China Mieville - Railsea

Abruptly, Sham hated them. He didn’t care that they were lost, too, in thrall to a remorseless drive, the hunger of a company presiding over ruin. That refused to allow the fall & rise of civilisations, the visitations & transformations & leave-takings & rubbish-pickings of aliens, the fall of waters, the poisonings of skies & the mutation of the things in the earth, because of the very actions for which they charged, to intrude on their patient accounting. Endlessly extending terms to a humanity unaware they were in debt, that they had for millennia been buying travel-passes on the never-never. All in the hopes that at the end of time, economies would be back in place to pay.

“ ‘Ghost money in Heaven,’ ” Sham said. “Not ’cause it died—ghosts because it weren’t born yet.” He stared the big man in the face. “We,” he said, “owe you nothing.”

The controller stared at him. His look of hungry expectation slowly changed. To one of uncertainty. Then slowly to one of misery. & abruptly to one of rage.

He roared. All the Heaven-dwellers roared. They lurched forward. The jetty rocked as they came.

Daybe launched at the huge figure, but the controller batted it away. “Move!” Sham shouted, but before he could even get his pistol up, the controller had snagged his neck & squeezed & smacked the weapon from his hand. Through blood pounding in his ears, Sham heard the gun hit the water.

His vision was darkening as he flailed. He could make out the Shroakes trying to get away, Captain Naphi firing her pistol twice, before a perfectly flung rock slammed into her hand & disarmed her. & then there was simply not enough blood in his head for Sham to focus.

He shifted in woozy pain. Someone was tying his feet together, his hands behind his back, with manky old rope. He was hustled, tugged, cuffed, dragged to the jetty’s edge, the yells & struggles of his fellows behind him, the screeches of impotent daybat rage.

His head spun, he heard Caldera’s voice. She was next to him, Dero by her, then Naphi, all tied up but for the captain’s enhanced arm, too strong for cord, held instead in the grips of several captors. Who bickered & chattered. Some sobbed, in the epochal disappointment of prophecy unfulfilled. Some hissed. Some busily filled their captives’ clothes with stones.

The controller raged. He ground his teeth. Daybe swooped below curious gulls, but the man ignored or smacked it away again.

“Oh, shun!” he whispered. The feral businessman pointed at the water, & snarled some more. He was declaiming for his minions. He was, Sham thought, announcing sentence .

“Other people’ll come,” Sham shouted. “They think there’s treasure here! All the fares, the imaginary money you think you’ve got coming!”

Sham staggered under his weighed-down clothes, & struggled in his captors’ grasps, stared out at his attackers & the remnants of this bureaucratic heaven. “No!” he shouted. “This isn’t how it ends!”

He looked right at Caldera. She stared at him. She called Sham’s name as he was shoved to the walkway’s edge.

Sham tried to dig in his toes. He felt the ground shake. For a moment he thought it was his heart thundering his body. But his captors were hesitating, too. Something was happening.

Daybe’s alarm call changed timbre.

Grinding towards them all, coming backwards along the rails, through the cut in the ruins, towards the buffers at the line’s end, was an angel. A huge & age-crusted angel. An oil-fouled angel. The angel over the corpse of which Sham had clambered. Woken & alive again, hauling in reverse back the way, generations before, it must have come.

THE EXECUTIVES of the factory-town screamed. They howled. They scattered. Sham reeled. It must be very much longer than a lifetime since the angel had died & isolated them. None of them had ever seen a train move, seen any rolling stock on any line.

The angel gusted filthy smoke. Sham heard yells, saw familiar figures riding its rear. Benightly, & Mbenday, & Sirocco the salvor & Fremlo, &, his coat billowing splendidly despite all its holes, Vurinam. Sham’s crew rode towards him on the bum of a backwards-moving angel.

Sham shouted mightily in welcome. Benightly shot into the air, & the wild bosses ran. All but the giant controller. The angel’s rear-end rivet things pushed into the buffer & it stopped.

“No!” shouted the controller. That word was the same. “No, no! Shun! Oh shun!” With startling speed, he grabbed for the nearest captive. Caldera Shroake. & at that sight, quicker still, without a thought, Sham intervened.

He was a nothing, a silly pipsqueak, next to the huge figure. It was a wonder all of Sham’s momentum was sufficient to shift him at all. Perhaps in no other circumstances would it have been. But the man was poised on the very edge of the walkway. & when Sham slammed into him he wheeled his arms, tottered, his feet slipped & he pitched roaring towards the waves.

He reached, he raged. He grabbed as he went.

Grabbed Sham. Took Sham over with him, into the water. Took him down.

& THANK YOU. DO YOU FEEL IT?

We are slowing.

We will soon be done, & at our destination.

It could make a person despair, to dwell on how many parts of everything have been neglected. Have not even been discussed. You might by now have heard of the stretches of eastern & northern rails, far beyond Manihiki or any navy, where there are tribes of wild horses that have learnt so well to stay safe from burrowers, to never stray from the rails & ties, that it is encoded in their bones. So a newborn foal swaying on its stick-legs will not let its hardening hooves fall on the open flatearth. So trainsfolk in that meadowland share the rails with long lines of horses, trotting single file forever, eating the juicy grass between the rails.

In Amman Sun is a cold fortress served by trains made of ice. It’s said. The political fiddles between Deggenlache & Mornington could fill many entertaining hours. The drab & isolated lives of those cowed, bored generations of self-styled bosses in that town at the end of the rails, by contrast—they are not uplifting. But there’s things to be learned from the stunted venality of the controllers.

On & on. Had you been in charge you would, even had you started & ended in the same places, have described a different figure. A different “&.” But nothing’s done. If you tell any of this to others, you can drive, & if you wish, go elsewhere on the way. Until then, safe travels & thank you.

&—Sham, you say?

Sham is drowning.

THE WATER TASTED LIKE TEARS. THAT WAS WHAT Sham thought as he went down. This was not like the streams & ponds on the hills of the railsea: it was salt.

Oh shun, tears forever.

He tried to fight his slow descent. No good. He couldn’t see a thing or free his limbs. Couldn’t hear anything but his own blood.

Somewhere below him in the cold, because it was desperately cold, he could feel a disturbance, the flailing limbs & bulk of the controller, thrashing. I hope I don’t end up on top of him , Sham thought. I don’t want that to be where …

To be where.

I saw the end of the world , Sham thought, & ceased moving his body, & breathed out in streaming bubbles, & closed his eyes & continued sinking.

& THEN ABRUPTLY STOPPED.

Felt something grip him painfully by the restraints that held his hands. Felt pressure shift. Was moving up again, against the pull of gravity, upside down, away from the huge body of the man, the last of whose motions he could still just feel, receding below.