China Mieville - Railsea

“Which bit do you not understand?” Sirocco said. She smiled at him, not meanly.

“You’ve come this far,” Sham said. “You came this far & you, you rescued me! We’ve only a last bit more to go. Only a little way.”

Sham stood at the front of the Medes , shouting up to her. Sirocco stood on the tip of the angel. The two trains were pressed up as if in an unequal kiss. Sirocco had leapt onto the angel, hauled herself up its curve & had announced that she was claiming it, for salvage, while the crew stared at her quizzically. She had begun to probe & prod & pry at chinks in the angel’s carapace.

Whatever. But there was no way past it. There was only the one rail. & there would be no shifting that corpse. Nor could you haul a jollycart over its landscapey body.

“Well, we’ll have to walk,” Dero said. & while much of the rest of the crew, still befuddled with everything that had happened, still awesick, you might say, had watched, the Siblings Shroake had strapped on their packs of dried food & water bottles & tools & whatnot, & tripped goatlike up onto the angel. Caldera glanced back more than once, stood at last atop a weather-beaten outcrop of angelback & watched Sham watch her.

“Wait!” Sham shouted. “Where the bloody hell are you going?”

“Oh come on,” Caldera shouted back. She shrugged. “You know fine well, Sham. We’re farther than they got, but we still ain’t there.”

“Where’s there?”

“I’ll know when I see it. Question is what you’re going to do?” She walked on, picking her way past copses of antennae, clots of rust, aeons’ worth of grime.

“Will you bloody Shroakes stop!” Sham shouted. Caldera hesitated. “Give us five minutes & stop being melodramatic. We’re all coming!”

NOT REALLY.

“This is where I get off. What makes you think I want to go to the end of the world?” Sirocco said. She had drilled an opening in the angel’s coating, & she was shoving her hand into its cold insides.

“We’re way past the end of the world already,” Sham said. “& I thought, I mean, you came for me …”

“Well now,” she said. “What I came for, in fact, is right here.” She slapped the engine-corpse flank. Her goggles were lit from within, illuminating her smile with pale grey light.

“Salvage?” Sham said. “You came here for salvage ?”

“Sham ap darling Soorap,” Sirocco said. “I like you, Sham, & I like your friends, but I ain’t here for you, & I ain’t even here for any old salvage. That I can get anywhere. I’m here for angel salvage !”

“How could you know we’d—”

“Meet them? Everyone knows there’s angels in the way of Heaven. Beat them? I didn’t. I made a bet. & you should take that as a vote of confidence.”

“Sham,” shouted Caldera.

“In a minute !” he shouted back.

“I know you’d face ’em when I knew where you wanted to go,” said Sirocco, “& I had faith. I couldn’t believe it when that old mole took it down. Could, not, believe it. But then stick on a few miles & here we are. Do you get what this is? This ain’t nu-salvage. This ain’t arche-salvage. It ain’t alt-salvage even. This is a whole other thing. This is trash from Heaven . This is dei -salvage! & it is mine .” Her delight was terrifying.

“We need your help,” Sham said.

“No, you don’t. & if you do, I’m afraid it ain’t yours to have. I wish you well, I really do. But this is what I came for, & this I have. So best of luck to you.”

From one of her pockets she pulled out a microphone. Little as it was, the tech in it amplified her voice so all the crew could hear. “Attention please,” she said. “You can’t get any farther. May I propose a business arrangement? I know what I’m doing: you’ve got a conveyance. We can come to an arrangement.

“I know where to go to do selling. This is my hunting, like that great moldywarpe was yours. Same terms, same shares as if it was molemeat you were bringing back. & you think people pay well for moldywarpe bits? Well, you never dealt in salvage before. & this ain’t any salvage. This is all our fortunes.”

“Fine,” Sham interrupted. “But I’m going with the Shroakes. You can keep my bloody share.” He raised his voice. “Who’s coming with us?”

A silence followed that. What does it say about me , Sham thought, that I’m genuinely surprised no one’s putting their hand up? That no one’s saying a word?

“Sham,” Mbenday said. “We are not explorers. We’re hunters who look after our friends. We came for you. Didn’t we?” Some of Sham’s comrades were looking avariciously at the dead angel. Some were looking sheepishly, or avoiding looking, at him or the Shroakes. “So let us look out for you. You have no idea where you’re going,” Mbenday said. He raised his arms & the leather of his coatsleeves creaked. “Or even if there’s anything at the other side.”

“It’s a bridge,” Sham said. “Of course there’s something on the other side.”

“That does not follow,” Mbenday said.

“Benightly!” Sham said.

But the harpoonist cleared his throat, & in his deep Norther voice rumbled hesitantly, “Come, Sham. Don’t need to do this. You, too, Shroakes.” Caldera made a rude noise.

“Hob?” Sham said. “Fremlo?” They wouldn’t look at him. He could not believe it.

“Walking?” said Fremlo. “Through void? For one knows not what? Sham, I beg you …”

“Anyone!” Sham shouted.

“We came for you,” Vurinam said. “We came for your Shroakes. We came as far as the angels. There ain’t nothing else we want. Now come back with us.”

“Tell Troose & Voam I send my love, but I’m following through,” said Sham, not looking at him.

“I’ll come.”

It was Captain Naphi. Everyone stared at her.

Even the Shroakes turned back. Naphi rattled her chains, & looked at them in splendid hauteur until someone ran to undo them.

“I can’t have mine,” the captain said. She looked at Caldera, at Dero & at last at Sham ap Soorap. “So someone else’s philosophy is better than none.”

IT FELT STRANGE TO WALK ON TRACKS, LET ALONE SUCH tracks as these. The Shroakes, the captain & Sham went single file. A terrible short distance to either side the bridge stopped & emptied into the air. Behind them were the clattering & drill-sounds of the crew’s salvage, under Sirocco’s exasperated supervision. People shouted goodbye, & not the Shroakes, Sham, or the captain answered.

Sham kept his eyes ahead, for hours, focussing on anything but the fall that hemmed them in. He thought of the crew tugging bits & pieces of the old angel out of their housings, teeth from a mouth, filling the rendering cart, the butchery floor, the storage containers, the hold of the Medes with unlikely meat. The ceramic, glass & old metal mechanisms.

Daylight went & they continued walking, until even with torches the darkness made it dangerous. They ate together. The Shroakes muttered to each other, & sometimes to Sham. Naphi said nothing. When they slept, they tied themselves to the rails. In case of thrashing, rolling, in their dreams.

They woke before the sun was fully up to the clattering passage of getterbirds overhead. “Maybe we’ll feel it when they go,” Caldera said, after an inadequate huddled breakfast. “The train I mean. Maybe we’ll feel it in the rails.”

“Maybe it’ll shake us off,” Dero said. He made a whistling noise, like something falling.

“We won’t feel nothing,” Sham said. They had been walking a long time. “What if it rains?”

“Then we’ll have to be very bloody careful,” Dero said.