Railsea

vibrate. Which swooped down towards the rear of the rearmost carriage, clenched claws like dockyard machines that split & splintered the vehicle’s roof, &, wings hammering again, ascended. Still gripping. So that one by one, from the back of the train forward, the cars of the Shroakes’ train uncoupled from the rails, began to rise.

FIFTY-FOUR

ELSEWHERE IN THE RAILSEA, THE TIES WERE STONE-HARD, the iron of the rails was a black no amount of train-wheel polishing could make shine, & the ground beneath & between them was very cold. Over such tracks came the Medes.

Had it been observed by a sky-dwelling god with any knowledge of moling, such a watcher would have been struck by the vehicle’s speed. The Medes raced on the icy railroad in shekkachashek, a rhythm suited to hot pursuit, not to these conditions. No moldywarpe was visible: the train would, the imagined watcher might have presumed, been better suited to prowl at lower speeds & slippery wheelbeats.

At the Medes’s prow, the captain, her tracer in her mechanical hand, looked up & down between screen & the horizon. The latter was all grey air & baleful clouds: the former a dancing dot of red, a complaining diode.

“Mr. Mbenday,” Naphi said, “it’s taken a turn star’d. Switchers to switch.” Switch they did, curving through a sequence of points, until the scanner light was again nearly straight ahead.

When she did not track on that relentless screen, the captain retired with books of philosophies. Reading memoirs & thoughts & speculations of the rare completers. She made notes in the margins. What happens when the evasive concepts you hunt, get found?

Three times the devilish fast beast they followed dug too far, too fast, too deep to be followed, dragged its glimmer-self beyond the range of Captain Naphi’s reader. Each time, within a few days of roaming, scanner at maximum power, drawing on more traditional techniques of moleground deduction, she found the signal again.

The second time they lost & found the blip that meant great talpa, they had seen, far, far off, a molehill born. An eruption of dust that silenced them with awe, & left a truly prodigious mound behind.

“Wish the lad could see this,” Fremlo had muttered. “I heard it was him got her the scanner. He’d have liked this.” No one answered.

There was still a chase; they were still molers, tracking & inferring & judging on their hunterly insights. But now Captain Naphi’s philosophy left an electrical spoor. Perhaps once or twice the captain looked like she was whispering, muttering something that might have including the word “thanks” as she fiddled with her receiver.

Mocker-Jack did not travel like a moldywarpe should travel. “How does it know?” Vurinam demanded of the world. “How does it know we’re on its bloody tail? How come it keeps trying to get away?” That was how he interpreted the creature’s unusual evasive speed & motion.

It’s always taunted the captain, some crewmates whispered back. That’s why it’s her philosophy.

Hob Vurinam had another question. As they circled a stretch of ice, in the very bloody light of evening, as he turned his pockets inside out & right-way round again in fret, he said to Dr. Fremlo, “D’you ever feel like it might be cheating?”

The doctor was watching groundhogs bicker by their holes. Fremlo said nothing.

“If Naphi gets Mocker-Jack like this,” Vurinam said, “mightn’t it be cheating to complete your philosophy that way? Can you shortcut an insight-hunt, do you think?” Fremlo threw scrunched-up paper into a groundhog squabble as the train passed. “Wonder what Sham would think,” Vurinam said.

“Not much,” Fremlo said. “It isn’t salvage, is it? It’s just a big mole.”

The sun went down on the two of them talking about Sham, while the vehicle to which they owed temporary paid loyalty described raggedy spirals in intersecting rails, closing in on its captain’s obsession.

FIFTY-FIVE

THE FIRST FEW TIMES HE ENTICED IT FROM THE SKY, Sham just stroked Daybe & took heart from the presence of something that liked him & didn’t care if he could verify that a piece of railsea was a particular piece of pictured railsea. Those duties continued. He said yes to a petrified forest; a glacier creeping at them, its slowly incoming edge already eating railsea rails; a particular patch of distinctive hillocky ground. “Is that what you saw?”

Each time Sham was out there to check, Daybe circled. Each time Sham said yes—until that last one, when, after a hesitation, he told the truth: no. & after another hesitation, Elfrish nodded & altered course.

Daybe wouldn’t enter Sham’s dreary cell, but it perched on the rim of the tiny window. With outswept arms & exaggerated pointings Sham would encourage it out to local islands, to disrupt railgulls & to pick up snacks of grubs. With swoopy beckonings he’d entice it back. He saw it flit under the clouds & upsky, above a ragged reef of salvage.

Where were they?

Sham was at the mercy of a man he knew to be wholly ruthless. Of murderers who would throw him overboard or spit him on a trainhook for the laugh of it, if the thought appealed. But as long as he was alive & making himself useful, he was somewhere he had never been. Neither doctoring nor pining, but somewhere quite new, doing something new, & with that came—whatever the danger—excitement.

Robalson visited him at all hours & would go on about nothing. Would start halfheartedly taunting Sham, until that was done & he’d just sit, uneasily. “There’s so many stories going round,” he said at last. “If whatever it is the Shroakes are after, that their family found, is even half as good as people think it might be, we’re going to be …” He made lip-smacking noises. “They say you can’t even imagine it. So we got to keep moving before anyone else gets smart. Course, they ain’t got your pictures, have they?”

No, thought Sham, but they’ll be after the Shroakes. He bit his lip.

A WHISTLE SOUNDED, & there came the heavy beat of running. The train accelerated, skewed away from the direction it had been going. This was skilled switching. The swift manoeuvres continued, these sudden changes of direction, abrupt speedings-up & slowings-down. Robalson leapt up.

“What is it?” Sham shouted. His jailer took a moment to shoot him a very nervous grin, then was gone & turning the key. Sham stared from the little window & caught his breath. The Tarralesh was racing after another train. Some small merchant vehicle, plying goods between railsea islands, now gusting at the limit of its steam strength. “Get out of here!” he shouted across the miles, & as if it heard him, the littler train tried.

There was a booming. A fusillade of missiles arced with dreadful laziness from the pirate train, over the rails, to rainbow down in a succession of withering explosions that sent ripped-up rail shreds & ties in all directions. One of the flying bombs hit the rear of their quarry.

Sham moaned. The caboose exploded, sent flames & metal & wood in a big splash, as well as, oh my Stonefaces, little pinwheeling figures. They landed scattered. & near those who still moved, now fitfully, injured, the earth erupted, as carnivorous burrowers smelled person-meat.

Another flurry of shots, & the train was immobilised. Over horrible minutes, the Tarralesh came closer. Sham could hear the crew catcalling & arming themselves. On the deck of the immobilized train the men & women waited with swords, guns & terrified expressions. They may not have been soldiers or pirates, but they would fight.

NOT THAT IT DID them overmuch good. The Tarralesh bombed them some more, spilt defenders like spillikins onto the awful ground. Elfrish’s vehicle came alongside, to an adjacent rail, &