Railsea

SIXTY-NINE

IT WAS BADLY BATTERED, A BRUTALISED & CREAKING train in which the Shroakes passed beyond any horizon most trainsfolk would ever see. & here their troubles began.

Actually—

It is, in fact, not time for the Shroakes. Not quite.

That phrase—here the troubles began—is ancient. It has been the fulcrum of many stories, the moment when everything is much bigger & more vertiginous than anyone thought. This is in the nature of things.

Technically, our name, to those who speak science, is Homo sapiens—wise person. But we have been described in many other ways. Homo narrans, juridicus, ludens, diaspora: we are storytelling, legal, game-playing, scattered people, too. True but incomplete.

That old phrase has the secret. We are all, have always been, will always be, Homo vorago aperientis: person before whom opens a vast & awesome hole.

SEVENTY

OUT OF THE EAST & SOUTH THE TRAIN CAME. IT howled, it whistled, en route through & out of the known railsea. It breathed diesel breath. An everyday moletrain, transmogrified by urgency & peculiar direction into something more than itself, something grander, buckling of more swashes.

The Medes was not alone. It came as part of a multitude.

Syncopating with the staccato of its iron wheels was the hard wood rush of a Bajjer war party, windblown in the Medes’s wake. Like a huge semitrained predator, the subterrain Pinschon grumbled fast into the light where rails allowed, submerged again to tunnel alongside & below the hunters.

Leaning from the Medes, Sham was at the head of an armada. Don’t dwell on that, the voice in him said. Don’t even think about it. You have a job to do.

It had been a bittersweet reunion, in the mashed-up Bajjer grounds. Of course, the eruption of welcome from his trainmates had made Sham cry happy tears. The tears had stayed & the happiness gone when he heard what had gone down, of the loss of Klimy & Teodoso to a monster out of the bad sky.

“Someone punished us,” a Bajjer warrior said, staring at pools of scummy offrun in what had been fertile soil. “Who? For what?”

“Who,” Sirocco said, “is easy.” She had leaned on the subterrain’s hatch.

“You!” Sham said.

“Good to see you again, young man.” She touched the brim of an imaginary hat.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sham!” It was Hob Vurinam. Arms outstretched, vaguely dandy threads even more battered than usual by the remorseless journey, tiredness making him look much older than he was, but his lined face wide in delight. He grabbed Sham & they pounded each other’s back in greeting, & Vurinam scruffed up Sham’s now-shaggy hair for longer than you would have thought, only becoming embarrassed after a few seconds.

& there was Mbenday, jumping from foot to foot, almost as vigorous in his welcome, & Kiragabo Luck, more restrained but not by much, Shappy, all his trainmates, suddenly Dr. Fremlo to Sham’s happy squawk, giving Sham a huge & lengthy hug, then holding him at arm’s length & shaking his hand.

“If it weren’t for her we wouldn’t have ever found you,” Mbenday said, pointing at the salvor. “She knows how to follow trails, & she was watching the bat, & then there were rumours that someone had you, & then that there’d been something terrible. But it was her.”

“Me?” Sirocco said. She glanced down into the bowels of the Pinschon. “I’m just here for the salvage.”

People lined up to greet the returned boy. Even Lind & Yashkan shook Sham’s hand, surly but not wholly ungracious. & then, suddenly, there was Captain Naphi.

She stood back. Sham hesitated. Was he happy to see her? Unhappy? He could not have said. She looked a little lessened. Diminished? She wore—Sham blinked at the sight—a bandage wrapped around her artificial arm. He bowed, & the captain bowed back. “Ap Soorap,” she said. “I’m pleased to see you’re alive. We’ve worked hard. We’ve given a lot to find you. A lot.”

“How did you know where I was?” he said. “Why did you break off hunting? &—” He stared at the stink all around. “& who then?”

“Who did this?” Sirocco said. “Who do you think?”

“Pirates!” someone shouted. Sirocco shook her head.

“That? See that?” She pointed at a particular ditch of sump. “That oil—you’ll excuse me but as you can imagine I know my effluent & runoff—that particular oil …” She wafted the air towards her & sniffed like a connoisseur. “… is used almost exclusively by one force. The Manihiki ferronavy.”

There was a silence. “That—” She pointed at a bush not merely killed but dripping with the remains of leaves enzymatically degraded into slop like a salted slug. “—is their favourite unleafer.”

“I heard it was pirates,” the same voice as before said.

“They may have driven under the skull-&-spanners flag.” Sirocco shrugged. “But …” She performed a mocking salute.

“What do they want?” Sham said. Then looking across the acres of miserable Bajjer, he said, “I know why. They were looking for information. & punishing the Bajjer because of who they once helped.”

“What?” said Vurinam. “Who did they help?”

“They want information about me,” Sham said. “& the people I’m trying to go after. & they’re punishing these people. Because of who they taught about the railsea.”

The Bajjer who could understand him nodded. “Shroakes,” someone said.

“The Shroakes,” said Sham. That little bit of history! That investigation, by Caldera & Dero’s parents, the meeting of those minds. All these years later, this deadened land was what it had cost the Bajjer, to have helped the Shroakes find a way to Heaven & the eternity of tears. To have helped them, & now to have helped him.

“Would someone,” Fremlo said, “& by ‘someone,’ Sham ap Soorap, I mean you, please explain what in the name of the Stonefaces & Their Stern Gaze you are talking about?”

So, rushing the details for now & promising to come back to them, Sham told the gathering about the Siblings Shroake, about their family & their family’s work, of their odyssey towards something of which they were quite unsure, & of what & who was hunting them.

The Bajjer had no loudspeakers, but Sirocco had three. “Can’t believe she came for me,” Sham whispered to Vurinam, as the equipment was checked & walloped into working. He stared at Captain Naphi on her dais.

“Well …” Vurinam said, & shrugged. “Tell you later.”

Sham saw the captain check the scanner again, again & again, but such glimmers of nostalgia for the hunt she almost made were surely forgivable. When she spoke, her voice was firm.

“May I suggest,” she said, “that we come to some sort of order?” & one by one, across all the vehicles, loudhailers sounded in repetition, translation & debate, until everyone there understood the shape of this. That, when you got down to it, Sham was looking for a hunted girl & boy.

“& whatever the rest of you decide,” Sham said, “I’m going after them. I’ve got to. They need help.”

The Bajjer were raging. The dead & the land, they said, whispering translations to Sham between exhortations, demanded revenge. “Don’t think who did this is finished with you,” Sham said. “Until they get what they want.”

“Punish.” That word was fast translated, & more & more Bajjer began to say it, in Railcreole.