SIXTY-ONE
AT THIS POINT, THE INTENTION HAD BEEN TO SAY that it was such slippery western terrain as few trainsfolk ever see, such strange wrong rails, that the Shroakes, by then, had reached, & in which & on which they travelled. But the time is not yet right.
The instant it is feasible, the Shroakes will be found. It’s Caldera & Dero, after all: as if they could be ignored.
There are monsters under the earth, & in the trees above it, & swinging from those trees to the rooftop decks of trains, & there are creatures that can barely be called animals watching from the upsky, & any of them might find, might sniff for, might zero in on the Shroakes. It would be wrong to leave them forever. But though the rails themselves are everywhere in profusion, fanned out & proliferating in all directions, we can ride only one at a time.
This is the story of a bloodstained boy. The Shroakes deserve their own telling, & will get it. Though their things & Sham’s are plaited together now, inextricable.
SIXTY-TWO
COULD IT BE? OH, THEY THOUGHT IT COULD. THEY began to believe that they, the crew of the Medes, would make it into the Museum of Completion.
Once again, as the Medes continued across the railsea, zeroing in on Mocker-Jack, they talked of Shedni ap Yes, who’d caught an elusive meerkat commensurate with playful pointlessness. Hoomy’s prey, the desert tortoise known as Boshevel, a dome-shelled symbol of tenacity. Guya & Sammov, who had sought & found a termite queen (doubt) & a bull-sized bandicoot (prejudice).
It was common to insist that the worst thing that could happen to a person was to get the wisdom for which they strove. “Feh,” said Dr. Fremlo. “Believe me, most people really do want what they want. Downsides there may be to getting it, but they’re heftily outweighed by the up, & by the downs of not doing so.”
There was no pretence any more that this was any kind of regular hunt. Whether out of fidelity to Naphi, excitement at what they might achieve, or the suddenly-less-unthinkable possibility of riches that a finishing train would accrue, most of the crew were content to ignore other moldywarpes & follow the transceiver. Into scrappy corners of the railsea where great southern moldywarpes had no business burrowing, that should have been too warm, with ground too hard or too soft, too marbled by too many salvage seams, like fat in a steak.
In a tiny townlet the Medes was gouged by diesel-merchants who correctly gauged that they were in too great a hurry to barter. They surprised the burghers of Marquessa by waving at the gravelly shore but not stopping. Beyond all but the most speculative maps they went. Into badrail. Wild shores where trees shook with the movements of animals of the interior. A nameless atoll from where the train was shot at by small-arms fire. The bullets only ricocheted with dramatic pings, but it was a scare.
“Not long now,” they reassured each other. But all of them feared the malevolent cunning that Mocker-Jack, great & terrible but dumb beast, should not possess. But seemed to. It led them to where the rails were stained dark.
“Been a while since anyone came this way,” Dramin said.
& across an empty reach of sky came a roar, a bass boom like the declaration of a storm. It shook the hair on the crew’s heads, made the train vibrate, gusted them with wind & dust. The silence in its aftermath was silenter than any silence had been for a long time. Yashkan tried to snigger, but nerves meant it did not take.
“What in the Stonefaces’ name …” Vurinam started to say, as if it was a mystery. The captain herself answered him.
“Mocker-Jack.”
She leaned over the rails. “Mocker-Jack,” she shouted. “Mocker-Jack, Mocker-Jack.” She turned at last & bellowed at no one in particular & at everyone, “Make—this—train—go—faster.”
The train accelerated towards the sound, into dangerous railsea strewn with rubble. The unseen moldywarpe called again.
“Blimey,” someone whispered. The way ahead was blocked by huge rock pillars. To port was an enormous declivity. A hole in the fabric of the earth, miles across, hundreds of stomach-dropping yards deep. Lines reached its edges & jutted & were broken. The sinkhole was scattered with ties & ruined rails. It hurt to see it. Rails beyond the reach of angel or salvor. There were the ruins of trains down there.
Mocker-Jack called a third time. It was near. The Medes headed for a passage between a gnarled-up spire & the great canyon.
“Switchers,” Mbenday shouted. “Ready.” They lined up with remote controls & switchhooks. “Come now, gentlemen & ladies. Let us show this beast how molers move.” Ebba Shappy threw her lever, & the junction ahead clicked smoothly into place as the Medes approached.
But then, audibly & terribly, with their front wheels scant feet from it, it switched again, reverted, unbidden, & the Medes passed over it & veered to port, heading straight for the gorge.
SIXTY-THREE
PANDEMONIUM. THE VOID WAS CLOSE. THE CAPTAIN was yelling, & with the quickest of quick thinking, the most vigorous button-pushing & lever-smacking on the part of the most heroic switchers, another gauge turned them from immediate disaster. Jens Thorn was leaning out, prodding buttons to take them star’d. “They won’t stay, Captain,” he yelled. The switches were switching back, junctions conspiring to tip them into the pit.
The switchers strained with the mechanisms, defeated the junctions straining one by terrifying one to send them port. They veered star’d towards the rock pillar, fighting to keep going. “A godsquabble booby-trap,” Mbenday shouted.
“Captain?” said Vurinam. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” Naphi said. “It’s something …” She stared at the shaft near which they had to pass, that cast an immensely long shadow across the world. They were in that shadow. The captain lifted her microphone & said, “To arms.” For seconds, the crew did not understand. “To arms!” she said again. Then came screams.
Uncoiling from where they had lain disguised with stone-grey skins, emerging suddenly from cave-holes in the stiletto-island’s sides, came snakelike things.
“What,” Vurinam whispered, “in the name of That Apt Ohm …?”
There were three, there were five, there were seven of the things. Swaying, flailing, eyeless but not mouthless—on each was a circle rimmed with oozing gums & chitinous teeth.
“Weapons!” Someone was shouting. Someone was firing. Molers raced to get guns. “Weapons now!” The wavering things drew themselves up. Their pulsing mouths drooled, then spat, leaving gluey spittle where they struck. The trainsfolk shot, & the attackers were harried by bullets like frenetic flies. The tentacular things drew back, then, whip-quick, struck.
One closed with a terrible sucking noise on Yorkaj Teodoso’s chest. He screamed. It tugged him from the traintop deck, dangled him, reeled him in to the island they passed. “Fire! Fire!” Captain Naphi shouted. Trainsfolk were screaming Teodoso’s name. Where shots hit the attacking things’ skins they sprayed dark blood. They recoiled, but not far, not for long; they came down blindly grubbing, their mouths moistly smacking.
They launched themselves at the crew. Yashkan howled. Fired the pistol he held blindly behind him as he ran. He almost hit Lind. Mbenday ducked under one of the looping coils, leapt another, smacked at a third with a machete. The slippery thing spasmed & oozed great slopping dollops of slime.
“Fire & drive!” the captain shouted. “Accelerate! On, will you?” Down came the coils again, & again found prey. One grabbed Cecilie Klimy by her left arm, one by her right. Her crewmates howled her name. They ran for her, they grabbed for her, Lind & Mbenday & even gibbering Yashkan pawing to try to get hold of her, but with awful collaboration the two mouth-things moved in concert, hauled her shrieking off as the train moved. The crew were firing now with purpose, were slashing with something other than utter panic. “Klimy!” they shouted. “Teodoso!”
Their colleagues were gone. Pulled out of sight, into the rock. Tendril-beast after tendril-beast tried to grip the train as it went, suckering onto the grinding wheels, the splintering deck.
&nbs
p; “You will not!” It was Naphi herself shouting. Not standing back, right there, shooting with a weapon in one hand, swivelling through a succession of spikes & blades in her left limb until she fixed on a nastily serrated edge & slashed at a coiling enemy.
“We have to go back!” Vurinam shouted, but the train kept moving, accelerating, as the creatures tried again. “We have to go back for them!” Benightly roared & fired a big rapid gun & the monsters shuddered. A ripple corkscrewed around & went the height of the island.
“Oh my god!” said Fremlo. “It’s all one thing!”
On the stone the necks conjoined into a single thick ropy body that wound into the upsky. At the landform’s very top, at the level of the toxic clouds, was the creature’s diffuse gas-filled body. It was like the canopy of a great tree all fruited with watching eyes.
The mountainside shook, the shoreline curved away. The Medes reached a safe distance from the hole on one side & from the monster on the other. It stopped in the sunlight. The bewildered & battered crew gathered. Some were crying.
“What in the name of holy bloody hell?” someone said.
“Siller,” Fremlo said. The doctor looked at the captain. At the thing behind them. They couldn’t see its tendrils any more. They’d retreated & lay still. “It’s called a siller. Breathes up there, dips its feeding toes down here. & that …” The doctor pointed at the canyon. “That’s the Kribbis Hole. That’s why that siller hunts here. Because to stay out of the hole, you have to get close to it.”
“Those rails!” Vurinam shouted. “That shunt you into the damn hole! Why don’t the angels fix them?”
“They aren’t broken,” said Dr. Fremlo. “In this place, that’s how the rails are supposed to be. This place is an old, old, old trap.”
“Captain,” Vurinam said. “We have to go back.” Captain Naphi was examining her tracker. She didn’t speak. “I thought this place was a bloody legend,” Vurinam gabbled. He stared at Naphi & abruptly stood straighter. “You knew,” he said.
There was silence. Naphi raised her head to meet his eyes. She did not look cowed. She put the scanner down. Spread her artificial fingers.
“Don’t shilly-shally, Mr. Vurinam,” she said. “Make your accusation.”
“You knew where we were,” he breathed. “But because your damned moldywarpe’s nearby, you said nothing. Couldn’t be bothered to have us go the long way round.” He choked up & stopped. The crew were all open-eyed & staring.
“Anyone else?” Naphi said at last. “Anyone similar accusations? Speak freely.” Nothing. “Very well. I’ve heard of this place, as have you. & it is true that when Mr. Mbenday said the switches were misbehaving, a possibility occurred to me. So if you arraign me before your court accused of having halfheld notions, fleeting recollections, then I plead guilty.
“If, however, you claim I deliberately allowed my crew to steer themselves into danger, then sir how dare you?” She walked towards Vurinam. “I did not hear you complaining about our route nor our objective. I haven’t heard you declining your share of whatever comes should we be successful in this endeavour.”
Vurinam wriggled under her gaze. “You still keep checking that scanner,” he said. “You still want to know where that bloody mole is, more’n anything.”
“Yes,” Naphi shouted. She raised her hand. Her louder, clattering one. She shook it. “I do. That’s what we hunt. That’s what we’re doing here. If anything’s going to provide for Klimy’s family now, to keep alive her memory & that of Teodoso, to ensure that this terrible moment has a purpose, it is bringing the beast down. Snaring the philosophy. So, yes, Mr. Vurinam. I want Mocker-Jack.”
The captain still clenched her fist at him. Its lights winked, it rattled. But—wait. “Your arm,” Vurinam said. “Captain. That thing hurt you, you’re—bleeding?”
Her constructed limb had cracked. &, what made no sense, the split was oozing blood.
“How can she …?”
“Where’s it …?”
The captain herself stared, as fascinated by the red drips as anyone else. Fremlo was there in a moment, prodding & squinting at the damaged limb. Naphi seemed to wake, tried to shake herself free, but the doctor was having none of it, kept on with the examination.
“You’re cut rather badly, Captain,” Fremlo announced at last. With scorn, the doctor released the arm as if it was hot, turned to face the crew, & continued. “Your arm, Captain. The one that appears to have been encased in metal & molebone, all this time. That is in fact not missing at all, only hidden. Your still-present left arm is injured, Captain.”
Silence spread like a slick. Naphi drew herself calmly up. Not an instant of embarrassment crossed her face. Slowly, with ostentation, refusing to flinch from her crew’s gazes, she held up the bleeding limb.
“Indeed,” she said at last. “I will require you to take care of this for me.”
“All this time,” Vurinam whispered. Mbenday was staring at Naphi, back at his friend Vurinam, back & forth. “You were lying!” Vurinam said. “It was like some game! Oh, I get it. It was so they’d take you serious.” Vurinam shimmied pugnaciously in his dusty coat, his eyes wide. “So you didn’t get left out.”
It had been a badge of intensity, of honour, that pretended lack. Had Naphi feared that fully in possession of her original body, she would not possess some requisite rigour? Certainly it looked that way.
She drew herself up. “There are those,” she said. She was using her most splendid voice. “Whose faith. In their philosophies. Follows from something being taken from them. Who need that terrible bite & rupture to spur their fascination. Their revenge.
“It is weak of them,” she said. “I would not so wait. Nor, however, would I fail to know what it is to suffer those agonies for a philosophy. & so. & hence.” She raised her mechanical limb-glove. “I fail to see your point. My rigour, Mr. Vurinam, is such that I have both made & refused to make a sacrifice.”
It was a good line. One by one, the crew looked back at Vurinam. He stamped in frustration.
“That don’t even bloody mean anything!” he despaired. “It’s complete bloody gibberish!”
“Something occurs to me,” said Dr. Fremlo. “Arguably, right now it ain’t where Mocker-Jack is that should concern us. Forget for a moment our captain’s skin, bones & circuitry.” There was a noise, an engine grind, from somewhere. “Let’s focus on what’s important. We’ve just lost two friends.” The doctor let that sit with them a moment. “The issue is not so much where the moldywarpe is, as what it’s doing.”
Fremlo pointed at the pass through which they’d come. “Do you think it lay just so, sounded off like it did, just at this point, when we were where we were, by chance? It wanted us to go through there. It was sending us into the trap.”
“Don’t be crazy,” someone started to say.
“It’s leading us into danger,” Fremlo interrupted. “The mole is trying to kill us.”
Only the wind spoke, for a long while. It seemed as if Mocker-Jack might laugh, as if they might hear a booming moldywarpe snigger, but no.
“Oh, Stonefaces help us,” said Zhed the Yimmer at last. Captain Naphi moved her fingers like horse’s hooves. “What do we do?” Zhed said. “Things couldn’t get any weirder.”
It would have been simply rude for reality not to respond to a challenge like that. As that last word came out of Zhed’s mouth, there came the whistling noise of something plummeting, & a small, firm, heavy body fell out of the air into Vurinam’s hands.
Everyone yelled. Vurinam yelled, he staggered back, but what had landed held him tight, & Vurinam saw its jabbering little face. Sham’s bat. Daybe, the transmitter still winking on its leg.
SIXTY-FOUR
TIME FOR THE SHROAKES?
Not yet.
SIXTY-FIVE
SHAM ROLLED UP HIS SLEEVES, WENT TO THE SHORELINE, & looked out at the ruined trains.
With care, effort & bravery, he was able to brace himself on the iron, the ties, t
he various bits of natural & wrecky business he could reach. He even walked the earth where he had to, dragging a makeshift cart. Sham made it at last to the ruin of some once-grand cargo train, stripped it of fittings. He dug into the ground & hauled out debris.
Dangerous work, but he got on with it. He dumped his finds on the shore. Gathered junk. A few more trips out to the wreck & Sham had a yard-load of nu-salvage. As night fell he began to cobble it together. When the sun came up he was standing, proudly, in a hut.
He made it into the old train’s hold where he discovered that, by happy chance, it had been carrying seeds. These he planted. He continued building until he had made a small township of corrugated iron. His crop grew. Sham collected rainwater & wove flax. He tamed local animals & got more stuff from the train. Sham made bread.
In the second year he got a bit lonely & then luckily he found the footprints of another human being on the island. He followed them & met a native, who was astonished but impressed by him & became his happy servant. Together they continued building, & after a few more years Sham managed to build an actual train, & he left the new country that he had founded with the handy discards of his old, & he set out on a journey back to Streggeye, the wind in his hair.
That didn’t happen.
Sham sat, cold, frightened, starving, on the beach. Staring at nothing. His fantasy hadn’t made him feel any better. It hadn’t been convincing at all.
He chewed at the … well, it was a sort of leaf that he had found.
“Mmmm,” he said. Out loud. “Piney. You’re the first ingredient for a new drink I’m going to make.” He grimaced & swallowed. “I’m going to call you fizzboont.”
He had, in fact, built a shelter out of rubbish, but he would hesitate to say he had “salvaged” it: it was only trash lying at shoreside. & he would hesitate to say he had “built” it: he had really sort of leaned it up one bit against another. & he would hesitate to call it a “shelter.” It was more of a pile.