Railsea

“Byro did,” she said. “However confused he got, that he never told. We have his machine. It’s got secrets. & there’s what you told us.”

The Shroakes bustled from room to salvage-filled room, from room to open-to-the-sky-&-wall-less room, from room to whirring-clockwork-&-diesel-instrument-mazed room. They gathered things, pulled them on carts, lined them up in the kitchen. They pulled clothes from closets, tugged them to test for strength, fingered them to test for warmth, sniffed them to test for mildew.

“But wait,” Sham said. “I heard, someone told me, you’re going on Engineday. That’s not for ages!”

“That worked, then,” Dero said.

“Engineday,” said Caldera, “is when we put it about that we’d be going. Should give us a little while before anyone thinks to look, or comes after us.”

“Comes after you?” Sham said. “You really think …?”

“Indubitably,” Dero said.

“Yes,” Caldera said. “They will. Too many rumours about what our parents were looking for.” She rubbed her finger & thumb in a money motion.

“You said that weren’t it,” said Sham.

“It weren’t it. But rumours don’t care what was it or not. So—” She put her finger to her lips.

Sham’s mind was going like train wheels at their fastest. “Why do you want to go?” he said.

“Don’t you?” Caldera said.

“I don’t know!” Exploring. Finding something new. All that way. “But what about my, my family,” Sham said, then stopped. Hold on. Would Troose & Voam mind if he went?

Yes, they would mind. But not as much as if he were a miserable bad doctor for years.

“I think,” Sham said slowly, trying to think it through, “they wanted me to do well, maybe even get my own philosophy.”

“I thought it was just captains did that,” Dero said.

“You could be a captain from being a doctor. Although I don’t know if they thought it through that much.” What Troose & Voam knew well was that he’d had a space to be filled, Sham thought with a little ache for them.

“Dero,” said Caldera. “Go get it. Do you want to philosophise?” she said to Sham when her brother left. “Get obsessed with an animal? Give it a meaning? Make that your life?” There was nothing snide in her tone. She staggered under the load she carried. “There are places,” she said, “where rails go up off the beach into uplands.”

“Railrivers, yeah,” he said.

“Yes. Some go up the mountains. Right into the uplands.”

“& loop down again somewhere else. They all merge back into the railsea.”

“Some of them go into old dead cities up there.”

“& out again,” Sham said. Caldera looked at him.

“This is heavy,” she said. Her burden, not the story. Sham took it from her, carried it to the jetty. Where he stopped, & stared.

Something was approaching from between knolls in the railsea. The earth around it breaking with curious moles’ snouts. Here came Dero, in—well. In a train.

The engine was a snubby, tough-looking thing with a few small carriages behind it. There were glass portholes in its flanks. Daybe raced through the intervening air to investigate. The engine was armoured & chimneyless. There was no telltale exhaust at all, that Sham could see or smell. & these were not electrified rails. “How does it run?” he whispered.

Dero leaned out of the oncoming vehicle. He looked up at Daybe, who dipped in his turning & angled his wings. “Caldera,” Dero shouted.

She stood by Sham. “We’re off, then,” she said to him. She looked through gaps in the surrounding rocks, into the railsea. A complicated tangle of gauges, here, a tricksy piece of switching, there. “So. Would you like to come, Sham?”

& Daybe cawed, an uncharacteristic crowlike sound, just as if it had heard the idea & got excited. & Dero shouted, “Caldera, come on.”

“What if it’s terrible?” Sham blurted out. “What if it all ends in tears? It ain’t like there’s no warning. You were the one reminded me we’re supposed to shun it!”

Caldera did not reply. She & her brother turned, in the same moment, & stared at the house. Sham knew they were thinking of Dad Byro. Tears came up in Caldera’s eyes. They stayed there a moment. Then without a word, she pushed them down again.

Sham could be with them. & while he wouldn’t be a salvor, nor would he be a train doctor nor a moler either. He’d be something else.

But he wasn’t saying anything, & then it was a moment later & still he wasn’t saying anything. He heard himself saying nothing. Caldera looked at him, a long, a long moment. Then at last gave a sad shrug. The train approached. The switches on its route switched. Caldera turned away from Sham towards it.

The train accelerated faster than Sham would have imagined. It turned more tightly, too. He, contrariwise, was still.

“Wait,” he shouted. He ran at last forward. But he was slow, & the train was fast, & here it was at the jetty’s end, opening a door, & Caldera was jumping on & getting in, not looking at him, determinedly not looking at him, & the train was moving again. How did that happen so quick? What crazy cutting edge & salvage-cobbled equipment were they driving?

“Wait!” Sham shouted again, reaching the edge of the wood, jumping in the glints off the tracks below, but time had moved on & the Shroakes were receding.

Sham sat. Just collapsed on his bum. Watched the rear end of a train move at an amazing rate.

The light was going. When the sun went down it went down fast. As if giving up all the effort with a flop of relief. The Shroakes’ train was away in the dusk.

Leaving Sham to pick himself up when all sight of it was gone. He looked into the shallow coastal rails. Made his way through the garden, past the house, under the washing-machine arch, back into bloody Manihiki. Where his moletrain waited.

Stupid, useless. That’s what he kept saying to himself, all the way.

FORTY-ONE

ROBALSON WAS IN THE PUB AGAIN. “WHAT GOT HOLD of you?” he said, at the sight of Sham’s face.

“I’m stupid & useless.”

“Blimey,” Robalson said.

“You know I said I was going to see some people? Well, they gave me the chance to go somewhere with them. They wanted me to go with them, I think. One of them. & I wanted to go with her. But I bottled it. & I don’t even know why! I think I did want to go. But I can’t have done, can I?”

“Who were they?”

“Just a family. I found something of theirs. A sort of a treasure map. Sort of. & they’ve gone off to find out if it’s right.”

“This is them Soaks. & you didn’t go?”

“I didn’t. Because I’m stupid …”

“Whoa, hush. Look. Tell me about it. I don’t think you’re stupid or useless. You’re no one’s fool, Sham.”

Nice to have someone think so. It was a scrappy version of the story that Sham told. He rambled about the wreck, spoke in vague terms of “evidence,” of “something,” of a secret that the poor dead prospectors appeared to have managed to keep, that the Shroakes had the right to know.

Robalson was rapt. “I heard Engineday they was going!” he said.