Railsea (35 page)

The angel’s wedge split, opened onto a furnace-mouth, the glowing insides of heavenly cogs & shearing metal. It bit down. It breathed out fire.

An appalling crash, a flash, a spinning maelstrom of metal. & the wartrain was gone.

Just—gone. So fast as to be unbelievable. The molers screamed at the sight of such an act, even committed against an enemy. The wartrain & those aboard were eaten & burnt, or churned under the angel’s wheels. Seconds, & all it was, that pride of Manihiki, was litter, scattered in ruins.

Silence fell again across the
Medes
. Sham shivered. The angel flamed through the rubble.

“It stopped them!” someone shouted.

“It stopped them, yes,” Sham said. “I wouldn’t get too excited though. Because there’s nothing between us & it, now. & it’s still coming.”

A
NGELS HAVE A THOUSAND JOBS
. F
OR EACH JOB, A
shape. For each task, celestial engineering in the factories of the gods. Not many of us are made according to such most minute & intricate blueprints.

In an angel’s philosophy, it was once said, two times two equals thirteen. This is not slander. Angels are not crazy, could not be further from madness. They have, insofar as any theologian understands, absolute purity of purpose. A stiletto-sharp fidelity to the task of keeping Heaven clean.

To messy-minded humans, to
Homo vorago aperientis
, so glass-clear & precise a drive makes no sense at all. It is considerably less comprehensible than the ravings of those we call insane.

Angels, unremittingly & absolutely sane, cannot but seem to poor humanity relentlessly & madly murderous.

S
HAM SWALLOWED
. B
EYOND THE CAPTAIN, BEHIND THE
train, a flaming & gnashing enormity, came the angel.

Its wheels were many sizes, an irregular flank of them, of interlocking gears. Tusked with weapons. It did not have, nor did it need, windows. There was no seeing out nor in: it was an avenging rail-riding chariot of wrath. It burnt the bushes in its passing.

Even the atheists on the
Medes
whispered prayers. Sham swallowed.
Come on
, he thought.
Don’t stop
, he thought. Think
more
.

Ahead was the too-close horizon, the end of the world. The same distance in the other direction, the angel. Moving faster than the
Medes
. The math was simple: the situation was hopeless. It would reach them before they reached whatever was there.

The captain did not move, & she did not, for all its monstrousness, appear to be looking at the angel, but rather through it. Sham looked at the receiver he held. He saw the glowing screen-blob. He had almost forgotten Mocker-Jack.

“All is lost,” someone shouted.

“We’re shafted,” shouted someone else.

Sham felt Daybe strain as he fiddled with the machine. He remembered how the bat had lurched for the captain as she tinkered, & narrowed his eyes. “I’m his philosophy,” Naphi had said of the great moldywarpe.

“Sirocco,” Sham said. He waved the mechanism. Daybe bobbed as it moved. “Can you make this thing’s signal get bigger?”

She looked quizzical. “Might be possible. Need more power.”

“So connect it to something.” He looked around, pointed at the
Medes
intercom. “That gets power from the engine. Come on, ain’t you a salvor? This is what you do.”

She pulled tools from her belt, yanked wires from the speakers & stripped them. Unwound some things, wound others together. Hesitated a second before plunging her tools into the guts of the racing
Medes
. There was a great crack, & all the machines on the train went off for an instant & came on again.

“Oh my head!” Sirocco shouted. They all felt it. The crew moaned at the rising, humming, trembling something, in the air, in the substance of the train. Even the captain staggered. Sham winced & grabbed Sirocco’s arm, took the receiver. It was wired now to the train’s insides.

Daybe was screaming at him. Scrabbling & scratching for the machine. Sham stared. The screen was pouring with light. It was bleating like a sheep. & the glowing blob that was Mocker-Jack was moving faster than he’d ever seen before.

“Oh my hammer & tongs,” whispered Vurinam. “What did you even do?”

“Made it stronger,” Sirocco said.

“What’s the point of that?” Mbenday shouted. “You
sped up
the mole?”

“Much as I hate to undermine this technical achievement,” Fremlo said. The doctor looked pointedly behind them, at the roaring angel. The crew stared.

“Mocker-Jack,” the captain said dreamily. “Mocker-Jack’s your philosophy now, too, & you belong to it. We’re going to have to face it.” If the angel concerned her at all, she did not show it. The captain smiled. She walked to her dais. The crew watched her.

“She’s right,” Sham said.

“What?” hissed Vurinam. “She’s lost her mind! Have you seen what’s about to get us?” He pointed at the terrible engine. “One thing it ain’t is a bloody mole!”

“She’s right,” Sham insisted. “We’re molers. & it’s our moling skills we need now.”

N
O LINES TO EITHER SIDE: THEY COULDN’T RELEASE
jollycarts. The explosive harpoon at the train’s front pointed uselessly in the wrong direction. Instead, they gathered at the
Medes
’s stern. Benightly went farther, jumped down onto the
Pinschon
that jostled behind them, right to its end. He stood silhouetted against the great angel scant yards behind. Its mouth-clamp opened. It roared.

Light was waning. Below the rumbling of the rails there was another rumbling, of the ground. “What’s that?” Caldera said. In the plain behind the chase, the earth trembled. & erupted. Sham gasped as a molehill burst up to huge height. A furrow roared in their direction.

“Stonefaces,” Sham whispered. Sirocco tugged at the wire-strewing transmitter & squeezed some impossible last drop of power from it. Miles off, through thick earth, Sham heard Mocker-Jack roar.

The
Medes
ploughed through a split in the rock line, followed seconds later by the gaining angel.

His crew watched Benightly. Even so big a man, even
tensing all his bulk, he looked tiny in front of the onrushing visitation. He hefted his harpoon. Against the angel. It was laughable. But Benightly drew back his arm & waited & somehow did not look absurd. The angel grew closer.

“What are you doing?” the captain shouted. “Mocker-Jack’s not even here yet.” Benightly said not a word. But the world itself answered.

It shook. Rocks quivered. Behind them, at the entrance to the rock chasm, the ground rose. Broke. Bigger than a tidal wave. The dark dirt fell away from a surging yellow something that shook the stones & rails & sent rockfall hurtling down the inclines. As if the earth spat out a new, rearing, fur-clad mountain. With teeth. Impossible ivory talpa, the titan moldywarpe.

Blood dropped out of Sham’s stomach. He staggered. Abacat Naphi howled a welcome.

A pale & shaggy enormity, a glimpse of blind red eyes in a debris plume. The mole roared.

& crashed back through into the dark beneath. Behind the implacable angel, the last line in the railsea shifted uneasily, rucked in segments as the mole burrowed faster than any train towards its summons.

Sham blinked away tears of awe. The crew were open-mouthed, staggered, by the angel, & by what came behind it. There was no time for reflection. The echoes of their passage swept away & changed, & with a rush the
Medes
emerged from between rocks. The angel was closing. Sham turned to look ahead at what was coming, & gasped again.

A bridge. Endless. A bridge into dark, jutting from the end of the world.

They were at the rim of the railsea. Racing towards a final
cliff. The world came to a stop. Into the nothing, the void beyond earth, their one true rail continued.

They were hurtling way too fast to stop, & an angel was right behind them. Was grinding in engine triumph.

“You,” Benightly said to it, “are close enough.”

The angel’s metal maw gaped. Benightly sang a hunt-hymn. Sham held out his hand.

Sirocco tugged the receiver free of the wire moorings that had boosted it. She handed it to Sham, stepped between him & the captain.

“No!” shouted Naphi, but the salvor kept her back, while Sham ran forward, whispered a prayer & hurled the receiver towards the
Pinschon
. Towards Benightly.

It arced.
Too high! Too high oh what have I done?

But Benightly leapt straight up. He plucked the charged-up receiver from the air with his fingertips. Landed already clipping it to his harpoon. Stood, his throwing arm ready, took aim & Captain Naphi shouted, & the angel opened its mouth-thing again onto gnashing flaming gears with a blast of scorching triumph, into the gusts of which Benightly threw.

The spear flew. An immense throw. Benightly aimed not at the angel was but at where it would be. The spear slammed into its mouth. Which closed.

With a rush of wind the
Medes
’s wheels rattled on suddenly raised rails, as it careened onto the bridge to nowhere & the land receded. Someone screamed. “Brakes!” someone shouted. To either side was abyss. Sham reeled & stared as the angel bore down.

B
EHIND IT SOMETHING CAME
. A living earthquake. Shaking the edge of the world. Black earth parted, & animal enormity burst forth.

Pale leviathan, shoved up from the under. It gnashed in epic rage. That mouth! A vast slavering, where steeple-fangs jostled. The mole howled. Haunches like overhangs, claws like towers, shoving into light.

The vast harsh velvet beast breached.

Mocker-Jack soared. Cloud-great & ravening.

& twisted in the air, rolling as it came, so in its endless flanks & belly storming towards the angel, Sham saw the stubs of weapons. Snapped-off handles & hafts, a pelt-archaeology of failed hunts, stinging trophies accumulated over the centuries the colossal burrower had taunted & destroyed.

Hunting that unseen salvaged force, the signal now blaring from the angel’s mouth, down the giant moldywarpe came. Onto the angel. Slab-teeth bared. With a scream of metal ruination, Mocker-Jack bit.

The angel fired all its weapons. Fire gusted across the behemoth & scorched its yellow hair & it snarled but did not release its mouthgrip even as it smouldered. It ripped, it tore. The crew gaped.

The captain shouted to Mocker-Jack, a loud & wordless greeting, challenge, lamentation.

The godlike mole tore the angel from the rails. The two great presences somersaulted in slow time, skidded, gouged across the last of the land. Mocker-Jack shook its prey apart, strewing heaven-trash & fire.

At the brink of the precipice the angel poised for long seconds straight up, a tower, wheels spinning. As if undecided
whether to topple back onto the flat land. Gripping it, Mocker-Jack, on fire, bled & gnawed through steel, stared at the
Medes
.

Sham knew those blood-coloured orbs could barely discern more than light & darkness. Still, he would always swear the moldywarpe looked carefully in their direction. Stared & chewed &
pushed
. Pushed its quarry & itself out of that instant, & over the world’s end.

The mole & the angel fell. The angel-train tumbled, & with it went the great southern moldywarpe,
Talpa ferox rex
, Mocker-Jack the great, the captain’s philosophy, into the abyss. & Sham would always swear on the lives of all the people he cared about that as it went, the mole looked with malice & satisfaction into the captain’s eyes.

T
HE ANGEL DISINTEGRATED
into shadows, became a shower of burning. The island-sized talpa glowed ghostly as it fell, until the dark that filled the trench beyond the railsea swallowed it, & the
Medes
was left above emptiness, waiting for the sound of impact, a sound that never came.

“Well grubbed,” Sham whispered at last, into the silence.

Vurinam repeated it. Fremlo copied him. Fremlo copied him, & Mbenday Fremlo. Then others, & more & more. Even Yashkan cleared his throat & muttered the words. & they carried & grew louder until everyone was shouting, “Well grubbed! Well grubbed, by gods, well grubbed!

“Well grubbed, old mole!”