Railsea (32 page)

“How did you know where I was?” he said. “Why did you break off hunting? &—” He stared at the stink all around. “& who then?”

“Who did this?” Sirocco said. “Who do you think?”

“Pirates!” someone shouted. Sirocco shook her head.

“That? See that?” She pointed at a particular ditch of sump. “That oil—you’ll excuse me but as you can imagine I know my effluent & runoff—that particular oil …” She wafted the air towards her & sniffed like a connoisseur. “… is used almost exclusively by one force. The Manihiki ferronavy.”

There was a silence. “That—” She pointed at a bush not merely killed but dripping with the remains of leaves enzymatically degraded into slop like a salted slug. “—is their favourite unleafer.”

“I heard it was pirates,” the same voice as before said.

“They may have driven under the skull-&-spanners flag.” Sirocco shrugged. “But …” She performed a mocking salute.

“What do they
want
?” Sham said. Then looking across the acres of miserable Bajjer, he said, “I know why. They were looking for information. & punishing the Bajjer because of who they once helped.”

“What?” said Vurinam. “Who did they help?”

“They want information about me,” Sham said. “& the people I’m trying to go after. & they’re punishing these people. Because of who they taught about the railsea.”

The Bajjer who could understand him nodded. “Shroakes,” someone said.

“The Shroakes,” said Sham. That little bit of history! That investigation, by Caldera & Dero’s parents, the meeting of those minds. All these years later, this deadened land was what it had cost the Bajjer, to have helped the Shroakes find a way to Heaven & the eternity of tears. To have helped them, & now to have helped him.

“Would someone,” Fremlo said, “& by ‘someone,’ Sham ap Soorap, I mean you, please explain what in the name of the Stonefaces & Their Stern Gaze you are
talking
about?”

So, rushing the details for now & promising to come back to them, Sham told the gathering about the Siblings Shroake, about their family & their family’s work, of their odyssey towards something of which they were quite unsure, & of what & who was hunting them.

The Bajjer had no loudspeakers, but Sirocco had three. “Can’t believe she came for me,” Sham whispered to Vurinam, as the equipment was checked & walloped into working. He stared at Captain Naphi on her dais.

“Well …” Vurinam said, & shrugged. “Tell you later.”

Sham saw the captain check the scanner again, again & again, but such glimmers of nostalgia for the hunt she almost made were surely forgivable. When she spoke, her voice was firm.

“May I suggest,” she said, “that we come to some sort of order?” & one by one, across all the vehicles, loudhailers
sounded in repetition, translation & debate, until everyone there understood the shape of this. That, when you got down to it, Sham was looking for a hunted girl & boy.

“& whatever the rest of you decide,” Sham said, “I’m going after them. I’ve got to. They need help.”

The Bajjer were raging. The dead & the land, they said, whispering translations to Sham between exhortations, demanded revenge. “Don’t think who did this is finished with you,” Sham said. “Until they get what they want.”

“Punish.” That word was fast translated, & more & more Bajjer began to say it, in Railcreole.

“Plus also,” Sham said after a decent pause, “where we’re going there’s an
X. X
the unknown. Off the edge of the map. Figuratively speaking. You know what
X
means.” He rubbed his fingers together.

Night reached them. Tumbleweed tumbled, investigating the gathering while a consensus emerged in shouts & declarations.

Sham listened. He was slowly staggered. He had to bite his lip. Whether out of a sense of justice at the thought of young Shroakes chased by armoured trains, out of a hope for treasure, out of fury at this despoliation, solidarity with him, or some combination, an astonishing number of those present were ready to come with him.

“But come where?” Mbenday said. “The whole
point
of this—” He indicated the poisonous slurry. “—is that no one knows where the Shroakes’ve gone.”

During the silence that followed that, Sham thought. A strategy he could not have followed on his own might not, in company, be closed.

“The Bajjer go all over, yes? All over the railsea? & Sirocco?”
She was moonbathing on the hull of her digger. She looked up politely. “You must’ve travelled a lot, there’s salvage all over. & us.” Sham looked at the
Medes
crew. “We got people from Streggeye, from Manihiki, Rockvane, Molochai, from all over. We’re trainsfolk. What we don’t know about the railsea ain’t worth knowing. Between all of us,” he said, “we’d surely recognise pretty much anything out there.

“Captain,” Sham said, & gave up the last secret. Rumbled her. “A long time ago, you & me saw some pictures.” Everyone turned to her & stared. “I want you to help me, because you saw them, too. If we want to find the Shroakes,” Sham said, “we have to find where they’re going. So everyone listen. Tell me where you think this stuff is. I’m going to describe some places to you.”

N
OW
. A
T LAST
. S
URELY
.

This must be the moment to return to the Shroakes & to their rail. Surely.

It is, in fact, yes, Shroake O’Clock.

T
HE STRANGE TRAIN MANAGED
. How battered it was. How shortened, how patched where glass had broken, beasts had snatched, where the frustrated fire of pirates had worn down armour.

Where the gauges narrowed, their mechanism still—just—worked. Where the pitch of rising tracks would have been impassable to most vehicles, the Shroakes’—just—coped. Event after brutalising event.

Pirate biplanes, very far from home, breaking the prime rule of exploratory flying, which was “Don’t.” Blitzing them from the air till they hid under overhangs. Railtracks through rock, into darkness, swaddled in silk, tunnels made lairs by train-eating funnelwebs. Shedding more rear carriages, distractions,
like a lizard sheds its tail. Once above a beach of cracked helmets they watched a tussle between two specklike upsky monsters, until one must have glanced their way, & showered them with caustic spittle as they raced away.

Caldera, as bruised & tired-looking as her train, read from what screens still operated.

“So,” said Dero.

“So what?” said Caldera. Her voice cracked.

“Wait. I’m thinking.”

“If this is another not-very-disguised one Mum & Dad brought back from the Bajjer that I remember from when we were little, you forfeit ten million points,” Caldera said.

“Shut up.”

“You’re already on minus seventeen million.”

“Shut
up
,” Dero said. “There was a mouse. Who lived in a hole.” Mostly it was Caldera who told stories as they drove, but not this time.

“Where?” said Caldera. “Between the rails?”

“Stupid. She’d get et up. A hole in a wall. & she could do magic.”

Caldera checked some notes. “What sort of magic?”

“Magic to do with sticks,” Dero decided. “She could make sticks come alive.”

Then the Shroakes gasped. The air outside the train was suddenly hammered by noise. In their nook, an alarm sounded, as if there weren’t enough cacophony already. Above them flew something nothing like a plane. An insecty thing that juddered & dangled from a patch of blurred air.

“What is that?” whispered Dero.

“What’s it doing?” said Caldera.

“Oh my lord,” whispered Caldera. “It’s an angel.”

Not one of the great & terrible driverless heavenly trains, wheeled angels shoring up foundations. A watcher. A getterbird. It scudded above them. Faced its bulbous dark sheen their way, regarded them flatly. They held their breath. It brought its own cloud with it. Venting filth. It was close enough that they could see its carapace. Scabbed with dirt & rust. Scratched & battered. The thing lurched in the air.

At last it turned & dipped its head with the hammering clattering &, faster than any bird or bat, was gone in a burst of soot.

“That,” said Caldera at last, “was a bit of an anticlimax.”

“You disappointed?” Dero said.

“Hardly. Just not used to seeing things that ain’t trying to kill me.”

“Oh,” Dero muttered. “Give it a minute.”

T
HE
S
HROAKES WERE DOWN
to the last of their equipment. They lived crammed & cramped in the engine room. They took it in turns to sleep, one diagonalwise across the floor while the other drove the train.

Dero rubbed his eyes, drank water, ate a snack from their (dwindling—hush) supplies.

“Why we going so
slow
,” Dero said. He sniffed. “We smell,” he said.

“You smell,” Caldera said. “I’m like a flower.”

“We have to go quicker,” Dero said. “We must be nearly there.” He rocked back & forwards, as if he would lend his momentum to the train. He turned & looked from the rear window.

“I’m being careful,” Caldera said. “I thought I heard something. This is as fast as I think’s safe.”

“Well,” Dero said. He spoke very precisely. “Well, I think you should maybe consider that going a bit faster might be a bit safer than not going so quick. See, because there’s a train behind us.”

“What?” It was true. Their scanners must be on the fritz, but there it was, visible to the naked eye. “Where did they
come
from?” she breathed.

“Behind that little forest,” Dero said, “I think.”

“But there’s nothing there! Pirates again,” said Caldera, but then she gasped. It was getting closer. & it was not what she had thought. It was a Manihiki ferronaval train. Definitely. That was a whole other thing.

The Shroakes looked at each other. “They got us,” Dero whispered. “At last.”

“At last,” said Caldera. “Or maybe—maybe they been behind us for ages. Maybe they been following us all this time.” She swallowed. “They know the way, now. Maybe we showed them the way.”

“Cald,” Dero said firmly. “We still got a chance. Get us out of here. Top speed.
Now
!”

Caldera didn’t move.

“Now,” Dero said, “would be good.”

“Can’t.” Caldera bit her lip.

“Engine?”

“Engine.”

“Buggered again?”

“Again.”

He stared at her, she stared at him, the Manihiki officers got closer.

“You said you’d been going slow deliberately,” Dero said.

“I was lying.”

“I thought you was lying.”

They knew how to make the Shroake train go when it was in the mood to work, but not to tweak somethings wrong in the strange metal hearts & tubes their parents had built. The vehicle sputtered at pitiful speed.

“So what,” Dero said, “d’you propose we do?”

Caldera leaned out of the window. “You know,” she said at last, with rising excitement. “I don’t know that they’ve actually seen us. Look at how they’re switching. They know we’re round here somewhere, but …”

She steered with renewed energy. Took them over points that veered lines close to a looming cliff. Thickly, richly vegetational. Their long journey had already sprayed their train’s flanks with dirt & dust. “Right,” Caldera said. She slowed them yet slower, & stopped the train in the shadows. “Quick,” she said. Climbed out of the roof hatch, & with hook & hands snatched plant matter from the overhangs. Dero did the same, until they stood under a wodge of richly smelling sappy green stuff. They draped their vehicle in the creepers.

“This is a
rubbish
plan,” Dero said, as they crawled back inside.

“I await your improvements eagerly. & complaining is
awesomely
helpful.”

Up close, the Shroake train was an absurd, green-pelted, unconvincing thing. But perhaps, in the stark light contrasts of the railsea, over miles, at motion, their poor battered conveyance might pass for some ignorable viney nothing. Dero & Caldera waited. They watched the incoming train through dirty glass & now, too, from behind a green fringe.

“Always knew Mum & Dads had annoyed them,” Dero said. He & Caldera held hands. They waited. The naval train came closer. It approached, closer, closer, it was abreast of them, only a few rail-widths away.

It passed on again. At last, the Siblings Shroake breathed out.

“This thing is barely even going,” Dero said at last. He kicked the inside of the carriage. “What are we going to do?”

“They’re going to find us again, you know,” Caldera said. “I just don’t think we can get by them. They probably will.”

“Yeah,” said Dero. For just a sad & terrible second, he looked like he would cry. “So what we going to do?”

“What can we do?” Caldera said at last. “Keep trying. Do our best.”

She shrugged. After a minute, her brother shrugged, too.

T
HE DETAILS ARE DISTINCT, THE SPECIFICS SPECIFIC
, but the trend clear. Event, encounter, pushing on, the slow degradation of the Shroake train, an against-the-odds continuation. That is what has been.

The train is such a battered shade of itself. But this is the railsea. A greater surprise is surely that the Shroakes are still here at all.

What Dero would admit to, who can say? But Caldera, certainly, is astonished.

“W
ELL YOU’VE DONE IT NOW
!” Caldera didn’t even know who she was talking to anymore.

It was the purest & most undeserved luck that the Manihiki train had not wheeled round, come back & found them. Someone else, however, was after them.

The Shroake train, coaxed to a last life lease, was hauling rail to rail. There was no hiding now. Nothing in this outermost railsea—not landscape, fauna, flora, the rails
themselves—behaved as it ought. They passed bridges from & to nowhere, that doubled back at the apex of their curves; lines that spiralled into sinkholes. Birds much bigger than they should be, perhaps a little too limb-encumbered, flew high enough to tickle the upsky.

“Maybe,” Dero whispered, “out here all the lines are blurry, & maybe birds in the sky & really bad things in the upsky are making babies.”

Caldera & Dero pored over charts & teased their dead parents fondly for their scrawls. They configured plans. They blinked too much & missed food. Dero snapped at Caldera & Caldera said less & less, sometimes nothing for hours.