China Mieville - Railsea

The Shroakes were determined to roll at night. Their instruments on, they sat in a winking cave of diodes as their train progressed. It was dimmer even than usual that starless evening, but for the soundless sweeps of far-off white beams from another light-tower ahead.

“Careful here,” Caldera muttered to herself, checked the chart that warned of dangerous proximity of the rails to rockfalls & quicksand.

“Drattit,” she murmured, slowing & backing up. “I’m taking us that way,” she said. “That must be the Safehouse Good Beacon.” She checked her chart again. “So if we go this route …”

She worked her remote control on switches & picked them slowly towards the lighthouse. The wheels whispered on the iron. The light fluttered with tiny shadows, as night-birds & darkbats bickered in its beam for hunting rights.

“Where is it we are?” Dero said. Caldera pointed at the map. Dero frowned. “Really?” he said.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Caldera said. She gritted her teeth & wrestled with the controls. “I know, I know, from the direction of the line, you’d have thought we were closer north a bit, right? Well.” They rumbled over unsteady ground. “Well, these aren’t the most up-to-date charts. They must be wrong.”

“If you say so,” Dero said doubtfully. “I mean …” He squinted into the night.

“Well, there’s not much else it can be, is there?” Caldera said. She adjusted, switched. “I mean look at the lighthouse. They ain’t going to have built a new one, are they?”

But of course by the time that last word was out of her mouth, Caldera had answered her own question in her head. Dero was staring at her, uncomprehending but horrified by her look. Glinting outside took his attention. Glinting much too close. “There’s something,” he said, “on that beach.”

“Stop!” Caldera shouted. Hauled hard, hard on the brake, & the train’s wheels screamed in resentment as it grudgingly halted. Dero staggered & fell. “Back back back!” Caldera shouted.

“What are you …?”

“Check the rear!” Above them the light beam went by. The train slowly began to move again, backed up, away from one bit of darkness among many.

“What am I looking for?” Dero said.

“Anything behind us.”

“There ain’t nothing.”

“Perfect then!” Caldera said, & accelerated in reverse. “Keep watching! We’ll turn around when we can.”

& with a lurch of the retreating train, the vivid glare of its headlamp swung a few yards, & Caldera saw how close to either side of the route they’d been taking were rises of flint. She had been a breath away from steering her train into a pass. On the edges of which, overlooking them, poised with great rocks ready to roll in to derail her, silent figures watched.

She caught her breath. She bit her lip. Another light swing showed the pale faces of the ambushers. They stared at her retreating vehicle, stared right through the glass, through the cameras & at her.

Calm-faced men & women. Armed. Carrying tools, the equipment with which to take an errant train apart. They lay where they had been hiding, their expressions betraying no shame nor any aggression: only mild disappointment as their prey escaped.

“Of course someone built a new lighthouse,” Caldera whispered.

“What’s that?” Dero said. “I can’t hear you. What is going on, anyway?”

What was going on? People had smashed the lights of the real & automated tower, that must, Caldera thought, be standing to useless dark attention on a nearby beach, not at all where she thought she had seen it. Locals had by careful reference to railsea charts lit a fake beacon at a place chosen to appeal as a reference in the darkest nights, that would lure the unlucky in to a terrible impassable part of the rails, where the crews who had built that false light would be waiting, to do what was necessary to travellers, to scavenge the scrap their intervention left behind. The cruellest kind of salvage. Train-ghouls, derailers & thieves.

“Wreckers,” Caldera whispered.

A RED SIGNAL AT THIS JUNCTION OF THE STORY-TRAIN’S route.

Generations of thinkers have stood with notebooks open on coastlines, the endless spread of ties-&-iron before them—countless junctions, switches, possibilities in all directions—& insisted that what characterises rails is that they have no terminus. No schedule, no end, no direction. This has become common sense. This is a cliché.

Every rail demands consideration of every other, & all the branches onto which that other rail might switch. There are those who would issue orders, & would control the passage of all such narratives. They may, from time to time, even be able to assert authority. They will not, however, always be successful. One could consider history an unending brawl between such planners, & others who take vehicles down byways.

So, now. The signal demands the story stop. With diesel wheeze & wheel complaint, our train reverses. With a whack of trainhooks a story-switch is thrown, & our text proceeds again from days ago, from where it had got to. To answer a question bellowed, we might imagine, by moldywarpe critics as we took routes where the Siblings Shroake drove & the Medes hunted. Curious & impatient mole listeners raised heads from earth & shouted across the flatlands of untold things. Demanding attentions elsewhere.

SHAM THEN.

What happened miles, days ago, was that Sham wobbled slowly up from the deeps of unconsciousness until he popped right into his own head. & into a headache. & winced & opened his eyes.

A room. A tiny train cabin. A cold line of light from a porthole. Boxes & papers wedged into shelves. Footsteps above him. The light wavered & swayed & dragged across the wall as the train changed direction. Sham could feel the shuddering now, through his back. He could feel that he was travelling fast.

He could not sit up. Was trussed on a bunk. He could just about see his own hands clutching at nothing. He tried to shout & discovered that a gag was in the way. Sham thrashed, but it was no good. He panicked. The panic was no good either. It gave up at last & left. He stretched each muscle that he could.

Vurinam? he thought. Fremlo? Captain Naphi? He tried to say the names out loud, & made muffled noises. Caldera? Where was he? Where was everyone else? An image of the Shroake train took him. Could he be on the Shroake train? Minutes, or hours, or seconds, passed. The door at last opened. Sham strained, turned his head, croaking. Robalson stood in the doorway.

“Ah ha,” Robalson said. “At last. We didn’t give you that much. I thought you’d wake up ages ago.” He grinned. “I’m going to untie your hands & mouth, let you sit up,” he said. “Your end of the deal is you’re not going to be a pain in my arse.”

He put down a bowl of food & loosened Sham’s bonds, & Sham began to shout even as the dirty cloth left his mouth. “What the hell are you doing my captain’s going to find me you’re going to pay for this you crazy pig,” & so on. Sham had hoped it would sound like a bellow. It came out more like a loud whine. Robalson sighed & tugged the gag back on.

“Now is that being not a pain in my arse?” he said. “Goat porridge for non-arse-painery. That’s the deal. There’s worse things I can do than put a gag on.”

This time when Robalson relaxed the mouthpiece Sham said nothing. Just stared at him in cold fury.

He also stared at the porridge. He really was hungry.

“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL do you call this?” Sham said through a mouthful of the delicious stuff.

Robalson rubbed his nose. “A kidnapping, I suppose. What do you call it?”