China Mieville - Railsea

“If it’s rumours,” she said, “I’d not be so foolish as to think that any trainsperson wouldn’t soon hear it anyway.” She pointed, with her bone-&-metal-&-wood finger. “& I’d not be so mean-spirited,” she said, “as to make her, or him, wait any longer than necessary.” Sham bowed thanks, heart racing & sat. “So. I appreciate you being the conduit of whatever it is you’re conduiting, Mr. Stone.”

“Well,” said Stone. Coughed. “We’re being followed,” he said.

“Followed,” said Naphi.

“Right. Well, you are. Or were. See, Captain, I was in bed for a long time, back on Bollons. But after a while, I got up.” He shifted. “Did a few odd jobs. Got to know the nurses. Some of the people around. Got to hobbling myself around the area. Got to knowing the byways, & the—”

“Do please,” said Captain Naphi, “expedite this journey relevance-ward.”

“So one of the fruit-sellers I knew was asking me who were my friends.” Stone almost stuttered in his efforts to speak quickly. “He says there’s people asking about what happened to me. To us. Asking for information. Said they’d heard something from someone, from a woman who’d heard about something we’d found …” He shook his head & shrugged. Sham swallowed, & shrugged, too. I don’t know anything about that either! he managed not to yell. “They were asking about our journey. The wreck. About the crew. Asking about you, Captain. First I thought it was all nothing.”

“But,” Naphi said.

“But. See, when I got on that mail-train to come back, after a couple of days, there’s a little train behind us. Miles off. A smart engine, a single-car & whatever it’s burning’s not putting out much exhaust that I can see. Top-notch quality. I know a good vehicle when I see one, & it should’ve been going a mad clip. But it stayed the same distance behind us. For way too long.

“Even then, I might not have thought anything of it. It was gone after a while. Except I saw it again. & not only that.

“We were in a plain. No hills, forests, nothing. Nowhere to hide. I saw it again, & then there was another. Keeping their distance.”

“Following you ,” the captain said. “Even assume that were true, surely everyone knew where you were going?”

“They knew where I said I was heading, Captain. & I was going there. But maybe they thought I was going somewhere else. Like they thought we had a plan.”

“Thank you, Unkus Stone,” the captain said at last. She nodded. “Well. Well, whatever our peculiar tails think they know, they’re bound to disappointment. After all I’ve no secrets to give them.

“Well.” Naphi sat up & sniffed. “Rumours must have eddied around us. Rumours & wrongnesses. If they decide to, whoever our unwanted disciples are won’t have much difficulty finding out where we’re going next. & going again I am. Would you like to accompany me?”

“Another voyage already, Captain?” Stone said. “It would be an honour.” He swallowed. With his legs as they now were, Stone wouldn’t be first choice for many crews. Naphi was going a mile for him that many would not. “So we going back down south?” Stone said. “More great southerns to find?”

“Of course. That is, after all, our job. But perhaps this will be a long trip, this one. You never know where we might end up, or by what route we might have to go.”

But seeing her eyes, seeing how the captain stared at the mechanism clipped to Daybe’s leg, Sham in fact suspected he did know. Did have a good idea of where any detours might take them. & the excitement battered on the inside of his chest. At that moment it felt in his ribs just as he imagined it would if Daybe was flying around in there.

DID WE—?

The maintenance of a log is indispensable. A good officer will be diligent, & treat any such document, whether typed into a digital machine, handwritten on fine paper, tugged into the knot-writing of the northern railsea, or whatever, like the external memory it is. Focusing on what was done & what followed should clarify causes & effects.

Alas, logging is sometimes neglected. Everyone is happy to write of encounters with predators or prey, dramatic mole chases & revelations. But the long & many days of nothing, of mere passage on everyday rails, of swabbing, seeing little of note, finding nothing, not arriving but being still a long way from where you set out? Those days, a logger can make mistakes, or not bother. & from such situations come questions like “Did we—?”

Though, sometimes, it is not inadequate attention that generates uncertainty. Even shock. The Medes is about to set wheel to rail. On a route very different from its initial planned. & all because of an intervention Sham very cannily made.

It seems, not at all least to him, hard to believe that is why the deviation, hard to reconstruct how he had got there. Sham’s own cunning has startled him out of understanding it. He does not understand how he can be going where he wanted to go.

BACK ON THE RAILROADS, BACK AT RAILSEA. ROCKING on his heels on the Medes . Soon to remember that conversation, Unkus Stone’s warning. It was amazing how much Sham felt pleasure at the slide of his feet, the rattle & tilt of rushing rails. Daybe dived & scattered the railgulls that followed them.

The captain had put together almost the same crew as before. For all her quietness, her abstraction & ponderous ruminations—the usual flaws of any captain chasing a philosophy—she motivated loyalty. Here was Fremlo & Vurinam, Shossunder & Nabby & Benightly, now blondly unshaven & still not talkative but who whacked Sham on the back with unexpected friendliness that sent him sprawling. They worked with Sham as before, with similar teasing backchat & rough camaraderie, but now drank with him, too, when his shifts finished, & did not seem exasperated if he was shtum, uncertain what to say.

There were more animal fights, of course. Lind & Yashkan would jeer at Sham as they put their coins down on the outcomes of awful assaults by ratlings, mice, miniature bandicoots, birds & fighting bugs. Sham stayed away from the arenas. Whenever he saw them, he would fuss with & simper over & gush attention at his surprised & gratified daybat. He did notice that Vurinam, who glanced more than once at these ministrations, seemed not to frequent the battles as once he had.

Near the upsky border was a sputtering biplane, & Daybe spiralled up towards it. Sham could see the little source-nubbins on its leg. It had not been hard to avoid returning it to Shikasta.

The aeroplane buzzed on westward. Perhaps it was from Mornington, swish island of aviators. Perhaps a transport of rich crew from the Salaygo Mess. With the complex tech available only in a few railsea countries, the cost of fuel, the necessity of long flat runways—hard to build on steep & slopey islands—air travel was expensive & uncommon. Sham looked up at the craft longingly, wondering what its drivers could see.

They were a few days out from Streggeye, veering a good clip through forest & on undulating ground. They went through unusual railscapes. By rivers & pools, crossing the waterways on jutting mooncalf elevated tracks.

“Where we heading, Captain?” Sham heard more than one officer ask, & the question, while mildly impertinent, was not surprising. They went west, not the south or southwest or south-southwest or even west-southwest that they might have expected for a mole hunt. “We have equipment to pick up,” was all the captain would say.

Sham had his duties in Fremlo’s poky surgery, but he made time to explore. Found cubbyholes. Crawl-spaces. Sections of holds. He sat in a big cupboard in a storage car, put his eye to an imperfectly sealed plank & through layers of wood could glimpse the sky.