China Mieville - Railsea

“Well,” Sham said. “I mean …” He was shy to say it. “It would be good to do what your family does. To be a salvor.”

Dero & Caldera regarded him. “You think we’re salvors ?” said Dero.

“I mean, well, yeah,” said Sham. “I mean—” He shrugged & indicated the house, so full to brimming with found technology & reconstructed bits & pieces. “Yeah. & where they were going.” He shook the camera. “That was salvage hunting. Far off. Weren’t it?”

“What do your family do?” Dero said.

“Well,” Sham said. “My, it’s my cousins, sort of, they do bits & pieces, nothing like this. &, but my mum & dad were—well, my dad was on the trains. Neither of them were salvors anyway. Not like yours.”

Caldera raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been salvors, of sorts,” she said. “I suppose. Mum was. Dad was. Once. But is that what you think would get you up in the mornings?”

“We are not salvors,” Dero said. Sham kept looking at Caldera.

“I said we were,” she said. “Not we are. What we are is salvage- adjacent .”

“I mean, all the searching, though,” Sham said, his voice coming quicker the more he spoke. “That’s got to be exciting, ain’t it? Finding things no one’s found before, digging down, finding more, uncovering the past, making new things, all the time, learning & that.”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Caldera said. “You can’t find things no one’s found before by uncovering the past, can you? Searching for something. I see the appeal.” She stared at him. “But you don’t uncover the past if you’re a salvor: you pick up rubbish. The last thing I think you should think about’s the past. That’s what they do wrong here.”

“Here?”

“Here Manihiki.” She shrugged a big shrug, to indicate the island beyond her walls.

“Why you here?” Dero said.

“Yeah, why are you? In Manihiki?” Caldera said. “Your crew. No moles here.”

Sham waved his hand. “Everyone always ends up in Manihiki at some point. Supplies & whatnot.”

“Really,” Caldera said.

“Salvage,” Dero said. “You here for salvage?”

“No,” Sham said. “Supplies. Whatnot.”

He walked with Caldera & Dero through their house. It was so rambling & tumbledown he called it, in his head, rambledown. Up stairs, down again via elevator, escalator up, ladder down, past all sorts of odd spaces like sheds indoors.

“It was good of you to come tell us,” Caldera said.

“Yeah,” said Dero.

“I’m very sorry about your dad & your mum,” Sham said.

“Thank you,” Caldera said.

“Thank you,” Dero said solemnly.

“We’re sorry about yours,” Caldera said.

“Oh.” Sham was vague. “That was ages ago.”

“It must’ve been a massive effort to get here,” Caldera said. “To tell us.”

“We were coming anyway,” Sham said.

“Of course.” She stopped at a door. Put her hand on the handle. Looked at her brother, who looked back at her. They seemed to draw strength from each other. She breathed deep. Dero nodded, she nodded back, & led them into what had once been a bedroom, now had two walls removed so it opened onto the low sky of the garden. Daybe chirruped at the smell of fresh air. The space contained as much mould, ivy, old rain stains & outside air as it did furniture & floor. Caldera ran her fingers over damp dust.

Sitting at a desk, facing out into the hole, was a man. He was writing, skipping between pen & paper & an ordinator. He was writing almost alarmingly quickly.

“Dad,” said Caldera.

Sham’s eyes widened.

The man looked around & gave them a smile. Sham stayed at the door. The man’s eyes looked not quite focused. His pleasure at seeing them was a little desperate.

“Hello there,” the man said. “A guest? Please please do come in.”

“This is Sham,” Caldera said.

“He came to do us a favour,” Dero said.

“Dad,” said Caldera. “We’ve got some bad news.”

She came closer, & trepidation went across the man’s face. Sham backed quietly out & closed the door. He tried to move a good distance away, but after a minute or two, he did think he could hear crying.

& a minute or two after that, the sombre-faced Shroake children came back out.

“I thought, you said that was your dad who … that that was who I found,” Sham whispered.

“It was,” said Dero. “That’s our other one.”

There were almost as many kinds of families as there were rock islands in the railsea—that, of course, Sham knew. There were many disinclined to take the shape that their homes would rather they did. & in those nations where the norms were not policed by law, if they were willing to put up with disapproval—as, it was clear, the Shroakes were—they could take their own shapes. Hence the Shroakes’ strange household.

“There were three of them,” Caldera said. “But Dad Byro …” She glanced in the direction of the room. “He didn’t have the same want to go gallivanting that Dad Evan & our mum did.”

“Gallivanting,” Sham said, hopeful for more.

“He keeps house,” Dero said. Behind him, unseen by him, his sister met Sham’s eye &, silently, mouthed the word kept . “He writes.” Caldera mouthed Wrote . “He’s … forgetful. He looks after us, though.” Caldera mouthed, We look after him .

Sham blinked. “There’s no one else here?” he said. How could they be looking after that lost man & themselves, all alone? A thought struck him.

“You know what I heard,” he said. “I heard there was ways of building artificial people. Out of this stuff.” He indicated the salvage. “That could walk around & think & do things …” He looked around as if expecting such a trash-coagulation, a junk nanny powered on strange energies, to appear, cooing at her charges.

“A salvagebot?” Dero said. He made a rude noise.

“Myths,” Caldera said. “No such thing.” The metal-rubber-glass-stone figure in Sham’s head disappeared in a puff of reality, leaving Caldera & Dero looking after themselves, & their lamenting second father.

DESPITE THE ODD TUG OF COMMUNITY HE FELT TO the Shroakes in their newly certain two-thirds orphanhood—a bond he had not expected—& despite his frustration at not understanding more of the elder Shroakes’ story, Sham could not stay. Time was doing what time always does, going faster & faster as if downhill. & in truth, Sham admitted to himself, he was not sure the Shroakes did not want him gone. Did not want to be alone with their remaining parent.

Dero ushered him from the house as Caldera checked again on Dad Byro. As he retraced his steps out of the garden, under the arch of washing machines & back into the streets of Manihiki, Sham thought about the duty roster, about Dr. Fremlo & whoever else might be around, about whose instruction he could & whose he could not evade, in his eagerness to slip away, revisit the Shroakes. Perhaps it was because he was thinking about authority & unwanted attentions that he noticed the man outside the Shroake house.

He stood leaning against a wall, swaddled in a long grey coat larger than the temperature would seem to warrant. From under the wide brim of his hat, it was impossible to see his face. Sham frowned. The man might be staring right at him. He certainly seemed to be looking in the general direction of the Shroakes’ house. & as passersby passed by & the light continued to leak from the sky, Sham was certain the man’s presence was not coincidence.

The watcher, as Sham anxiously gazed, began to saunter across the street. Sham played for time. Knelt for a moment & fiddled with his shoes. The man was approaching him. As casually as he could manage, Sham started to walk away. He willed himself not to look over his shoulder, but the two eye-sized spots on his back where he imagined the man’s gaze landing itched, & he could not help a quick glance. The man was closing on him. Sham sped up. Still looking backwards, he walked straight into someone.