Railsea (8 page)

Sham was in the first lot out, going with Dr. Fremlo to deliver Unkus Stone into the hands of the local sawbones. He stepped off the gangway onto solid ground, cobbles that didn’t wobble, didn’t rock. It was an old cliché that the first step on hardland after weeks at railsea made you stumble again, the inertness of rock suddenly feeling mad as a trampoline. An old cliché but true: Sham fell over. His comrades cackled. He started to cringe, then stopped & laughed, too.

A local cart took Sham, the doctor, the captain & first mate, all fussing over the wildly delirious Unkus Stone, through narrow Bollons streets. Sham tended the wounded
man as the doctor checked the dressings. He muttered in his head to That Apt Ohm, the great rotund boss-god, one of the few deities worshipped across the railsea, whatever the peculiarities of local pantheons. Bollons was ecumenical, granted church-licences to any deities whose worshippers could pay the fees. But the disrespectful worship of That Apt Ohm was taken more seriously there, pursued with more verve, than at most stops on the railsea. Sham had no idea quite what, if anything, he believed, but there seemed little harm in a quick silent word with one of the few gods whose name he remembered.

W
HEN THEY MADE IT
to the infirmary the doctor stayed, bickering with the local caregivers over the best course of treatment. So it was to Sham that the captain spoke, at last, on their way back to the
Medes
.

“What’s your professional opinion, Soorap?” she said.

“Um …” Professional opinion! He could give her a professional opinion on what to carve on a wooden belly to allay boredom, if that was any use? He shrugged. “Dr. Fremlo seems hopeful, ma’am.”

She looked away.

Sham was to return to the hospital the next day, for orders. For now, he was briefly free.

Now Stone was delivered, a weight & urgency dissipated. For all that they had slurred Bollons on the way, the crew were suddenly eager to explore it. They grouped according to various priorities. Yashkan & Lind sauntered off to some unpleasant gathering place the password to which, they kept hinting, they knew, to participate in something scandalous &
questionably legal. The crew’s devout members headed off to worship at temples to whatever. Others rubbed their hands, licked their lips for shore-food. Some were lustful.

Sham was certainly curious about that last. He watched that sniggering section of the crew making rude gestures & jokes, lascivious intimations & muttering about to which establishment they would go. Certainly he was intrigued, but on that issue he was shyer than he was curious, so after a second Sham veered & followed Vurinam & Borr, Benightly, Kiragabo Luck, a bunch of cheerful & chatty crew whose intentions were clear from their raucous rendition of the traditional landfall shanty, “We’re Going to Get Unbelievably Drunk (in a Pub).”

I
T TURNED OUT
, in fact, that the song was misleading: they visited not one pub but many, migrating from one alcohol-hole to the next in an increasingly bleary & beery & ultimately slobbering group like some restless migratory herd.

The first was called the Tall Bird. Its proper name was in Bollons, but it announced itself pictorially in its sign. It was lugubrious & underlit & full of muttering locals & visitors eyeing each other. Kiragabo put a small glass of something in front of Sham. It tasted like blackberries & dust.

“What was it the captain took from you?” said Kiragabo. “After Stone was bit?”

“Something from the wreck.”

“Ooh, mystery man. What was it, Soorap you toerag?”

“Just a thing,” he muttered, while his companions jeered & nudged him while he drank so it slopped on him, & demanded to know more, then forgot what they were talking
about when Vurinam launched into some unlikely lewd anecdote. Then to the Grumpy Molly, a more flamboyant place where the walls were garish & a gleaming jukebox blared syncopated JazzleHouse that quickly had Vurinam bouncing like a fool, flirting with anyone near. He was shouting & comparing clothes with a temporary dance partner, a young woman pretty enough to make Sham blush without her even seeing him.

Benightly saw him, though, Sham realised, & laughed at him. Then Vurinam was back at the table, & there was something sweeter & darker & a lot thicker than the first drink going down Sham’s throat. He pulled Daybe from beneath his shirt, let it have a sip, & his companions screamed at him for bringing the happy animal with them, then forgot what had scandalised them.

“It was a wossname,” Sham said. “Little thing for a camera.” It took a moment for his crewmates to understand he was answering a question from a whole pub ago.

“A memory!” said Luck. Benightly raised an eyebrow & was about to ask more, but was distracted by the insistence of a local bravo challenging him to an arm-wrestle. Then they were all at the pinnacle of a thoroughly corkscrewing path at the Clockerel, a snooty establishment signed by a hybrid timepiece-fowl, on a rock spur overlooking the raily harbour. Its staff tried for a moment to keep them out till it looked like causing more difficulties than letting them in.

“Look!” Sham bellowed. “ ’S the train!” Visible through the windows, it was, yes, the
Medes
. On it glimmered a few home lights. & it was Sham’s round, it turned out, his trainmates helpfully informed him, & helpfully they took out his moneypouch, & helpfully emptied it to pay for jugs of Stone-faces
knew what, & this time some bar snacks, too, chilli-fried dustcrab & locust thing the whiskers & segmenty legs of which Sham eyed without enthusiasm but chewed on nonetheless.

“How’d you even end up on the moler?” Vurinam asked him, bewildered but not unkind. The others were leaning in with interest to hear his answer. “Was it your mum & dad?” Sham was befuddled enough that he wasn’t even sure what it was he said in response.

“ ‘Mumble mumble mum & dad mumble’?” Vurinam said. “Well, thank you for elucidating.”

“It weren’t me,” Sham tried to explain, “it was my cousins. I ain’t got a …” The last four words sounded suddenly loud to him, & he closed his mouth before the words
mum & dad
could get out past his teeth & dampen the evening.

No one was listening anyway. His
Medes
-mates were all cackling loudly at Vurinam’s impression of him. Vurinam who was punching him on the shoulder, now, in friendly enough fashion, telling him, “Aaah, you’re alright, Soorap, just need to ease up a bit,” & there was Sham thinking
ease up on what?
but that was a mystery for another time, because conversation had moved on.

Benightly was looking at him. From the sympathy on the big man’s face might even have guessed the missing words. Sham took another sip.

Then where? Some place called the Ancient Cheese, another called the Formidable, another the Drip & Doctor & Drain & Dragon or something. At what point the
Medes
women & men had started up conversations with their fellow drinkers Sham had no idea, but he was at it, too.

“Wha’for the men staring?” he said to a woman with tattoos
on her neck & her hair coiled like rope. She peered over her glasses. “Where you from please also?”

“Bollons men like women indoors,” she said in Railcreole, the lingua franca of railsailors, with an accent Sham couldn’t place. “Don’t like the likes of me. From Cold Basin, me.” Cold Basin! Miles & miles away, easter even than Streggeye! “Come to buy rumours. Sell them, too.”

“I’ve heard about the rumourmarkets. Where are they?”

“You have to buy rumours of where they are from street-corner rumourjockeys, hope you get lucky.”

“Buy rumours about rumours?”

“How else?”

“They going to stop you doing whatever you’re here t’do?” Sham said.

She shook her head. “They ain’t so dumb here to tell outlanders what to do. I already done updiving on the east highlands.” She teased with hinting talk about Sowmerick, a mythical upsky toxicontinent. “What was this wreck, then?”

“Oh!” Sham’d forgotten he was telling her. A garbled version of the story of, what was it? Back he set off like a train on a straight stretch, with the tale of the wreck. He gabbled through it & she stroked his daybat. Then it was another pub & she was still with him & oops, Sham was outside, puking into the steep gutter. Leaving a little bit of Streggeye behind, he thought.
You’re welcome, Bollons
. More room for that schnapps, was that what they called it?

& again here he went with stories of the wreckage, of his fumbling, of the terrible mole-rat attack. “ ‘S’why we’re here. Our mate got his leg bit.”
Look at me
, thought Sham,
the storyteller
. A storm of faces hanging on him & listening as off in other bits of wherever they were Kiragabo & Vurinam were
dancing together, & someone gave Sham another drink, & someone said, “So what was it you found on the wreck?” & “Aaaaah,” he was saying, tap-tapped the side of his nose, never you mind, secrets, that was what. That was a secret. Not that he knew, nor that he’d refrained, apparently, from mentioning that he’d found something. Hey ho, drink up. Then he was under the stars & snuggling down his head all rested on a something. They weren’t so bad, he thought. They were nice, in Bollons, he thought. Giving him something to sleep on.

I
T WAS A STONE, WAS WHAT IT WAS
. H
IS PILLOW
.

Sham found that out gradually. Very gradually.

First a fingernail-sized rough something scratched & scratched at him. Through a very slow stretch Sham hauled himself like a hero out of the sticky slough of dreams up & oh, really very gradually, geared up the strength to reach up &, with his finger, pry open an eye.

So. Turned out he’d slept outside in the yard of some final pub. Whimpering at the assault of merciless morning light on his eyes, he blinked until he could see a few of his crewmates still snoozed in a barn, watched by contemptuous goats. Daybe the daybat was licking Sham’s face. Crumbs from around his mouth.
When did I eat something?
Sham thought. Couldn’t remember. Hauled himself up, froze & moaned & sat still while his head did its lurching business.

Stonefaces, he was thirsty. Was that
his
sick in a big splattery spread just beside him? No proof one way or the other. Through his fingertips, he glanced up at the sun. The upsky was pretty clear—a little fuzzing miasma, a few swirls of way-high
poison camouflaging a few terrible high-fliers, but it felt as if he could see all the way into space. The sun fairly glared back down at him, like a teacher disappointed.
Oh sod off
, Sham thought, & set out for the harbour.

Past terraces where women & men were watering windowsill plants, & cooking breakfast, or what, in fact, must be lunch, & was, whatever it was, by a long way the most unbelievably delicious-smelling food Sham had in all his years of life been privileged to sniff. Past the dogs & cats of Bollons, cheerful ownerless animals that trotted around unfussed, eyeing him sympathetically. Past the blocky rectangular churches, where the history of the godsquabble was sung. Down towards the harbour from where, over rows of houses, grocers, a statue of a sardonic-looking local godlet, he could hear the clack & smack & pistonhammer crack of trains.

It wasn’t a big town, Bollons, & there was really one main thoroughfare. Up he stared at the telescopes & sensors on its roofscape, trained by way of veering tubes & wires on Cambellia. This was somewhere new, a different place. In principle he was excited.
I am getting annoyed with this
, he thought, when he wasn’t sure how he felt.

He saw
Medes
comrades: Ebba Shappy at a café, waving over her chicory drink; Teodoso, who looked worse than Sham felt, & did not notice him; Dramin, the grey cook, examining odd herbs, who did see him & did not say hello.

Sham almost wept at the thought of breakfast. Bought a salty pasty from a vendor, sat on the steps of a street-pump to eat it & washed it down with the metally water. Fed finger- & thumbfuls to Daybe.

His head hurt, he ached all over, & he was sure, oh, yes, quite sure that he smelled. But whoever’d bought rounds with
his money the previous night had given him back his change. He’d slept dusty but he had slept. The passersby were ignoring him or grinning at him, less judgmental than the sun. He had two or three hours before he was due back on the train. Maybe hangovers were survivable. Whether he should or not, & despite that little flurry of familiar frustration with himself, Sham felt not too too bad.

A
T ONE CORNER OF THE RAILSEAFRONT WAS THE
T
EKNIQALL
Noshhouse, a combination eaterie, chatterie (at its many tables the captains & officers of moletrains & explorers were doing obviously secret, muttering business), announcerie & technickerie. Sham stopped. In the shadow behind its awnings, he saw Captain Naphi talking to the owner.

She was describing something big with her hands. She handed over a piece of paper, & the man nodded & placed it in the information window, among many such flyers. Sham squinted to make out the larger words.

INFORMATION LEADING TO
.

REWARD
.

PHILOSOPHY
.

He was about to continue. He was about, indeed, to creep away, not eager to have Naphi’s imperious melancholy spoil his mood. But there was to be no creeping. She saw him & beckoned him over. Not a flicker on his face, of course, but Sham felt his heart pitch.

“One more thing,” the captain said to the cafékeeper. “You have ordinators?” She pulled a handful of paper from one pocket. “I have something for you,” she said to Sham.
LARGE MOLDYWARPE
, Sham read as he took them.
UNIQUE COLOUR
.

She clenched her artificial hand so a hatch opened within it. Inside was the camera memory.
That’s mine!
Sham thought as she extracted it.
Finder’s rule!
The café owner was nodding them towards the back. “Come. I shall check this,” the captain said. “& then I’ll tell you where you’re going.”

In the sideroom was a collection of ordinators, cobbled-together equipment, tangled tubing, jury-rigged screens from movographs, black-&-white flickering projectors, lettered keys, the hmph of a diesel generator keeping the data safely on the machines.