China Mieville - Railsea

IT RAINED & MADE THE RAILSEA MUD & SLICK METAL, the ties slippy. The venting clouds obscured the upsky. The Medes seemed to hunker in the pouring wet.

Beside it, not hunkering, thrusting rather from the muck, was the subterranean digger, the Pinschon . Captain Naphi stood with her officers around her, the crew around them & beside her in the middle of the circle on the rooftop Medes deck, was Travisande Sirocco, the salvor.

WHEN DAYBE HAD DROPPED onto the deck, the crew had done a quick recce of the surrounds, & seen a pipe jutting from the ground in the middle distance. Swivelling to watch them, dragging through earth. A periscope. The ground had upfolded & fallen away, & “Ahoy!” a voice had boomed from the speakers of the tunnelling machine. “Sorry to interrupt you. There’s something you ought to know.”

“Look at that,” Sirocco said when she came aboard the Medes , & stared at the monster-rooted siller in the distance. “Haven’t seen one of them for, oh. & that’s the Kribbis pit, ain’t it? Would that I could get down there. All that salvage. But the rock’s too hard, & there are ticks down there you wouldn’t believe. Anyway, I’m one for arche-salvage myself.”

Sirocco had put up her hand. Various of the trash nubbins on her protective suit had raised as if in echo. “Let me explain why I’m here. I met your young man in Manihiki. We had a chat. He seemed a good lad.”

“He’s with you, ain’t he?” someone shouted. She rolled her eyes.

“You know what I told him?” she said. “When he was going on about salvors this & salvage that & such the other? I told him to stay with his crew. Which is why it raised my eyebrows to hear word a bit later that he was with me. Because he ain’t.”

So she’d been heading in a certain direction, she said with some vague evasion, to strip what—she’d got word back in Manihiki—might be a new ruin after the intervention of a particular train. A train that might even have something to do with their missing young man. So there she’d been, heading, when this peculiar little bugger had dropped from the sky.

“There was a message,” she said. “I thought I remembered Sham saying something about a bat. It had a message on it that I thought you’d want to see. So I’ve been asking around. You leave a trail, you know. A moler in the wrong part of the world. A moler going for the biggest game, a long way from where it should be.” She smiled. “I’ve been trying to find you. Then suddenly, in the last couple of days, this one”—she indicated Daybe—“went nuts. Went zooming off. As if it heard something. I’ve been following it.”

How could the bat have known where the Medes was? Sirocco shrugged. “Do you think I’d follow it across the railsea for the good of my health? I’m in business, & my business is salvage. I’ve no call to gallivant off on wild-bat chases.”

“So?” said Captain Naphi. “Why did you?”

Sirocco held up a message written in Sham’s hand. Naphi snatched for it, but Sirocco stepped back & read it aloud, herself, to the listening crew. “ ‘Please!’ ” she began. “ ‘I am a captive in the train Tarralesh … ’ ”

WHEN SHE HAD FINISHED there was another long quiet. The crew, the salvor, the bat & the captain stood sodden on the Medes deck, ignoring the rain & watching each other. Everyone was staring. At Sirocco, at each other, at the captain.

“Oh my Stonefaces,” someone said.

“This is absurd,” the captain said. She grabbed the sheet. Despite the blood, her artificial arm seemed to be working as well as ever. The pencil marks on the paper were softening in the rain. “It’s impossible even to tell what this says,” she said. “Let alone who wrote it. This is very possibly some elaborate trick being played for I do not know what reason.”

“Really?” It was Dr. Fremlo. “Does anyone here seriously want to pretend we think Sham would have let go of Daybe by choice? This is the very salvor with whom he’s supposed to have gone. Yet here she is, Shamless to her core. & there his beloved aerial vermin, to which we know out of whatever misplaced sentimentality he was devoted, & which reciprocates that affection, is here, frantically eager for us to follow it somewhere. Wherever our trainmate is, he is there not of his own choice.”

“This, makes, no, sense,” Naphi said through her teeth. “I don’t know why someone wants to keep me from—” She glanced in the direction of Mocker-Jack, then stared at Sirocco. “What is your agenda? You’re asking us—”

“I’m not asking you anything,” Sirocco said. “I’m just delivering a bat’s message. & my job’s done.” She sauntered to the rail.

“I’ve no idea how this animal happens to be here,” the captain said. “For all we know it could have escaped, lost Sham. Not one part of this story makes any sense.”

The crew stared. Captain Naphi closed her eyes. “As we told him, once,” Naphi said, “sentiment & moletrains don’t mix.”

“There is nowhere,” Fremlo said, “more sentimental than a moletrain. Thankfully.”

Vurinam looked from one side of the deck to the other with sudden cocky urgency, met as many eyes as he could. He cleared his throat. Sham. Worst assistant train doctor ever. Couldn’t play quoits. The crew stared.

“I wish him the best,” said Yashkan suddenly, “but we can’t—”

“The best?” Vurinam said. “You?”

“The reputation of salvors precedes them,” Naphi said. She looked at Sirocco. “We have no idea why she is here. For what she’s searching. What is her agenda. Mr. Mbenday. Set course.” She pulled out the scanner. She waved it for a signal, shook it twice. The proximity of Daybe’s leg transmitter appeared to be interfering with it. Daybe squeaked & shuddered. There was a fingertip drumming of rain. Nobody went anywhere. The crew were looking in every direction.

“Mr. Mbenday,” the captain said. “You will plot us a course. We are scant miles from the greatest moldywarpe you or I or any of us have ever seen.” The captain reached quickly & grabbed Daybe with her uncovered flesh hand. It fluttered, & Sirocco hissed & caught its other outstretched wing. They stretched the bat between them. It squeaked. “A beast,” Naphi said, “that I’ve been hunting since I was little more than a girl. A beast desperate for us to catch it.” Her voice was rising. “We are a harpoon’s throw from a philosophy . I am your captain.”

The trainsfolk watched Captain Naphi pull & the salvor pull back. They spread Daybe’s wings. It made frightened sounds.

Vurinam muttered, “Sham,” looked as if he would say more, but at that moment Dramin coughed. Everyone looked at him. The cook held up a finger, seemed to be thinking.

“The boy is,” he said at last, audibly surprised at his own words, “in trouble.”

“What?” said Yashkan, but even as he spoke, Lind, his companion on more than one Sham-baiting escapade, put her finger to Yashkan’s lips.

“Mr. Mbenday,” Vurinam said. “May I suggest we set about & encourage this daybat to fly? Bet it’ll go back to him. Maybe we can ask this salvor where she arrived from?”

“Good idea,” Mbenday said. “I think that’s a fine suggestion .” He looked at Naphi. “Captain? Will you issue the order?”

Captain Naphi looked from one face to another. Some looked longingly in the direction of the Talpa ferox . Some looked stricken. You could all but hear flapping wings as the money they had imagined into their pockets from their imaginarily successful hunting of Mocker-Jack took imaginary flight. But more—the captain visibly, carefully tallied—did not. Beyond Mbenday’s courteous request lay mutiny.