Railsea

& philosophers, but it was, those xenophobes sniffed, the only one that didn’t do it wrong.

Sham nuzzled his recuperating daybat. It still not infrequently tried to bite him, but the force & frequency of the snaps was decreasing. Sometimes, like now, when he swaddled it, the animal buzzed with what Sham had learned was purring. Bat happiness.

“You ever been?” said Sham.

“Cambellia?” Vurinam pursed his lips. “Why would a person go there?”

“Exploring,” Sham said. He had no notion what governments there were on Cambellia to get things wrong & not be Streggeye. He stared towards it in fascination.

“When you’ve been trainsfolk as long as I have …” Vurinam began. Sham rolled his eyes. The trainswain was barely older than him. “I’m sure you must’ve heard stuff. Bad people, wild people,” Vurinam said. “Crazy things out there!”

“Sometimes,” Sham said, “it seems like every country in the railsea’s full of wild things & bad places & terrible animals. That’s all you ever hear.”

“Well,” Vurinam said. “What if they are? The thing is with a place like Cambellia, it’s the size of it. Miles & miles. Get me more than a day from the railsea lines, I get very twitchy. What I need to know’s that any moment, if things gets tricky, I can run to harbour, show my papers, get on a train, hightail away. A life on the open rails.” He breathed deep. Sham rolled his eyes again. “If you head northwest in Cambellia, you know where you get eventually?”

Remnants of geography lessons, remembered images from class ordinators, went through Sham’s head. “The Nuzland,” he said.

“The Nuzland.” Vurinam raised eyebrows. “Bloody hell, eh?”

The highest reaches of Cambellia climbed past where atmosphere shifted, up higher than where the carved gods, the Stonefaces, lived on Streggeye, into the upsky. The Nuzland wasn’t a pinnacle or a ridge. It was bigger by many times than Streggeye or Manihiki. Yes, Sham knew the stories, that somewhere there were whole bad plateau worlds in the upsky. Cities of the dead. Curdled high hells. Like the Nuzland, which was right over there. Sham could see its edge.

Vurinam muttered.

“What?” said Sham.

“Said sorry,” Vurinam said. He was staring out to railsea. “Said I’m sorry for what I said to you. It weren’t your fault, what happened to Stone. Might as well say it was my fault for hitting him when I jumped in the cart.” The thought, Sham said to himself, had occurred. “Or Unkus’s fault for being in my way. Or for not holding on hard enough. Or that captain’s fault for wrecking the train leaving it for us to see. Whatever. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

Sham blinked. “ ‘S’alright,” he said.

“Not really it ain’t,” Vurinam insisted. “When I’m upset I rage around. I was like a mole on the hooks.” He looked at Sham at last. “I hope you’ll accept my sorry.” Pleasingly formal, he stuck out his hand.

Sham blushed. Fumbled & juggled with his bat. Freed up his own right hand & shook.

“You’re a gent, Sham ap Soorap,” Vurinam said. “What’s it called?”

“Eh?”

“Your daybat.”

“Oh.” Sham looked at it. He spread its wings. It chittered in annoyance but let him. He’d wracked his brains for memories of Fremlo’s lessons, consulted the doctor’s medical textbooks with extremely uncharacteristic rigour. Fingertip gentle, he’d found the spot in the wing where bone ground against bone, & set the fracture in the multicoloured wings with a tiny makeshift splint.

“It’s called … Day … Be,” he said. “Daybe.” The name was plucked from nowhere, in panic at the question, & he almost groaned to hear it. It was out now. Too late to take it back.

“Daybe.” Vurinam blinked. “Daybe the daybat.” He scratched his head. “I make no judgments. Daybe it is. It’s on the mend, I hope.”

“It’s getting better.”

“& Unkus?”

“Depends,” Sham said. “Dr. Fremlo says that depends how fast we get to Bollons.”

“Best get there fast then.”

They were caning through diesel. Doubly desperate to get to the island now, for fuel from the town’s plants, as well as for the sake of poor feverish Unkus, shivering & singing again, now, but not pleasingly. Caterwauling in delirium in the doctor’s hold.

THIRTEEN

ON A DRIZZLY DAY THE CREW SAW TRAINS AT THE rain-veiled horizon. Two, three, six, amid rocklets & islets & crowning nubs a few yards across, maybe topped with scrappy treelife & halos of birds. They saw dot-dot-dot sky punctuation of steam-train exhaust. A flat-topped cold volcano, a craggy irregular mountain, on its slopes the craggy irregular town of Bollons.

The western side of the island, facing Cambellia, that farthest shore, was mostly bare but for telescopy arrays. On its eastern side were the precarious-looking concrete & wood neighbourhoods of Bollons itself. As if the town didn’t want to look at the edge of the world. Houses & warehouses ran down the slope to the shore where the metal & wood & stone of the lines began, where diesel & steam trains puttered gently in the railsea bay. Sham saw the old halls his crewmates said were the guildbuildings of spies & ne’er-do-wells, where rumourmarkets were held.

“A few coppers’ll get you a questionable assertion from someone drunk & past it.” So Fremlo said. “A handful of dollars, something said with a straight face by one whose information has panned out more than once in the past. More than that, you’re into the realm of the tempting secret.

“You won’t get it from the source, I mean. The rumour-mongers sell them on.” They’d vouch for none of them, of course—that was the point. But if it were them, they’d tell their customers, they’d set more store by this story than that one—hence the higher price tag. & tell you what: buy this one, they’d throw in another—almost certainly the ravings of a feverish fantasist—free.

The Medes ran up flags telling any watchers who they were, & a bone-sign & red exclamation, to say there was an injury aboard. “Slow.” Captain Naphi’s voice on the intercom was more terse even than usual. She must be frustrated not to be pursuing her philosophy, Sham thought. They rounded harbour-edge rocks on which railgulls raucously announced themselves.

Railsailors watched them from other trains on the fanning-out rails of the inlet, each vehicle surrounded by carts, to ferry crews to land. A smokestacked steamer snorted a soot-cloud exactly as if in disdain. The Medes switched, backed & switch-backed towards the railfront. Veered close enough to another vehicle that it looked as if the figureheads were leaning in to kiss, short-sighted paramours. A diesel molar like the Medes. It was mostly moletrains there.

What were these other vehicles, though? Sham had no clue. They were smaller & stubbier than the hunters. The equipment he could see being oiled & readied was nothing he could name. It wasn’t salvage, he was almost certain. On a diesel train of strange design two men vigorously hand-cranked a chugging engine on caterpillar treads, from which protruded a long coiled tube, a glass-fronted helmet & brown bodysuit, in which someone performed ponderous gymnastics.

“What the Stonefaces is that?” Sham said. The pumpers had the brick-coloured skin & distinctive electronically tinkered & doohickey-enhanced goggle-glasses of Kammy Hammy, that secretive many-island nation of, supposedly, warlords.

“That?” Sham had been talking to himself, but Yehat Borr heard him, paused as he hand-scurried up a nearby ropeladder. He swung & spun & controlled his descent, stopping in front of Sham hanging upside down. “That,” Borr said, “is explorers.”

Of course. It was hardly as if it was just distant-ranging molers, fuel-hungry or desperate for something to