But then, audibly & terribly, with their front wheels scant feet from it, it switched again, reverted, unbidden, & the Medes passed over it & veered to port, heading straight for the gorge.
SIXTY-THREE
PANDEMONIUM. THE VOID WAS CLOSE. THE CAPTAIN was yelling, & with the quickest of quick thinking, the most vigorous button-pushing & lever-smacking on the part of the most heroic switchers, another gauge turned them from immediate disaster. Jens Thorn was leaning out, prodding buttons to take them star’d. “They won’t stay, Captain,” he yelled. The switches were switching back, junctions conspiring to tip them into the pit.
The switchers strained with the mechanisms, defeated the junctions straining one by terrifying one to send them port. They veered star’d towards the rock pillar, fighting to keep going. “A godsquabble booby-trap,” Mbenday shouted.
“Captain?” said Vurinam. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” Naphi said. “It’s something …” She stared at the shaft near which they had to pass, that cast an immensely long shadow across the world. They were in that shadow. The captain lifted her microphone & said, “To arms.” For seconds, the crew did not understand. “To arms!” she said again. Then came screams.
Uncoiling from where they had lain disguised with stone-grey skins, emerging suddenly from cave-holes in the stiletto-island’s sides, came snakelike things.
“What,” Vurinam whispered, “in the name of That Apt Ohm …?”
There were three, there were five, there were seven of the things. Swaying, flailing, eyeless but not mouthless—on each was a circle rimmed with oozing gums & chitinous teeth.
“Weapons!” Someone was shouting. Someone was firing. Molers raced to get guns. “Weapons now!” The wavering things drew themselves up. Their pulsing mouths drooled, then spat, leaving gluey spittle where they struck. The trainsfolk shot, & the attackers were harried by bullets like frenetic flies. The tentacular things drew back, then, whip-quick, struck.
One closed with a terrible sucking noise on Yorkaj Teodoso’s chest. He screamed. It tugged him from the traintop deck, dangled him, reeled him in to the island they passed. “Fire! Fire!” Captain Naphi shouted. Trainsfolk were screaming Teodoso’s name. Where shots hit the attacking things’ skins they sprayed dark blood. They recoiled, but not far, not for long; they came down blindly grubbing, their mouths moistly smacking.
They launched themselves at the crew. Yashkan howled. Fired the pistol he held blindly behind him as he ran. He almost hit Lind. Mbenday ducked under one of the looping coils, leapt another, smacked at a third with a machete. The slippery thing spasmed & oozed great slopping dollops of slime.
“Fire & drive!” the captain shouted. “Accelerate! On, will you?” Down came the coils again, & again found prey. One grabbed Cecilie Klimy by her left arm, one by her right. Her crewmates howled her name. They ran for her, they grabbed for her, Lind & Mbenday & even gibbering Yashkan pawing to try to get hold of her, but with awful collaboration the two mouth-things moved in concert, hauled her shrieking off as the train moved. The crew were firing now with purpose, were slashing with something other than utter panic. “Klimy!” they shouted. “Teodoso!”
Their colleagues were gone. Pulled out of sight, into the rock. Tendril-beast after tendril-beast tried to grip the train as it went, suckering onto the grinding wheels, the splintering deck.
“You will not!” It was Naphi herself shouting. Not standing back, right there, shooting with a weapon in one hand, swivelling through a succession of spikes & blades in her left limb until she fixed on a nastily serrated edge & slashed at a coiling enemy.
“We have to go back!” Vurinam shouted, but the train kept moving, accelerating, as the creatures tried again. “We have to go back for them!” Benightly roared & fired a big rapid gun & the monsters shuddered. A ripple corkscrewed around & went the height of the island.
“Oh my god!” said Fremlo. “It’s all one thing!”
On the stone the necks conjoined into a single thick ropy body that wound into the upsky. At the landform’s very top, at the level of the toxic clouds, was the creature’s diffuse gas-filled body. It was like the canopy of a great tree all fruited with watching eyes.
The mountainside shook, the shoreline curved away. The Medes reached a safe distance from the hole on one side & from the monster on the other. It stopped in the sunlight. The bewildered & battered crew gathered. Some were crying.
“What in the name of holy bloody hell?” someone said.
“Siller,” Fremlo said. The doctor looked at the captain. At the thing behind them. They couldn’t see its tendrils any more. They’d retreated & lay still. “It’s called a siller. Breathes up there, dips its feeding toes down here. & that …” The doctor pointed at the canyon. “That’s the Kribbis Hole. That’s why that siller hunts here. Because to stay out of the hole, you have to get close to it.”
“Those rails!” Vurinam shouted. “That shunt you into the damn hole! Why don’t the angels fix them?”
“They aren’t broken,” said Dr. Fremlo. “In this place, that’s how the rails are supposed to be. This place is an old, old, old trap.”
“Captain,” Vurinam said. “We have to go back.” Captain Naphi was examining her tracker. She didn’t speak. “I thought this place was a bloody legend,” Vurinam gabbled. He stared at Naphi & abruptly stood straighter. “You knew,” he said.
There was silence. Naphi raised her head to meet his eyes. She did not look cowed. She put the scanner down. Spread her artificial fingers.
“Don’t shilly-shally, Mr. Vurinam,” she said. “Make your accusation.”
“You knew where we were,” he breathed. “But because your damned moldywarpe’s nearby, you said nothing. Couldn’t be bothered to have us go the long way round.” He choked up & stopped. The crew were all open-eyed & staring.
“Anyone else?” Naphi said at last. “Anyone similar accusations? Speak freely.” Nothing. “Very well. I’ve heard of this place, as have you. & it is true that when Mr. Mbenday said the switches were misbehaving, a possibility occurred to me. So if you arraign me before your court accused of having halfheld notions, fleeting recollections, then I plead guilty.
“If, however, you claim I deliberately allowed my crew to steer themselves into danger, then sir how dare you?” She walked towards Vurinam. “I did not hear you complaining about our route nor our objective. I haven’t heard you declining your share of whatever comes should we be successful in this endeavour.”
Vurinam wriggled under her gaze. “You still keep checking that scanner,” he said. “You still want to know where that bloody mole is, more’n anything.”
“Yes,” Naphi shouted. She raised her hand. Her louder, clattering one. She shook it. “I do. That’s what we hunt. That’s what we’re doing here. If anything’s going to provide for Klimy’s family now, to keep alive her memory & that of Teodoso, to ensure that this terrible moment has a purpose, it is bringing the beast down. Snaring the philosophy. So, yes, Mr. Vurinam. I want Mocker-Jack.”
The captain still clenched her fist at him. Its lights winked, it rattled. But—wait. “Your arm,” Vurinam said. “Captain. That thing hurt you, you’re—bleeding?”
Her constructed limb had cracked. &, what made no sense, the split was oozing blood.