Railsea

ambitious bird flying above what’s sensible.

We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the fourfold of the world.

There is the subterrestrial, where the digging beasts dig, where there are caverns, roots, ancient seams of salvage & maybe the iron & wood of long-forgotten or not-yet-seen lines of railsea.

The railsea, sitting on the flatearth; that is the second level. Tracks & ties, in the random meanders of geography & ages, in all directions. Extending forever.

The lands & the countries & the continents are level three. They jut above the rails. They rise on the grundnorm, the foundation of hard earth & stone too dense for the diggers of level one to hole. That makes them habitable. These are the countless archipelagos, solitary islands, the nations & questionable continents.

& over & above all that, where the peaks of the larger lands reach, protrude through the miles of breathable downsky into the upsky, above the borderline, are the cloggy, claggy highlands. On which poison-mist- &-dodgy-air-obscured levels creep, scurry & stagger the cousins of the upsky flyers, poison-breathing parvenu predators. Like them, troublesome biology, originating elsewhere.

Of those four zones there are two & a half where human life goes on. Inland, on the islands looking over iron & ties & savage dirt of the railsea, there are orchards & meadows. There are pools & quick streams. Fertile, gentle soil full of crops. This is where farmers farm, next to where towns town. That is where the landbound, the mass of humanity, lives. Above train travels & troubles.

Edging such places is the railseaside, called the littoral zone. Those are the shorelands. Port towns, from where transport, freight & hunting trains set out. Where lighthouses light ways past rubbish reefs breaking earth. “Give me the inland or give me the open rails,” say both the railsailor & the landlubber, “only spare me the littoral-minded.”

There are many such homilies among trainsfolk. They are particularly given to sayings & rules. Like: “Always do your best for those in peril on the railsea.”

SIX

AGAIN, THE CIRCLE OF OFF-DUTY TRAINSPEOPLE bickering over the odds of fighting animals. Again, the prodding & tweaking of the handlers.

The day was bright & cold & windy, & made Sham blink. He sidled up. Oh, sneck up, he thought, in unease he couldn’t explain to himself, when he saw on what the audience was betting.

They were birds. Not indigenous to these latitudes, either—pygmy fighting cockerels. They must have been kept & coddled just for this moment. Each was smaller than a sparrow. Their tiny wattles wobbled, their minuscule cockscombs throbbed, they clucked & cawed chest-out in miniature swagger, strutted in circles, taking each other’s measure. On their lower legs they wore wicked little spurs. As was traditional for the smallest fighting birds, theirs weren’t metal but hardened, polished bramble thorns.

Yes, Sham could see the careful expertise with which some in the crowd were appraising the belligerents. He could appreciate the ferocity & bravery of the sudden madly fluttering assault, as bird went for tiny bird. He heard the odds, the mathematics of savagery. But strive as he did to overcome distaste, to watch with enthusiasm, or even with calm interest, Sham could only wince, & could focus only on the fact that the birds were very small.

Over slow seconds, he leaned over the fighting grounds. What was all this, he thought? He spectated himself, as if his body was a puppet. What is Sham up to? Sham wondered.

Ah, there was his answer. It wasn’t only mammals for which he felt sorry, it turned out. Sham was tugging his sleeves over his fingers, while the rest of the trainsfolk watched with increasing bewilderment, not even interrupting him, so methodically did he move. Now he was reaching down into the flurry of dust & feather-fluff & blood where the two tiny cockerels struggled to slaughter each other. Then right hand, left hand, Sham picked them up.

The wind, the squawks, the huffs of the engine continued, but it still felt in that moment as if everything was silent. Ah. That sound was in his head. It was as if he could hear the half-approving, half-disapproving amusement of Troose & Voam at his action. & behind them—a surprise to him—a whisker of the same conflicted emotion from Sham’s long-gone mum & dad. Observing him.

Everyone on-deck stared at Sham. “What,” said Yashkan, “are you doing?”

I have no idea, he thought. He kept watching, to learn the answer. Ah, again. Having rescued the birds, now, it seemed, Sham was running away.

He snapped abruptly back into his own body as if his soul was catapulted by elastic. He came to himself running full-pelt, his breath heaving, his legs drumming as the train veered. He vaulted obstacles on the cartop deck. Behind him were outraged shouts.

A glance, & Sham saw chasing him, shaking their fists & yelling vengeance & punishment, not only Brank & Zaro, the big hauler & little switcher whose birds he carried; not only Yashkan & Lind, a bit behind them, eager to get hold of Sham for more vindictive reasons; but a great gathering of people who’d placed bets.

Sham was ungainly, but he jumped over chests, capstans & knee-high chimney stubs, ducked under the bars segmenting one deck-bit from another. Moved faster than he thought he could. Faster than his pursuers thought he could. & all without using his hands, each of which contained a carefully not-crushed fighting rooster. Sham ran from one end of the deck to the other, a trail of women & men behind him, shouting instructions to each other to head him off here & grab hold of him there. The birds pecked & scratched, & even tiny as they were & through the cloth wrapping his hands, they drew Sham’s blood. He beat his own reflex to fling them away. He was surrounded. He scuttled up a ladder, onto a storage bin.

Nowhere to go. Brank & Zaro approached. He swallowed at the sight of their fury. But as many of his pursuers were laughing as looked angry. Vurinam was applauding. Even Shossunder the cabin boy smiled. “Well run, boy!” Mbenday shouted. Sham held out his hands full of terrified birdlings as if they were weapons. As if he would throw them, thorns & all. What, he thought, am I doing?

Desperately, he considered hurling the birds straight up, to where the wind gusted. Their wings were clipped, but flapping them frantically, they could fall in controlled feathery motion right off the deck. At least that way they’d avoid the combat that appeared to be their lot. But when they landed they would, within instants, be something’s lunch. He hesitated.

There was no way he was getting out of this without a whack or two, he thought, as Brank & Zaro came at him. & then, just then as the triumphant Brank lifted his arms to pounce, there was a halloo from the crow’s nest. The train was approaching something.

A frozen moment. Then Mbenday shouted, “Stations!” The crew scattered. Brank, Zaro waited, till Sham, grudging & without a choice, handed back the birds.

“Finish this later,” Zaro whispered.

Whatever, thought Sham. At least the roosters had had a brief reprieve. He moved slowly again, all the energy that had hurtled him so uncharacteristically fast quite gone. Breathing heavily, Sham clambered off his little platform to find out what had been seen.

“WHAT IS IT?” Sham said. Trainsman Unkus Stone ignored him, & Mbenday tutted irritably.

They were in a stretch of atolls the size of houses. Woolly squirrels watched the Medes from where shoreline trees met the metal of the railsea. Across a sparsely railed stretch, Sham could see a line of much newer ruin. A crumpled silhouette.

He answered his own question. “A wreck.”

A small & shattered train. An engine, lying on its side in the dust. Completely off the rails.