That other island looked increasingly delicious. I’m not a kid anymore, Sham thought. Shouldn’t take anything for granted. A big bird cawed as he thought that, & Sham took it as applause. All my life, he thought, they’ve told me about the dangers of the earth. Maybe it’s true. But … He kept his eyes on the foody island across the narrow railsea strait. But maybe it’s also useful for them if everyone believes it. If people are too scared to just go.
Without giving himself time to think, Sham set out walking.
He stuck out his chest, kept his stare ahead. He marched off the edge of the rock shore. Stepped over the closest rail, put his foot between ties & iron & continued.
I’m walking, he thought. I’m on the earth. He kept going, crossing rail after rail. He laughed. He sped up. He whooped. He tripped. He sprawled. He thumped the ties. The earth jiggled.
Oh. Yes, the earth definitely moved. Sham rose, no longer laughing. There he was, stopped, looking back at the shore. Which looked an awfully long way away.
It wasn’t a jiggle anymore, what was going on in the ground, it was a full-blown shudder. Again. He watched aghast as a ridge came up. Something moved underground. It was coming towards him. Experiment fail, Sham thought, turned & ran.
He ran, & behind him there was a boom, a crash, the grind of the ground. Muck showered Sham as whatever that was coming burst the earth from below. It closed on him, clattering.
Sham wailed & accelerated. With two last huge leaps he made it back to the baked, rocky earth, almost blown by a howl from his pursuer, something like a kettle screaming & an electrical short, all at once. He stumbled, rolled, turned to see.
Shiny segmented shell, scissoring pincer on its rear, bum-jaws. It wriggled down again out of the light. He just glimpsed it. An earwig. Oh Stonefaces. Sham was lucky. In a different mood it might have come up onto the shore after him.
He picked up a big rock, chucked it onto the disturbed earth of the earwig’s wake. Another rumbling, & he saw the head of a meat-eating worm. A flurry of fur & metal-hard claws as a vicious digging shrew came just up enough to yank it down.
Everywhere Sham looked, the ground between ties, the dirt around rails, the muck shoring up stays, seethed. He yelled at the excited birds, as the little ones laughed at him & the bigger urged him to get farther back. “Albloodyright,” he yelled at them. “The earth is dangerous!”
SIXTY-ONE
AT THIS POINT, THE INTENTION HAD BEEN TO SAY that it was such slippery western terrain as few trainsfolk ever see, such strange wrong rails, that the Shroakes, by then, had reached, & in which & on which they travelled. But the time is not yet right.
The instant it is feasible, the Shroakes will be found. It’s Caldera & Dero, after alclass="underline" as if they could be ignored.
There are monsters under the earth, & in the trees above it, & swinging from those trees to the rooftop decks of trains, & there are creatures that can barely be called animals watching from the upsky, & any of them might find, might sniff for, might zero in on the Shroakes. It would be wrong to leave them forever. But though the rails themselves are everywhere in profusion, fanned out & proliferating in all directions, we can ride only one at a time.
This is the story of a bloodstained boy. The Shroakes deserve their own telling, & will get it. Though their things & Sham’s are plaited together now, inextricable.
SIXTY-TWO
COULD IT BE? OH, THEY THOUGHT IT COULD. THEY began to believe that they, the crew of the Medes, would make it into the Museum of Completion.
Once again, as the Medes continued across the railsea, zeroing in on Mocker-Jack, they talked of Shedni ap Yes, who’d caught an elusive meerkat commensurate with playful pointlessness. Hoomy’s prey, the desert tortoise known as Boshevel, a dome-shelled symbol of tenacity. Guya & Sammov, who had sought & found a termite queen (doubt) & a bull-sized bandicoot (prejudice).
It was common to insist that the worst thing that could happen to a person was to get the wisdom for which they strove. “Feh,” said Dr. Fremlo. “Believe me, most people really do want what they want. Downsides there may be to getting it, but they’re heftily outweighed by the up, & by the downs of not doing so.”
There was no pretence any more that this was any kind of regular hunt. Whether out of fidelity to Naphi, excitement at what they might achieve, or the suddenly-less-unthinkable possibility of riches that a finishing train would accrue, most of the crew were content to ignore other moldywarpes & follow the transceiver. Into scrappy corners of the railsea where great southern moldywarpes had no business burrowing, that should have been too warm, with ground too hard or too soft, too marbled by too many salvage seams, like fat in a steak.
In a tiny townlet the Medes was gouged by diesel-merchants who correctly gauged that they were in too great a hurry to barter. They surprised the burghers of Marquessa by waving at the gravelly shore but not stopping. Beyond all but the most speculative maps they went. Into badrail. Wild shores where trees shook with the movements of animals of the interior. A nameless atoll from where the train was shot at by small-arms fire. The bullets only ricocheted with dramatic pings, but it was a scare.
“Not long now,” they reassured each other. But all of them feared the malevolent cunning that Mocker-Jack, great & terrible but dumb beast, should not possess. But seemed to. It led them to where the rails were stained dark.
“Been a while since anyone came this way,” Dramin said.
& across an empty reach of sky came a roar, a bass boom like the declaration of a storm. It shook the hair on the crew’s heads, made the train vibrate, gusted them with wind & dust. The silence in its aftermath was silenter than any silence had been for a long time. Yashkan tried to snigger, but nerves meant it did not take.
“What in the Stonefaces’ name …” Vurinam started to say, as if it was a mystery. The captain herself answered him.
“Mocker-Jack.”
She leaned over the rails. “Mocker-Jack,” she shouted. “Mocker-Jack, Mocker-Jack.” She turned at last & bellowed at no one in particular & at everyone, “Make—this—train—go—faster.”
The train accelerated towards the sound, into dangerous railsea strewn with rubble. The unseen moldywarpe called again.
“Blimey,” someone whispered. The way ahead was blocked by huge rock pillars. To port was an enormous declivity. A hole in the fabric of the earth, miles across, hundreds of stomach-dropping yards deep. Lines reached its edges & jutted & were broken. The sinkhole was scattered with ties & ruined rails. It hurt to see it. Rails beyond the reach of angel or salvor. There were the ruins of trains down there.
Mocker-Jack called a third time. It was near. The Medes headed for a passage between a gnarled-up spire & the great canyon.
“Switchers,” Mbenday shouted. “Ready.” They lined up with remote controls & switchhooks. “Come now, gentlemen & ladies. Let us show this beast how molers move.” Ebba Shappy threw her lever, & the junction ahead clicked smoothly into place as the Medes approached.