. So don’t think about burrowing predators, toxic earth, rockfalls, grizzly chthonic deaths.

  There are electric lights down there. In the salvage mine.

  Don’t think about burrowers. Don’t think about seeing a bulge in that garbage wall, as you walk hunched to get under the beams of the supports, past the trolleys & wagons & discarded tools; don’t think about that bulge roaring into a split into the shadows under the world & onto a snuffling, blind, toothed face.

  Just look at this passage. Between layers of pressure-hardened earth & shaley rock, an archaeology of discards, centuries layered. Extruded edges of junk, shards, glass, bits & pieces, faint stretching fronds of ripped-up plastic bags. A greening layer: tiny cogs from a clockwork epoch; crushed plastic; the scintilla from an era of glass; rag-seams of degraded video tape; a gallimaufryan coagulum of mixed-up oddness.

  There are places where the pressures of ages & the jostling of continents against each other like slow uncomfortable bedfellows shoves such motherlodes airward, & the railsea is broken by the dangerous jags of salvage reefs, full of trash treasure. & there are these tunnels. Just like there are tunnels where trains can go. You know there are.

  What the scholars want to do is work out what these things were. Salvors want to know what they were if & only if it helps sell them. & if it doesn’t, they don’t care. People who want to use them want to know what they were if it means they can be used. Although they’ll work out something to do with them one way or another. They’ll take some reclaimed thing & hit nails with it & call it a hammer if it comes to that.

  “WHAT’S WRONG with doing that?” Sham said.

  “Wrong?”

  THERE’S NOTHING WRONG with that. There isn’t anything right with it either. There’s only one thing that everyone agrees on about salvage. Whether you’re digging it out of the ground or selling it or buying it, or studying it, or bribing someone with it, or wearing it, or looking for it, it catches the eye. Like foil for magpies.

  Salvors don’t have to dress like they do. They want to. Those are their peacock feathers. That’s the one thing you can always say for salvage. It looks cool.

  & really, who cares?

  Who cares? Say you’re a salvor, or a pair of salvors, who doesn’t or don’t love salvage anymore. Maybe you don’t have to cast about to find out what it is you want instead. It’s enough, maybe, to know you don’t want what you thought you did. That’s enough to be getting on with.

  “THE QUESTION IS,” said Caldera, “is this—” She shook the picture. “—the stuff you want to chase? Buried rubbish? Maybe there’s something better than that. Or maybe there’s something just else. Think about it. You’ve got an hour or two.”

  “Till what?” Sham said. “What happens then?”

  “Then we go. So by then you have to decide if you’re coming with us.”

  FORTY

  DAYBE FELL FROM NOWHERE ONTO SHAM’S SHOULDER. Caldera jumped. Sham didn’t even gl
ance at the animal, humming & whickering in his ear.

  “The key you left,” he said.

  “For the nurses,” Caldera said. She headed back for the house. “They’re good people. We looked a long time. There’s money. Dad Byro’ll be taken to the sanatorium.” She closed her eyes. “Because we’ve got stuff to do. So.”

  “You don’t even know where they went!”

  “Byro did,” she said. “However confused he got, that he never told. We have his machine. It’s got secrets. & there’s what you told us.”

  The Shroakes bustled from room to salvage-filled room, from room to open-to-the-sky-&-wall-less room, from room to whirring-clockwork-&-diesel-instrument-mazed room. They gathered things, pulled them on carts, lined them up in the kitchen. They pulled clothes from closets, tugged them to test for strength, fingered them to test for warmth, sniffed them to test for mildew.

  “But wait,” Sham said. “I heard, someone told me, you’re going on Engineday. That’s not for ages!”

  “That worked, then,” Dero said.

  “Engineday,” said Caldera, “is when we put it about that we’d be going. Should give us a little while before anyone thinks to look, or comes after us.”

  “Comes after you?” Sham said. “You really think …?”

  “Indubitably,” Dero said.

  “Yes,” Caldera said. “They will. Too many rumours about what our parents were looking for.” She rubbed her finger & thumb in a money motion.

  “You said that weren’t it,” said Sham.

  “It weren’t it. But rumours don’t care what was it or not. So—” She put her finger to her lips.

  Sham’s mind was going like train wheels at their fastest. “Why do you want to go?” he said.

  “Don’t you?” Caldera said.

  “I don’t know!” Exploring. Finding something new. All that way. “But what about my, my family,” Sham said, then stopped. Hold on. Would Troose & Voam mind if he went?