“He’s why we haven’t gone looking for them,” Caldera said. “It’s been a while. It’s not like what you told us was a big surprise. But him.”
“He’s been waiting,” her brother said.
“Byro’s been waiting to hear,” Caldera said. “That’s what he’s been writing. Letters to them. Are you a letter-writer, Sham?”
“Not as much as I should be. With Troose & Voam—” Sham stopped, aware, suddenly, of how long it had been since he’d sent them word. “Last night,” Sham said. “When I was here before. When I came out, I saw something. Someone. Your house.” He looked grim. “It’s being watched.” The Shroakes stared at him.
“Well, yeah,” said Dero. He shrugged.
“Oh,” said Sham. “Well. As long as you know.”
“Of course,” said Caldera.
“Well, obviously of course,” Sham said. “But, you know, I just wanted to make sure. So, why? Why is it of course?”
“Why’s it watched?” said Caldera.
“ ’Cause we’re the Shroakes,” said Dero. He jerked his right thumb at himself as he made the announcement, used his left one to snap his braces. Raised one eyebrow. Sham could not help laughing. Even Dero, after a moment of glowering, laughed a bit, too.
“They were sort of salvors, like I said,” Caldera told Sham. “& sort of makers. & investigators. They went places & did things this lot would love to be able to do. They want to know where they went, & why.”
“Who does?” Sham said. “Which lot? Manihiki?”
“Manihiki,” said Caldera. “So of course, when they didn’t come back, Byro couldn’t go to the navy. Search & rescue ain’t their priority. Oh, they came offering to search, asking what maps we had, where they’d been going.”
“As if we’d tell them,” Dero said. “As if we knew.”
“They didn’t keep logs of their route on the train,” Caldera said. “That’s why they hid that memory. Even wounded, one of them made sure to bury it in the ground. They must’ve realised there were hints on it about where they’d been.”
“They took windabout ways where they were going & windabout back again,” Dero said.
“Dad Byro might have been getting a little …” Caldera’s voice petered out & picked up again. “But he wasn’t so gone as to trust the navy. Nor tell them what he knew of the route.”
“So there was a chart?” Sham said.
“Not on the train. & none that you or they could read. Manihiki wanted to find them, but for their reasons, not ours. The Shroakes never gave them what they wanted.” She sounded proud. “All manner of engines & machines made that no one else could make. What they wanted wasn’t Mum & Other Dad back—it was whatever they might have with them. What they might have made or found.”
“They’ll have been looking for them for ages,” Dero said. “Since they were gone.”
“But now you’re here,” Caldera said, “they’ll be whispering for the first time in years, ‘We have a lead!’ ”
“They had me hiding in a gutter,” Sham said. “Takes more than a bit of whatever-they-are to get hold of a Streggeye boy.”
“Wanted to know who you are,” Caldera said. “& what you know. About where the Shroakes are.” Sham remembered the caution with which Caldera & Dero had greeted him, when first he had arrived. No wonder they had been suspicious. No wonder they had no friends: even had they not been looking so carefully after Dad Byro, & pining for the return of their other parents, they had to assume everyone who visited was a potential spy.
“Till you came,” Dero mumbled to Sham, “I still always thought they might come back.”
“It was the longest time they’d been away, but you don’t stop wondering,” Caldera said. She inclined her head in the direction of the room where Dad Byro confusedly grieved. “& how could we leave him when we weren’t sure? Go off in one direction, have them come back in the other?”
“We’re sure now though?” Dero said. It sounded like a statement until the very end, when it tweaked suddenly up into a question, a moment’s hope for uncertainty, that twanged on Sham’s heart.
“We’re sure now,” Caldera gently said. “So we have to do right by them. Finish what they started. It’s what Mum & Other Dad would’ve wanted. & it’s what he’d want, too,” She looked at the door again.
“Maybe,” Dero said.
“He might be writing to them again,” Caldera said.
“If he’s going to forget,” Sham asked, “why did you tell him they were gone?”
“Well he loves them, don’t he?” Caldera said. She led him to the kitchen, brought Sham a cup of some oily-looking tea. “Doesn’t he deserve to mourn?”
Sham stirred the drink dubiously. “Whenever I mention this place to anyone,” he said, “I get looks. It’s obvious people talk about your family. & I saw the wreck. I ain’t never seen a train like that. & then there’s that picture.” He looked up at her. “Will you tell me? What were they doing? Do you know?”
“Do we know what they’d been up to?” said Caldera. “Where they were going, & why? Oh, yes.”
“We do,” said Dero.
“But then, you do, too,” Caldera said. She glanced at her brother. After a second, he shrugged. “It’s not very complicated,” Caldera said. “Like you say, you’ve seen the picture.”
“They were looking for something,” Sham said.
“Found,” said Caldera, after a moment. “They were looking for something & they found something. Which was …?” She waited like a schoolteacher.
“A way out of the railsea,” Sham said at last. “Something beyond the rails.”
Well of course. Sham had seen that one line. So he had sort of known that. Still, to hear it! He had a delight in the blasphemy. Spouting heresy, it turned out, was invigorating as well as nerve-wracking.
“There is nothing beyond the rails,” he squawked. Annoyed by his own voice.
“Looks like we’ve got work to do, Dero,” Caldera said. An edge of seriousness, an effort, had come into her voice. When her brother spoke, it was in his, too.
“There’s some stuff in Dad Byro’s room,” Dero said. “I’ll bring it down when I get him his supper.”
“There is nothing beyond the rails,” Sham said again.
“Can we seriously leave him?” Dero said. He glanced back at the door where their remaining father waited.
“We aren’t going to leave him,” Caldera said gently. “You know that. We’ll take care of him.” She came closer to Dero. “All that we’ve been putting away for the nurses—you know they’ll look after him. You know if he could he’d go himself. He can’t. But we can. For him. For all of us.”
“I know,” Dero said. He shook his head.
Sham started to give it one more try. “There is …”
“Oh, will you stop it?” Caldera said to him. “Obviously there is. You saw the picture.”
“But everybody knows—” Sham said, then stopped. He exhaled. “Alright,” he said. There were no certainties. He itemised what he knew. “No one knows where the railsea came from.”
“Well, no one knows,” Caldera said, “but they’ve got a sense of the possibilities. What do they say where you come from? Streggeye, you said? What do you think? Were the rails put down by gods?” Her questions came faster. Were they extruded from the ground? Were they writing in heavenly script, that people unknowingly recited as they travelled? Were the rails produced by as-yet-not-understood natural processes? Some radicals said there were no gods at all. Were the rails spit up by the interactions of rock, heat, cold, pressure & dirt? Did humans, big-brained monkeys, think up ways to use them when the rails emerged, to stay safe from the deadly dirt? Was that how trains got thought up? Was the world an infinity of rails down as well as around, seams of them through layers of earth & salvage, down to the core? Down to hell? Sometimes storms gusted off topsoil & uncovered iron below. The most excavation-gung-ho salvors claimed to have found some tracks yards underground. What about Heaven? What was in Heaven? Where was it?