Railsea

Stop. Turn. Run a few steps in this direction, a few in that, take off finally in a third. When they were out of sight, Sham burst out, wheezing, hauled himself out from under the cart.

Muddied, shaking & bloodied. He looked up, raised his arms & here came Daybe, out of the sky & back into his shirt. Sham swayed. Stood mostly ignored by Manihiki locals, until he croaked a question to one of them, got directions back to the docks & skulked, by as roundabout routes as he could manage, back to the Medes.

THE WAY TO THE DOCKS took Sham under disorganised streetlamps, electricity, gas, glowing sepia. Through places where those lights were salvage from humanity’s past, bright, historically misplaced colours; & even some alt-salvage, for show, turning footprint-like shapes, or unfolding swirls within containment fields.

His bruises were puffing up. A jollycart, its lamp swaying, shedding shadows as it rolled between snoozing trains, took him to the Medes.

“Late night, was it?” shouted Kiragabo. Sham cringed & stumbled over deck stuff.

“I’m late,” he said. “Captain’ll flay me.”

“She will not. She’s got other stuff on her mind.”

& indeed, when he made his way belowdecks, he didn’t just creep his way to Naphi’s cabin to drop the texts into her lockbox, but was distracted by & went to investigate the noises he heard from the officers’ mess. Oohs, ahs, goshes of impressedness.

The captain & her officers were crowded around something. “Sham,” someone said. “Get on in here, look at this.” Even the captain beckoned him. The officers made space around the table. On which were artefacts.

Sham thought his appearance, the muck & fight-residue on him, would necessitate an explanation. But no one cared. Sham had never heard the captain so voluble. Clickety-glimmer went her arm, the lights on it, the tripping of her fingers faster than flesh fingers could go.

“& look, this. You see here.” She was fiddling with a receiver. It winked & made henlike sounds. It showed lights in combinations. So she’d found the receiver-seller, then.

“Range of—well, miles, they tell me. Perhaps as many as a hundred. & it can pass through feet of earth.”

“They go deeper’n that, Captain,” someone said.

“Yes & they come up again. No one’s suggested it’ll take us to the moldywarpe’s door, Mr. Quex. No one claims the receiver will let us in & make us tea. We will still have a job to do. You’ll still be a hunter. We still even have to learn how to read this thing. But.” She looked around. “Get this—” She held up a little transmitter. “Get this in its skin—it will change things.”

Bozlateen Quex shifted his dandy clothes &, with Naphi’s permission, picked up the receiver. It was cobbled together. More cobbled than together, really—a mess poised at the point of collapse. Made from arche- salvage & alt-salvage. It whispered like a live thing. Odd little circuit. Antiquity & alien expertise mashed into one ugly astonishing machinelette.

Sham moved for a better look. Quex twirled dials & the lights changed. Changed colour, position, velocity. Sham stopped moving a moment, then continued, & as he did so, so did those lights. Everyone looked at him. He blinked & moved again. The lights’ shenanigans continued with his motion.

“What the hell?” said Quex. He prodded a button, the glow grew in his hand. The instrument was paying attention to Sham. Daybe poked its head up from his shirt.

“Ah. It’s the animal,” said the captain. “It has the thing still on its leg. This one is picking up something from that, some backwash signal. Quex, you’ll have to adjust it. Make sure it’s looking for these ones, instead.” She shook her handful of receivers. As they rattled, the receiver barked like a duck & its light changed again.

“As I say,” the captain said, “there is some learning to do. But still. This changes things, does it not? So so so.” She rubbed her hands. She looked at Sham, the source of this idea, to seek out this mechanism. She did not smile—she was Captain Naphi!—but nod at him she did. Which was enough to fluster him. “Check what details we have, work out where last there was sign. Where we might find good molegrounds. That is where we’re heading.”

THIRTY-SIX

I KNOW, BUT WE CAN’T JUST LEAVE HIM,” DERO SAID.

“We ain’t just leaving him,” Caldera said. “It ain’t like we haven’t got people coming to take care of him. You think I won’t miss him, too? You know he’d want us to go.”

“I know, but I don’t want us to go. Not with him here. He needs us.”

The siblings Shroake had retired to another room to have this argument, but if they’d thought it removed them from Sham’s earshot they were mistaken.

“Dero.” Caldera’s voice was subdued. “He’ll forget we’re gone.”

“I know but then he’ll remember & be sad again.”

“& then forget again.”

“… I know.”

When the Shroakes came out, into the corridor where he waited, Dero, red-eyed, stared at Sham as if in challenge. Caldera stood a fraction behind her brother, hand on his shoulder. They met Sham’s gaze.

“He’s why we haven’t gone looking for them,” Caldera said. “It’s been a while. It’s not like what you told us was a big surprise. But him.”

“He’s been waiting,” her brother said.

“Byro’s been waiting to hear,” Caldera said. “That’s what he’s been writing. Letters to them. Are you a letter-writer, Sham?”

“Not as much as I should be. With Troose & Voam—” Sham stopped, aware, suddenly, of how long it had been since he’d sent them word. “Last night,” Sham said. “When I was here before. When I came out, I saw something. Someone. Your house.” He looked grim. “It’s being watched.” The Shroakes stared at him.

“Well, yeah,” said Dero. He shrugged.

“Oh,” said Sham. “Well. As long as you know.”

“Of course,” said Caldera.

“Well, obviously of course,” Sham said. “But, you know, I just wanted to make sure. So, why? Why is it of course?”

“Why’s it watched?” said Caldera.

“ ’Cause we’re the Shroakes,” said Dero. He jerked his right thumb at himself as he made the announcement, used his left one to snap his braces. Raised one eyebrow. Sham could not help laughing. Even Dero, after a moment of glowering, laughed a bit, too.

“They were sort of salvors, like I said,” Caldera told Sham. “& sort of makers. & investigators. They went places & did things this lot would love to be able to do. They want to know where they went, & why.”

“Who does?” Sham said. “Which lot? Manihiki?”

“Manihiki,” said Caldera. “So of course, when they didn’t come back, Byro couldn’t go to the navy. Search & rescue ain’t their priority. Oh, they came offering to search, asking what maps we had, where they’d been going.”

“As if we’d tell them,” Dero said. “As if we knew.”

“They didn’t keep logs of their route on the train,” Caldera said. “That’s why they hid that memory. Even wounded, one of them made sure to bury it in the ground. They must’ve realised there were hints on it about where they’d been.”

“They took windabout ways where they were going & windabout back again,” Dero said.

“Dad Byro might have been getting a little …” Caldera’s voice petered out & picked up again. “But he wasn’t so gone as to trust the navy. Nor tell them what he knew of the route.”