China Mieville - Railsea

“If it weren’t for her we wouldn’t have ever found you,” Mbenday said, pointing at the salvor. “She knows how to follow trails, & she was watching the bat, & then there were rumours that someone had you, & then that there’d been something terrible. But it was her.”

“Me?” Sirocco said. She glanced down into the bowels of the Pinschon . “I’m just here for the salvage.”

People lined up to greet the returned boy. Even Lind & Yashkan shook Sham’s hand, surly but not wholly ungracious. & then, suddenly, there was Captain Naphi.

She stood back. Sham hesitated. Was he happy to see her? Unhappy? He could not have said. She looked a little lessened. Diminished? She wore—Sham blinked at the sight—a bandage wrapped around her artificial arm. He bowed, & the captain bowed back. “Ap Soorap,” she said. “I’m pleased to see you’re alive. We’ve worked hard. We’ve given a lot to find you. A lot .”

“How did you know where I was?” he said. “Why did you break off hunting? &—” He stared at the stink all around. “& who then?”

“Who did this?” Sirocco said. “Who do you think?”

“Pirates!” someone shouted. Sirocco shook her head.

“That? See that?” She pointed at a particular ditch of sump. “That oil—you’ll excuse me but as you can imagine I know my effluent & runoff—that particular oil …” She wafted the air towards her & sniffed like a connoisseur. “… is used almost exclusively by one force. The Manihiki ferronavy.”

There was a silence. “That—” She pointed at a bush not merely killed but dripping with the remains of leaves enzymatically degraded into slop like a salted slug. “—is their favourite unleafer.”

“I heard it was pirates,” the same voice as before said.

“They may have driven under the skull-&-spanners flag.” Sirocco shrugged. “But …” She performed a mocking salute.

“What do they want ?” Sham said. Then looking across the acres of miserable Bajjer, he said, “I know why. They were looking for information. & punishing the Bajjer because of who they once helped.”

“What?” said Vurinam. “Who did they help?”

“They want information about me,” Sham said. “& the people I’m trying to go after. & they’re punishing these people. Because of who they taught about the railsea.”

The Bajjer who could understand him nodded. “Shroakes,” someone said.

“The Shroakes,” said Sham. That little bit of history! That investigation, by Caldera & Dero’s parents, the meeting of those minds. All these years later, this deadened land was what it had cost the Bajjer, to have helped the Shroakes find a way to Heaven & the eternity of tears. To have helped them, & now to have helped him.

“Would someone,” Fremlo said, “& by ‘someone,’ Sham ap Soorap, I mean you, please explain what in the name of the Stonefaces & Their Stern Gaze you are talking about?”

So, rushing the details for now & promising to come back to them, Sham told the gathering about the Siblings Shroake, about their family & their family’s work, of their odyssey towards something of which they were quite unsure, & of what & who was hunting them.

The Bajjer had no loudspeakers, but Sirocco had three. “Can’t believe she came for me,” Sham whispered to Vurinam, as the equipment was checked & walloped into working. He stared at Captain Naphi on her dais.

“Well …” Vurinam said, & shrugged. “Tell you later.”

Sham saw the captain check the scanner again, again & again, but such glimmers of nostalgia for the hunt she almost made were surely forgivable. When she spoke, her voice was firm.

“May I suggest,” she said, “that we come to some sort of order?” & one by one, across all the vehicles, loudhailers sounded in repetition, translation & debate, until everyone there understood the shape of this. That, when you got down to it, Sham was looking for a hunted girl & boy.

“& whatever the rest of you decide,” Sham said, “I’m going after them. I’ve got to. They need help.”

The Bajjer were raging. The dead & the land, they said, whispering translations to Sham between exhortations, demanded revenge. “Don’t think who did this is finished with you,” Sham said. “Until they get what they want.”

“Punish.” That word was fast translated, & more & more Bajjer began to say it, in Railcreole.

“Plus also,” Sham said after a decent pause, “where we’re going there’s an X. X the unknown. Off the edge of the map. Figuratively speaking. You know what X means.” He rubbed his fingers together.

Night reached them. Tumbleweed tumbled, investigating the gathering while a consensus emerged in shouts & declarations.

Sham listened. He was slowly staggered. He had to bite his lip. Whether out of a sense of justice at the thought of young Shroakes chased by armoured trains, out of a hope for treasure, out of fury at this despoliation, solidarity with him, or some combination, an astonishing number of those present were ready to come with him.

“But come where?” Mbenday said. “The whole point of this—” He indicated the poisonous slurry. “—is that no one knows where the Shroakes’ve gone.”

During the silence that followed that, Sham thought. A strategy he could not have followed on his own might not, in company, be closed.

“The Bajjer go all over, yes? All over the railsea? & Sirocco?” She was moonbathing on the hull of her digger. She looked up politely. “You must’ve travelled a lot, there’s salvage all over. & us.” Sham looked at the Medes crew. “We got people from Streggeye, from Manihiki, Rockvane, Molochai, from all over. We’re trainsfolk. What we don’t know about the railsea ain’t worth knowing. Between all of us,” he said, “we’d surely recognise pretty much anything out there.

“Captain,” Sham said, & gave up the last secret. Rumbled her. “A long time ago, you & me saw some pictures.” Everyone turned to her & stared. “I want you to help me, because you saw them, too. If we want to find the Shroakes,” Sham said, “we have to find where they’re going. So everyone listen. Tell me where you think this stuff is. I’m going to describe some places to you.”

NOW. AT LAST. SURELY.

This must be the moment to return to the Shroakes & to their rail. Surely.

It is, in fact, yes, Shroake O’Clock.

THE STRANGE TRAIN MANAGED. How battered it was. How shortened, how patched where glass had broken, beasts had snatched, where the frustrated fire of pirates had worn down armour.

Where the gauges narrowed, their mechanism still—just—worked. Where the pitch of rising tracks would have been impassable to most vehicles, the Shroakes’—just—coped. Event after brutalising event.

Pirate biplanes, very far from home, breaking the prime rule of exploratory flying, which was “Don’t.” Blitzing them from the air till they hid under overhangs. Railtracks through rock, into darkness, swaddled in silk, tunnels made lairs by train-eating funnelwebs. Shedding more rear carriages, distractions, like a lizard sheds its tail. Once above a beach of cracked helmets they watched a tussle between two specklike upsky monsters, until one must have glanced their way, & showered them with caustic spittle as they raced away.

Caldera, as bruised & tired-looking as her train, read from what screens still operated.

“So,” said Dero.

“So what?” said Caldera. Her voice cracked.

“Wait. I’m thinking.”

“If this is another not-very-disguised one Mum & Dad brought back from the Bajjer that I remember from when we were little, you forfeit ten million points,” Caldera said.