Railsea

  “Hey, d’you remember,” Vurinam said abruptly to no one in particular, “how that Sham ap Soorap brought the grog when he had to?” He cleared his throat. “Couldn’t work out if he liked doing it more or less than his usual doctoring, weren’t that so, Fremlo?”

  There were a few laughs. Were they happy or sad that Vurinam had mentioned their runaway? Yes. They were happy or sad.

  “Shut up, Vurinam,” Yashkan said. “Nobody cares.” But his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Didn’t know he had it in him,” Fremlo muttered to Mbenday when they drank bad smoky tea late that night. “He was hopeless, though you couldn’t but like the lad, but I’d never have thought he’d have the oomph to go be a salvor, no matter how mooningly he stared at them.”

  The Medes passed a slave-powered train from Rockvane, which the captain would not hail. Shossunder & Dramin the cook stared out to railsea, as in their wake a big old bull armadillo, like a grunting armoured cart, groped up into the air, sniffed for prey, & ground below again.

  “He was funny with his food,” Dramin said.

  “Odd having him not around,” the cabin boy said.

  They reached a huge & clanking wartrain from one of the Cabigo monarchies. They approached the double-decked wheeled fortress, porcupine-spined with guns, howling sooty smoke, on its manoeuvres & reconnaissance.

  Admiral Shiverjay received Naphi, & after niceties & a cup of cactus tea, after paying sufficient polite attention to his ill-tempered train-cat, in the halting combination of languages with which they could get by, she asked him if he had any news of a large, pale moldywarpe.

  & he only bloody had.

  MANY TRAINS KEPT RECORDS of overhearings like sightings of megabeasts, of any talk of sports & monsters they encountered, knowing molers they met might be searching. Shiverjay ran a finger down a rumour-list, past tales of the largest badger, albino antlions, aardvarks of prodigious size. Some had the names of captains marked alongside. Some had more than one: oh, those were awkward occasions, clashes of hunt. What to do when more than one philosopher sought the same symbol? It was notoriously embarrassing.

  “Ah now,” Shiverjay said. “Here’s a thing.” He had a superb stock of stories. “You know where the Bajjer roll?” Naphi nodded a vague nod. The sail-nomads gathered & hunted across great swathes of the railsea. “A deep-railsea spearhunter, back from their grounds, she told me something that she’d heard from a furrier who’d been trading with a salvor crew—”

  The lineage, the genealogy by which the story was delivered at last into Captain Naphi’s ears, was convoluted & not important. What mattered was this: “A solo trainsman saw our quarry,” Naphi said, back on her own vehicle. She controlled herself, stiff & upright & careful, but she was all-but bass-string vibrating at the news. “He ain’t too far. Switchers, south-southwest.”

  & still there was that sniff of loss about the Medes.

  A PECULIARITY OF GEOGRAPHY HAD the railsea dipping into a sheltered declivity that thronged with rabbit. There a light steam train all the way from Gulflask passed on stories they, too, like the wartrain, had heard about the jaundiced-looking Talpa rex. They directed the Medes west, to where the earthworms were huge & sluggish & the largest moldywarpes fed.

  Three days, following earth-trails of ever-increasing sizes, & the Medes saw two great southern moldywarpes. One sleek young male too far to chase; the second, a grizzled sow, they might have been able to run down. But Naphi told the harpoonists no.

  As the sun dropped & the cold went vicious, they reached a dangerous intricate knot of rails, of manifold gauges. It would need charting for passage. The captain was untouched by any tiredness. She stared rapt & intently through her telescope, into the last of the light.

  Abruptly she volunteered Mbenday, Brownall, Benightly & Borr to go with her. The crewmembers were like inflated people, so bundled were they in fleece & fur. The captain herself wore only a moderately quilted jacket.

  “She don’t need no furs, she’s warmed by her crazy,” Borr whispered to Benightly as they took the jollycart slowly forward. They mapped & took careful notes, prepared switches for the Medes that would follow. They glanced longingly at the receding warmth & light of the train.

  Slowly they rounded a patch of bushes metal-coloured in the twilight … steered between trees thin & gnarled as pained skeletons … knocked stones from the rails with their trainhooks … They moved at a creeping pace in thickets of tough vegetation, in a range of dense rails, broken by spare patches of ground & the curve of a hill towards which they steered.

  “Stop here,” Naphi said, her voice trembling. She stood, ready to disembark. “Let’s see what we can see from the top.” They rolled closer to the pale hill. The shaggy bone-coloured hill.

  The hill covered not in pale freeze-bleached grass but in hair.

  The yellow hill rumbled. It shuddered.

  The hill growled.

  A twitch, a switch & stubs & tufted nubs on the hill moved. Moved as a chewing sound sounded, as there came from all around them a slam of teeth & a throaty animal exhalation.

  The hill opened wicked eyes.

  “Oh my good gods!” someone screamed. “It’s him!”

  & with violence & suddenness the earth shook & birds were calling as loud as the crew & the hill was not a hill, was the colossal humped flank & back of Mocker-Jack the pale mole. & there was throating & a snarl of tree-sized slaver-spattering tusks & a plunging with appalling motion so enormous that the world itself, time itself, seemed to buckle, & countless tons of meat & malevolent muscle & dead-hued fur moved. & with a red stare near-sightless but quite terrible the beast rose an instant then plunged straight, straight down, leaving ruination, buckled rails, splintered ties, a quivering-edged pit.

  A gun fired, a flash in the dark. The earth shuddered again. Benightly, Brownall, Borr were falling & clinging to the cart’s sides as the world pitched. Someone braked hard to stop them following the beast into the below. From which came a dust-choked roar.

  Oh, so appalling a timbre.

  ONE BY ONE THE CREW on the cart opened their eyes. They coughed in the clouds left by Mocker-Jack’s passing. Checked their cuts & bruises & that they were not dead.

  They looked up one by dizzy one. To see, standing, unruffled, indeed exultant, the captain. She held a rifle against her hip. Smoke from its muzzle fingered the air.

  Naphi was leaning towards the new hole, peering into the new shadow. In her artificial hand was the mechanism she had bought. Lights flashed upon it. She shook the gun, the electric box & smiled. It was a chilling smile. “Now,” she said. “We will just see.”

  “Lizards,” Mbenday whispered at last, a curse to the strange iguana gods of Mendana, his home. “You knew what it was. But you knew we wouldn’t come if we knew. You saw it. This was the plan. Phase one. Is that not it, Captain?” There was as much admiration as anger in his voice.

  The captain said nothing. She pressed a button on the box she held, & read the lights. The scanner in her hand traced the sub-dirt passage of her nemesis. It sent back information from the tracer she had shot into the giant mole’s flesh.

  FORTY-SIX

  THESE WERE THE RAILSEA’S MIDDLE REACHES: NOT yet the deepest open rail, far from hardland, nor the bays & heavily patrolled inlets & railrivers of territorial stretches. The lines & the train upon them wound through stunted hardy forests.

  “Ooh ooh,” said Dero. He steered the Shroake train a good decent distance from the barricaded buildings of some tiny rock-perching hamlet, peered again through his lever-side windows at the community of small simians that watched him from the trees. He tried, once more, to imitate them. “Eeh eeh,” he said. He jumped up & down.

  The monkey family watched the train go, prim & glum. The older female sniffed & peed. The others wandered off, on their branches, hand over hand.

  “Tchah,” said Dero. “Stupid animals,” he said. “Ain’t they?”

  “Whatever you say,” Caldera said. She was writing in t
he Shroake train journal & log.

  “Come on, Cal. This is supposed to be fun.”

  “Fun?” she said slowly. She put the book down. “Fun? You know where we’re heading? Course you don’t. Neither do I. That’s the whole point. But you know this ain’t going to be a joke. This is a promise we’re making, that’s what. For them. So let me ask you again—you think it’s supposed to be fun?”

  She stared at her brother. He met her gaze. He was littler than her, by a good ways, but he stuck out his chin & furrowed his brow & said, “Yeah. A bit.”

  & after a second, Caldera slumped & sighed, & said, “Yeah. I suppose it should be a bit. Tell you what.” She glanced in the direction of the copse they had left. “Next one we pass, we’ll throw fruit at the monkeys.”

  ANOTHER CHARACTERISTIC of these inner-outer stretches—given the reefs of rock, fields of scattered salvage disproportionately jagged with metal, the trees & narrow straits between hardland islands—was that they were dangerous. Look to your charts, drivers. & it was so much more dangerous if you were determined to roll at night.

  The Shroakes were determined to roll at night. Their instruments on, they sat in a winking cave of diodes as their train progressed. It was dimmer even than usual that starless evening, but for the soundless sweeps of far-off white beams from another light-tower ahead.

  “Careful here,” Caldera muttered to herself, checked the chart that warned of dangerous proximity of the rails to rockfalls & quicksand.

  “Drattit,” she murmured, slowing & backing up. “I’m taking us that way,” she said. “That must be the Safehouse Good Beacon.” She checked her chart again. “So if we go this route …”

  She worked her remote control on switches & picked them slowly towards the lighthouse. The wheels whispered on the iron. The light fluttered with tiny shadows, as night-birds & darkbats bickered in its beam for hunting rights.

  “Where is it we are?” Dero said. Caldera pointed at the map. Dero frowned. “Really?” he said.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Caldera said. She gritted her teeth & wrestled with the controls. “I know, I know, from the direction of the line, you’d have thought we were closer north a bit, right? Well.” They rumbled over unsteady ground. “Well, these aren’t the most up-to-date charts. They must be wrong.”

  “If you say so,” Dero said doubtfully. “I mean …” He squinted into the night.

  “Well, there’s not much else it can be, is there?” Caldera said. She adjusted, switched. “I mean look at the lighthouse. They ain’t going to have built a new one, are they?”

  But of course by the time that last word was out of her mouth, Caldera had answered her own question in her head. Dero was staring at her, uncomprehending but horrified by her look. Glinting outside took his attention. Glinting much too close. “There’s something,” he said, “on that beach.”

  “Stop!” Caldera shouted. Hauled hard, hard on the brake, & the train’s wheels screamed in resentment as it grudgingly halted. Dero staggered & fell. “Back back back!” Caldera shouted.

  “What are you …?”

  “Check the rear!” Above them the light beam went by. The train slowly began to move again, backed up, away from one bit of darkness among many.

  “What am I looking for?” Dero said.

  “Anything behind us.”

  “There ain’t nothing.”

  “Perfect then!” Caldera said, & accelerated in reverse. “Keep watching! We’ll turn around when we can.”

  & with a lurch of the retreating train, the vivid glare of its headlamp swung a few yards, & Caldera saw how close to either side of the route they’d been taking were rises of flint. She had been a breath away from steering her train into a pass. On the edges of which, overlooking them, poised with great rocks ready to roll in to derail her, silent figures watched.

  She caught her breath. She bit her lip. Another light swing showed the pale faces of the ambushers. They stared at her retreating vehicle, stared right through the glass, through the cameras & at her.

  Calm-faced men & women. Armed. Carrying tools, the equipment with which to take an errant train apart. They lay where they had been hiding, their expressions betraying no shame nor any aggression: only mild disappointment as their prey escaped.

  “Of course someone built a new lighthouse,” Caldera whispered.

  “What’s that?” Dero said. “I can’t hear you. What is going on, anyway?”

  What was going on? People had smashed the lights of the real & automated tower, that must, Caldera thought, be standing to useless dark attention on a nearby beach, not at all where she thought she had seen it. Locals had by careful reference to railsea charts lit a fake beacon at a place chosen to appeal as a reference in the darkest nights, that would lure the unlucky in to a terrible impassable part of the rails, where the crews who had built that false light would be waiting, to do what was necessary to travellers, to scavenge the scrap their intervention left behind. The cruellest kind of salvage. Train-ghouls, derailers & thieves.

  “Wreckers,” Caldera whispered.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  A RED SIGNAL AT THIS JUNCTION OF THE STORY-TRAIN’S route.

  Generations of thinkers have stood with notebooks open on coastlines, the endless spread of ties-&-iron before them—countless junctions, switches, possibilities in all directions—& insisted that what characterises rails is that they have no terminus. No schedule, no end, no direction. This has become common sense. This is a cliché.

  Every rail demands consideration of every other, & all the branches onto which that other rail might switch. There are those who would issue orders, & would control the passage of all such narratives. They may, from time to time, even be able to assert authority. They will not, however, always be successful. One could consider history an unending brawl between such planners, & others who take vehicles down byways.

  So, now. The signal demands the story stop. With diesel wheeze & wheel complaint, our train reverses. With a whack of trainhooks a story-switch is thrown, & our text proceeds again from days ago, from where it had got to. To answer a question bellowed, we might imagine, by moldywarpe critics as we took routes where the Siblings Shroake drove & the Medes hunted. Curious & impatient mole listeners raised heads from earth & shouted across the flatlands of untold things. Demanding attentions elsewhere.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  SHAM THEN.

  What happened miles, days ago, was that Sham wobbled slowly up from the deeps of unconsciousness until he popped right into his own head. & into a headache. & winced & opened his eyes.

  A room. A tiny train cabin. A cold line of light from a porthole. Boxes & papers wedged into shelves. Footsteps above him. The light wavered & swayed & dragged across the wall as the train changed direction. Sham could feel the shuddering now, through his back. He could feel that he was travelling fast.

  He could not sit up. Was trussed on a bunk. He could just about see his own hands clutching at nothing. He tried to shout & discovered that a gag was in the way. Sham thrashed, but it was no good. He panicked. The panic was no good either. It gave up at last & left. He stretched each muscle that he could.

  Vurinam? he thought. Fremlo? Captain Naphi? He tried to say the names out loud, & made muffled noises. Caldera? Where was he? Where was everyone else? An image of the Shroake train took him. Could he be on the Shroake train? Minutes, or hours, or seconds, passed. The door at last opened. Sham strained, turned his head, croaking. Robalson stood in the doorway.

  “Ah ha,” Robalson said. “At last. We didn’t give you that much. I thought you’d wake up ages ago.” He grinned. “I’m going to untie your hands & mouth, let you sit up,” he said. “Your end of the deal is you’re not going to be a pain in my arse.”

  He put down a bowl of food & loosened Sham’s bonds, & Sham began to shout even as the dirty cloth left his mouth. “What the hell are you doing my captain’s going to find me you’re going to pay for this you crazy pig,” & so on. Sham had
hoped it would sound like a bellow. It came out more like a loud whine. Robalson sighed & tugged the gag back on.

  “Now is that being not a pain in my arse?” he said. “Goat porridge for non-arse-painery. That’s the deal. There’s worse things I can do than put a gag on.”

  This time when Robalson relaxed the mouthpiece Sham said nothing. Just stared at him in cold fury.

  He also stared at the porridge. He really was hungry.

  “WHAT THE BLOODY HELL do you call this?” Sham said through a mouthful of the delicious stuff.

  Robalson rubbed his nose. “A kidnapping, I suppose. What do you call it?”

  “It ain’t funny!”

  “It is a bit.”

  “You … You’re a pirate!”

  Robalson shook his head as if at imbecility. “I told you I was,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “That depends.”

  “Where’s my bat?” Sham said.

  “Flew off when we took you.”

  “Why are we going so fast?”

  “Because we want to get there quickly, & because we’re pirates. We ain’t the only ones heard things. Salvors’ve been asking after you. & what with us up & suddenly buggering off like that, you can bet a bunch of other people are curious & looking our way.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “What we want,” said a new voice, “Sham ap Soorap, is information.” In from the corridor came a man.

  He wore an engineer’s boiler suit. His hair was short & greased. He held his hands together gently, he spoke quietly, & his bloodshot eyes fixed on Sham’s with intelligence. “I’m Captain Elfrish,” he said gently. “You are, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I’m Sham ap Soorap!”

  “I haven’t decided what you are, yet.”