Railsea
Authors: China Mieville
Railsea
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places &
incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by China Miéville
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark & the Del Rey colophon is
a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miéville, China.
Railsea / China Mieville.
p. cm.
Summary: “On board the moletrain
Medes
, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death & the other’s glory. But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea—even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-colored mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it’s a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a kind of treasure map indicating a mythical place untouched by iron rails—leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for. Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters & salvage-scrabblers, & it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea. Here is a novel for readers of all ages, a gripping & brilliantly imagined take on Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick
that confirms China Miéville’s status as ‘the most original & talented voice to appear in several years’ (
Science Fiction Chronicle
)”—Provided by publisher.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52454-6
I. Title.
PR6063.I265R35 2012
823’.914—dc23 2012009516
Jacket design: David Stevenson
Jacket illustration: © Mike Bryan
v3.1
ILLUSTRATIONS
| 1.1 G REAT S OUTHERN M OLDYWARPE Talpa ferox rex | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 2.1 N AKED M OLE R AT Heterocephalus smilodon glaber | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 3.1 B URROWING T ORTOISE Magnigopherus polyphemus | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 4.1 A NTLION Myrmeleon deinos | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 5.1 B URROWING O WL Athene cunicularia trux | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 6.1 E ARWIG Dermaptera monstruosus | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 7.1 B LOOD R ABBIT Lepus cruentus | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 8.1 T UNDRA W ORM Lumbricus frigidinculta | Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society |
| 9.1 D AYBAT Vespertilio diei | Personal collection of Sham Yes ap Soorap |
GREAT SOUTHERN MOLDYWARPE
(Talpa ferox rex)
Reproduced with permission from the archives of the Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society
.
Credit: China Miéville
(illustration credit 1.1)
T
HIS IS THE STORY OF A BLOODSTAINED BOY
.
There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. If only that were paint! Around each of his feet the red puddles; his clothes, whatever colour they were once, are now a thickening scarlet; his hair is stiff & drenched.
Only his eyes stand out. The white of each almost glows against the gore, lightbulbs in a dark room. He stares with great fervour at nothing.
The situation is not as macabre as it sounds. The boy isn’t the only bloody person there: he’s surrounded by others as red & sodden as he. & they are cheerfully singing.
The boy is lost. Nothing has been solved. He thought it might be. He had hoped that this moment might bring clarity. Yet his head is still full of nothing, or he knows not what.
We’re here too soon. Of course we can start anywhere: that’s the beauty of the tangle, that’s its very point. But where
we do & don’t begin has its ramifications, & this right now is not best chosen. Into reverse: let this engine go back. Just to before the boy was bloodied, there to pause & go forward again to see how we got here, to red, to music, to chaos, to a big question mark in a young man’s head.
A
MEAT ISLAND
!
No. Back a bit.
A looming carcase?
Bit more.
Here. Weeks out, back when it was colder. The last several days spent fruitlessly pootling through rock passes & in the blue shadows of ice cliffs, late afternoon under a flinty sky. The boy, not yet bloodstained, was watching penguins. He stared at little rock islands furred in huddled birds plumping their oily feathers & shuffling together for comfort & warmth. He’d been giving them his attention for hours. When at last there came a sound from the speakers above, it made him start. It was the alarm for which he & the rest of the crew of the
Medes
had been waiting. A crackling blare. Then from the intercom came the exclamation: “There she blows!”
An instant frantic readiness. Mops were abandoned, spanners dropped, letters half-written & carvings half-whittled were thrust into pockets, never mind their wet ink, their saw-dusty
unfinishedness. To windows, to guardrails! Everyone leaned into the whipping air.
The crew squinted into the frigid wind, stared past big slate teeth. They swayed with the
Medes
’s motion. Birds gusted nearby in hope, but no one was throwing scraps now.
