Railsea (22 page)

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.

O
NE 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.

T
HESE 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 the 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.”

A
NOTHER 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.

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.

S
HAM 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.

“W
HAT 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.”

The captain of the pirate train did not wear a greatcoat in which lived polecats & weasels. He did not have a beard woven with smouldering twists of gunpowder to surround himself with a stench & demonic aura. He did not cock a tricorn hat or have handprints in blood on his shirt. He did not dangle a necklace of bones & flesh-scraps. All these were things of which Sham had heard, ways in which railsea pirates spread the terror on which they relied.

This man wore large glasses. He had what Sham would,
had circumstances been otherwise, have said was a kind face. He couldn’t help thinking it, & then he couldn’t help a miserable little laugh.

The man folded his arms. “Your situation amuses you?” he said. He sounded like an office manager asking someone to clarify a row of figures.

“No,” Sham said. It was, to his own surprise & grim pleasure, anger more than fear that swept him. “You’re in so much trouble, don’t you even know? My captain’s going to come for you. She’s going to—”