Railsea

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.

FIFTEEN

IT WAS A STONE, WAS WHAT IT WAS. HIS 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 cafe, 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.

SIXTEEN

AT ONE CORNER OF THE RAILSEAFRONT WAS THE TEKNIQALL 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 cafekeeper. “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 cafe owner was nodding them towards the back. “Come. I shall check this,” the captain said. “& then I’ll