One closed with a terrible sucking noise on Yorkaj Teodoso’s chest. He screamed. It tugged him from the traintop deck, dangled him, reeled him in to the island they passed. “Fire! Fire!” Captain Naphi shouted. Trainsfolk were screaming Teodoso’s name. Where shots hit the attacking things’ skins they sprayed dark blood. They recoiled, but not far, not for long; they came down blindly grubbing, their mouths moistly smacking.
They launched themselves at the crew. Yashkan howled. Fired the pistol he held blindly behind him as he ran. He almost hit Lind. Mbenday ducked under one of the looping coils, leapt another, smacked at a third with a machete. The slippery thing spasmed & oozed great slopping dollops of slime.
“Fire & drive!” the captain shouted. “Accelerate! On, will you?” Down came the coils again, & again found prey. One grabbed Cecilie Klimy by her left arm, one by her right. Her crewmates howled her name. They ran for her, they grabbed for her, Lind & Mbenday & even gibbering Yashkan pawing to try to get hold of her, but with awful collaboration the two mouth-things moved in concert, hauled her shrieking off as the train moved. The crew were firing now with purpose, were slashing with something other than utter panic. “Klimy!” they shouted. “Teodoso!”
Their colleagues were gone. Pulled out of sight, into the rock. Tendril-beast after tendril-beast tried to grip the train as it went, suckering onto the grinding wheels, the splintering deck.
“You will not!” It was Naphi herself shouting. Not standing back, right there, shooting with a weapon in one hand, swivelling through a succession of spikes & blades in her left limb until she fixed on a nastily serrated edge & slashed at a coiling enemy.
“We have to go back!” Vurinam shouted, but the train kept moving, accelerating, as the creatures tried again. “We have to go back for them!” Benightly roared & fired a big rapid gun & the monsters shuddered. A ripple corkscrewed around & went the height of the island.
“Oh my god!” said Fremlo. “It’s all one thing!”
On the stone the necks conjoined into a single thick ropy body that wound into the upsky. At the landform’s very top, at the level of the toxic clouds, was the creature’s diffuse gas-filled body. It was like the canopy of a great tree all fruited with watching eyes.
The mountainside shook, the shoreline curved away. The
“What in the name of holy bloody hell?” someone said.
“Siller,” Fremlo said. The doctor looked at the captain. At the thing behind them. They couldn’t see its tendrils any more. They’d retreated & lay still. “It’s called a siller. Breathes up there, dips its feeding toes down here. & that …” The doctor pointed at the canyon. “That’s the Kribbis Hole. That’s why that siller hunts here. Because to stay out of the hole, you have to get close to it.”
“Those rails!” Vurinam shouted. “That shunt you into the damn hole! Why don’t the angels fix them?”
“They aren’t broken,” said Dr. Fremlo. “In this place, that’s how the rails are supposed to be. This place is an old, old, old trap.”
“Captain,” Vurinam said. “We have to go back.” Captain Naphi was examining her tracker. She didn’t speak. “I thought this place was a bloody legend,” Vurinam gabbled. He stared at Naphi & abruptly stood straighter. “You knew,” he said.
There was silence. Naphi raised her head to meet his eyes. She did not look cowed. She put the scanner down. Spread her artificial fingers.
“Don’t shilly-shally, Mr. Vurinam,” she said. “Make your accusation.”
“You knew where we were,” he breathed. “But because your damned moldywarpe’s nearby, you said nothing. Couldn’t be bothered to have us go the long way round.” He choked up & stopped. The crew were all open-eyed & staring.
“Anyone else?” Naphi said at last. “Anyone similar accusations? Speak freely.” Nothing. “Very well. I’ve heard of this place, as have you. & it is true that when Mr. Mbenday said the switches were misbehaving, a possibility occurred to me. So if you arraign me before your court accused of having halfheld notions, fleeting recollections, then I plead guilty.
“If, however, you claim I deliberately allowed my crew to steer themselves into danger, then sir how dare you?” She walked towards Vurinam. “I did not hear you complaining about our route nor our objective. I haven’t heard you declining your share of whatever comes should we be successful in this endeavour.”
Vurinam wriggled under her gaze. “You
“Yes,” Naphi shouted. She raised her hand. Her louder, clattering one. She shook it. “I do. That’s what we
The captain still clenched her fist at him. Its lights winked, it rattled. But—wait. “Your arm,” Vurinam said. “Captain. That thing hurt you, you’re—bleeding?”
Her constructed limb had cracked. &, what made no sense, the split was oozing blood.
“How can she …?”
“Where’s it …?”
The captain herself stared, as fascinated by the red drips as anyone else. Fremlo was there in a moment, prodding & squinting at the damaged limb. Naphi seemed to wake, tried to shake herself free, but the doctor was having none of it, kept on with the examination.
“You’re cut rather badly, Captain,” Fremlo announced at last. With scorn, the doctor released the arm as if it was hot, turned to face the crew, & continued. “Your arm, Captain. The one that appears to have been encased in metal & molebone, all this time. That is in fact not missing at all, only hidden. Your still-present left arm is injured, Captain.”
Silence spread like a slick. Naphi drew herself calmly up. Not an instant of embarrassment crossed her face. Slowly, with ostentation, refusing to flinch from her crew’s gazes, she held up the bleeding limb.
“Indeed,” she said at last. “I will require you to take care of this for me.”
“All this time,” Vurinam whispered. Mbenday was staring at Naphi, back at his friend Vurinam, back & forth. “You were lying!” Vurinam said. “It was like some game! Oh, I get it. It was so they’d take you serious.” Vurinam shimmied pugnaciously in his dusty coat, his eyes wide. “So you didn’t get left out.”
It had been a badge of intensity, of honour, that pretended lack. Had Naphi feared that fully in possession of her original body, she would not possess some requisite rigour? Certainly it looked that way.
She drew herself up. “There are those,” she said. She was using her most splendid voice. “Whose faith. In their philosophies. Follows from something being taken from them. Who need that terrible bite & rupture to spur their fascination. Their revenge.
“It is weak of them,” she said. “I would not so wait. Nor, however, would I fail to know what it is to suffer those agonies for a philosophy. & so. & hence.” She raised her mechanical limb-glove. “I fail to see your point. My rigour, Mr. Vurinam, is such that I have both made & refused to make a sacrifice.”
It was a good line. One by one, the crew looked back at Vurinam. He stamped in frustration.
“That don’t even bloody
“Something occurs to me,” said Dr. Fremlo. “Arguably, right now it ain’t where Mocker-Jack is that should concern us. Forget for a moment our captain’s skin, bones & circuitry.” There was a noise, an engine grind, from somewhere. “Let’s focus on what’s important. We’ve just lost two friends.” The doctor let that sit with them a moment. “The issue is not so much where the moldywarpe is, as what it’s doing.”
Fremlo pointed at the pass through which they’d come. “Do you think it lay just so, sounded off like it did, just at this point, when we were where we were, by chance? It
“Don’t be crazy,” someone started to say.
“It’s leading us into danger,” Fremlo interrupted. “The mole is trying to kill us.”
Only the wind spoke, for a long while. It seemed as if Mocker-Jack might laugh, as if they might hear a booming moldywarpe snigger, but no.
