China Mieville - Railsea

The visitor whispered some apology.

“There’s nowhere I’ll go & nothing I’ll not cross to reach it. My philosophy,” Naphi said slowly, “is not yellow.”

Her bleeding philosophy! That was why she was ignoring those pictures, Sham thought. Those proofs of—he didn’t even know what of, of some grand tremendous upset to the world of the railsea, at very least. She would not spare the time out from her molehunting philosophising!

Any more than would Skaramash, it sounded like. How many of these philosophies were out there? Not every captain of the Streggeye Lands had one, but a fair proportion grew into a close antipathy-cum-connection with one particular animal, which they came to realise or decide—to decidalise—embodied meanings, potentialities, ways of looking at the world. At a certain point, & it was hard to be exact but you knew it when you saw it, the usual cunning thinking about professional prey switched onto a new rail & became something else—a faithfulness to an animal that was now a world-view.

Daybe was learning to hunt. The daybat could fly again, now, for short distances. Sham swung a bit of meat on the end of a rope, at the corner of the deck, while Daybe flapped & snapped at the whirling snack. Now that was hunting with a point .

Sham thought of the awe with which those very few who snared the objects of their fascination, who made it into the Museum of Completion, were held. Maybe there was competition between the captains, he thought. “Call that a philosophy?” they perhaps sneered behind each other’s backs. “That prairie dog you’re after? Oh my days! What is that supposed to signify?” One-upmanship, one-upcaptainship, of the themes some quarries had come to mean.

THEY CROSSED A RAVINE to get home, on one of the tangle of bridges that stretched the twenty-, thirty-yard gap. He’d known it was coming, but the view made Sham uneasy. The rails went up on raised earthworks & wood-&-iron rises, jumping pools & streams full of cramped fish.

“Hardland ho!” the tannoy announced. Then: “Home ho!”

It was twilight. Birds circled. The few interrail trees were thick & shaggy with them. The crew bustled & laughed. The local daybats were going home; darkbats were coming out. They greeted each other, handed over sky-scudding duties with chitterings. Daybe, on Sham’s shoulder, chittered back. He leapt up & out. Sham wasn’t worried: the daybat always came back to the Medes: often, as then, crunching an unlucky cricket.

Lit up by the last red blast of the sun were stone slopes. Like dark mildew, patches of jungle pelted the hilly nation they approached, & like light mildew, houses & buildings aggregated around its flanks & became the town of Streggeye. Bustling from the harbour came hardy tug-trains, to ferry goods in & out of land, to guide the Medes into dock.

Home.

THE RETURN OF ANY MOLETRAIN IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED by delighted shrieks of husbands, wives, children, lovers, friends & creditors. Sham’s heart shook happily to see Voam & Troose, on the railsea wall, waving & yelling with everyone else. They hugged him, yanked him into the air, bellowing all sorts of endearments, dragging him embarrassed & delighted home, as Daybe whirled around his head wondering what these man-things were that were attacking its human, & why it appeared to make Sham so happy.

His cousins were unsurprised by Sham’s animal acquisition. “It was going to be a tattoo,” said Voam, “or jewels, or something , so this ain’t bad.”

“Lots of lasses & lads on moletrains come back with some companion,” Troose said. He nodded enthusiastically. Voam winked at Sham. Troose always nodded. He always had. Including at silences, as if it was imperative that he & the world be in accord about everything, including nothing.

The house where Sham had grown up: halfway up a steep street, overlooking the railsea, epic darkness punctured from time to time by the lights of night-voyaging trains. All was as he’d left it.

He did not remember his arrival there, the first time, though he very dimly recalled moments he knew predated it, the voices & solidity of his missing mother & father. Sham did not even know where on Streggeye he had lived with them. Once, some years previously, Troose had offered to show him, as they walked through an unfamiliar part of town. Sham had deliberately stamped in a puddle & got mud all the way up his trousers, begged to be taken home to change, rather than continuing wherever they were going.

His father had disappeared almost his whole life ago on some ill-fated messenger train lost to an everyday catastrophe, its specifics never known, in the wilds of the railsea. His bones doubtless gone to animals, as the bones of the train were gone to salvors. Sham’s mother had taken off soon after, travelling the islands of the archipelago. There had never been a letter. Her grief was too great, Voam had gently explained to Sham, to return. To be happy. To be anything but alone. Ever. She’d hidden from her cousin, as Voam vaguely was; her son; herself. & hidden she had stayed.

“You’re so big!” shouted Troose. “You’ve got deckhand muscles! You’ve got to tell me all the doctoring you’ve learned. Tell us everything!”

So over broth, Sham did. & in that telling he discovered himself with pleasure & a degree of surprise. A few months ago, had that stumbling young chap tripping on cables & stays on the roofdecks of the Medes attempted to tell a story, it wouldn’t have gone well. But now? He could see Voam’s & Troose’s faces, agog. Sham fished for gasps & aaahs & the goggle-eyed fascination of his audience of two.

“… so,” he was saying, “I’m by the crow’s nest, captain’s yelling blue & bloody murder, & down comes a razory bird right at me. I swear it wanted my eyes. But up goes Daybe, right for it, & the two of them go wrestling in the air …” & no force on hardland, on the railsea, under it or in any of the skies would have prodded Sham into admitting, including to himself, that the bird had been not quite as low as all that, had been in fact somewhat of a speck, that it & Daybe had rather than fighting to the death perhaps been competing for the same ill-fated bug, & their wrestling match a brief bump.

But Voam & Troose enjoyed it. & there were some events he told & varnished nothing. The eruption of the mole rats from the earth; antlions gnawing prey in sight of the train; the outpost city of Bollons.

He told stories while Voam & Troose ate; he told them while the moon came up & made the metal of the railsea shimmer its own cold colour; while the night sounds of Streggeye Land rose around the house. His mouth got on with the telling, leaving him free to think about Manihiki in the centre of the world. He did not tell them what he had seen on the ordinator screen.

“You’re a proper grown man now,” Troose said. “You should join us. Three adults.” The two men looked intense with pride as Troose said it. “Like adults like us do. We’re going to the pub.”

& impatient as they could sometimes make him, Sham felt that pride swell in his own chest, walking with them through the steep streets of Streggeye, kicking cobbles that bounced a long way to scuff & settle eventually, perhaps, on the railsea itself. So good was Sham’s mood that it did not suffer more than a little when he realised that they had come to the Vivacious Weevil, a captains’ pub, one of the most famous. Where Captain Naphi would surely be. Discussing her lemon-coloured philosophy.

IT WAS CONTAINEDLY RAUCOUS WITHIN. FULL OF EXCITED debate. People sat listening to the stars of the evening holding forth. Naphi was there, listening to the speaker, a portly, muscular man close to two meters high. Sham could tell by his cadences that he was well into his story.