China Mieville - Railsea

Three.

Two.

One.

Sound came out of the pit they’d passed.

“Go fast,” Caldera said. The noise grew loud. “Really, go fast.” It seemed to be everywhere. Everyone on deck was turning to see what made so terrible a sound. Such a bass grinding. Such whining of metal. Officers turned, too, on the deck of the wartrain. A hill shook.

“I think we got close enough,” Dero said. Loose stones jumped. A curtain of vines at the hole-entrance trembled. The sky was filled with blaring. & from out of the pit, riding the rails, something came.

An angel. Like no thing they had ever seen.

Everyone made noises of terror.

From under the ground, a train of spiked & spiny metal. It spat steam, dribbled fire. Grey smoke rose from a dorsal ridge of chimneys. How many parts were there to it? Who could count its ways? It slipped by segment into the light. Like a convoy of thorned towers.

How old was this bad thing? The birds flew shrieking. Daybe huddled in Sham’s arms. The angel pressed down hard & made its appalling noise. Its front was a wedge-shaped blade. With a blast like low thunder, it came.

It ate up yards. It came so fast. Its weapons glowed. The crew stared like worshippers.

“Welcome,” Sham breathed, “to the outposts of Heaven.”

“That,” Caldera whispered, “is what keeps people from the edge of the world.”

“But,” Dero said, “it ain’t used to facing two of us at once.”

The angel howled onto the one true line behind the Manihiki wartrain. They were all, from rear to front—angel, navy & molers—committed to this single rail. All they could do was go fast.

“Will you move !” That was Captain Naphi. Staring over the Pinschon & the hulking wartrain at the world’s-end protector. She was shouting, however, at her crew. They knew it; they obeyed. They managed to make the Medes accelerate.

The angel closed impossibly fast. It closed on Reeth’s train. Sham could see him, staring at it. Closer. Close. Closed.

Say what you like about those Manihiki officers, they were brave & bolshy souls. They fired & fired. Sent bullets, missiles, lobbed bombs at the incoming angel. It ignored them. Ground through the explosions. It reached the rear carriage.

The angel’s wedge split, opened onto a furnace-mouth, the glowing insides of heavenly cogs & shearing metal. It bit down. It breathed out fire.

An appalling crash, a flash, a spinning maelstrom of metal. & the wartrain was gone.

Just—gone. So fast as to be unbelievable. The molers screamed at the sight of such an act, even committed against an enemy. The wartrain & those aboard were eaten & burnt, or churned under the angel’s wheels. Seconds, & all it was, that pride of Manihiki, was litter, scattered in ruins.

Silence fell again across the Medes . Sham shivered. The angel flamed through the rubble.

“It stopped them!” someone shouted.

“It stopped them, yes,” Sham said. “I wouldn’t get too excited though. Because there’s nothing between us & it, now. & it’s still coming.”

ANGELS HAVE A THOUSAND JOBS. FOR EACH JOB, A shape. For each task, celestial engineering in the factories of the gods. Not many of us are made according to such most minute & intricate blueprints.

In an angel’s philosophy, it was once said, two times two equals thirteen. This is not slander. Angels are not crazy, could not be further from madness. They have, insofar as any theologian understands, absolute purity of purpose. A stiletto-sharp fidelity to the task of keeping Heaven clean.

To messy-minded humans, to Homo vorago aperientis , so glass-clear & precise a drive makes no sense at all. It is considerably less comprehensible than the ravings of those we call insane.

Angels, unremittingly & absolutely sane, cannot but seem to poor humanity relentlessly & madly murderous.

SHAM SWALLOWED. BEYOND THE CAPTAIN, BEHIND THE train, a flaming & gnashing enormity, came the angel.

Its wheels were many sizes, an irregular flank of them, of interlocking gears. Tusked with weapons. It did not have, nor did it need, windows. There was no seeing out nor in: it was an avenging rail-riding chariot of wrath. It burnt the bushes in its passing.

Even the atheists on the Medes whispered prayers. Sham swallowed. Come on , he thought. Don’t stop , he thought. Think more .

Ahead was the too-close horizon, the end of the world. The same distance in the other direction, the angel. Moving faster than the Medes . The math was simple: the situation was hopeless. It would reach them before they reached whatever was there.

The captain did not move, & she did not, for all its monstrousness, appear to be looking at the angel, but rather through it. Sham looked at the receiver he held. He saw the glowing screen-blob. He had almost forgotten Mocker-Jack.

“All is lost,” someone shouted.

“We’re shafted,” shouted someone else.

Sham felt Daybe strain as he fiddled with the machine. He remembered how the bat had lurched for the captain as she tinkered, & narrowed his eyes. “I’m his philosophy,” Naphi had said of the great moldywarpe.

“Sirocco,” Sham said. He waved the mechanism. Daybe bobbed as it moved. “Can you make this thing’s signal get bigger?”

She looked quizzical. “Might be possible. Need more power.”

“So connect it to something.” He looked around, pointed at the Medes intercom. “That gets power from the engine. Come on, ain’t you a salvor? This is what you do.”

She pulled tools from her belt, yanked wires from the speakers & stripped them. Unwound some things, wound others together. Hesitated a second before plunging her tools into the guts of the racing Medes . There was a great crack, & all the machines on the train went off for an instant & came on again.

“Oh my head!” Sirocco shouted. They all felt it. The crew moaned at the rising, humming, trembling something, in the air, in the substance of the train. Even the captain staggered. Sham winced & grabbed Sirocco’s arm, took the receiver. It was wired now to the train’s insides.

Daybe was screaming at him. Scrabbling & scratching for the machine. Sham stared. The screen was pouring with light. It was bleating like a sheep. & the glowing blob that was Mocker-Jack was moving faster than he’d ever seen before.

“Oh my hammer & tongs,” whispered Vurinam. “What did you even do?”

“Made it stronger,” Sirocco said.

“What’s the point of that?” Mbenday shouted. “You sped up the mole?”

“Much as I hate to undermine this technical achievement,” Fremlo said. The doctor looked pointedly behind them, at the roaring angel. The crew stared.

“Mocker-Jack,” the captain said dreamily. “Mocker-Jack’s your philosophy now, too, & you belong to it. We’re going to have to face it.” If the angel concerned her at all, she did not show it. The captain smiled. She walked to her dais. The crew watched her.

“She’s right,” Sham said.

“What?” hissed Vurinam. “She’s lost her mind! Have you seen what’s about to get us?” He pointed at the terrible engine. “One thing it ain’t is a bloody mole!”

“She’s right,” Sham insisted. “We’re molers. & it’s our moling skills we need now.”

NO LINES TO EITHER SIDE: THEY COULDN’T RELEASE jollycarts. The explosive harpoon at the train’s front pointed uselessly in the wrong direction. Instead, they gathered at the Medes ’s stern. Benightly went farther, jumped down onto the Pinschon that jostled behind them, right to its end. He stood silhouetted against the great angel scant yards behind. Its mouth-clamp opened. It roared.