The Steam Mole (7 page)

“That was on the train. The bar could have been broken. But yes. I'm for it. Just trying to work out how.”

“Donner and me and Parsee, Deloraine and Lampy, we all ready to take a chance wi' you. The country out there is a killer, man. And they got dogs for hunting us. But it feels like we're in for a wet. If we're going to make a break, we need to do it soon, in the rain. You break us loose, we'll go 'long.”

Deep in the desert Tim Barnabas dreamed of rain. His mind must have been a bit messed up by breathing bad air, being nearly frightened to death, and maybe even the bump he'd taken on his head. Somehow, he'd lost the low hump of ground that indicated the termite run. It was quite rugged terrain out here, not the miles of flat sand he'd thought he'd find. The sky was a dirty red. The wind wuthered among the rocks and scattered dry, yellow shreds of grass. There were the scattered, twisted, wind-desiccated bones of trees here for him to fall over, too.

He really wasn't sure where he was going. His head throbbed and his mouth was dry, but at least he wasn't sweating so much anymore. Surely that must be good.

It was just so hot.

Eventually he stopped staggering along and took some shelter from the sun under the overhang of a large boulder. He lay there, looking at the cracks and shades of red, and watched them twine and make strange patterns before his eyes. It was slightly cooler under the rock—anything was better than the beating sun. Mind you, that was half hidden in blowing dust, a fierce red disk up in the sky.

Tim must have slipped away into a sort of sleep, or at least unconsciousness, because when he woke up he was shivering with cold and it was dark, and his head wasn't quite such a mess. He was still desperately thirsty.

He was pretty sure that he'd come from that direction…he'd certainly crawled under the rock from it. And therefore, logically, if he walked back that way, he'd come out at the mound that marked the termite run. If he walked along it, only at night, he had to come out at the power station, and water. The mole had been on its way back. That was why he'd been so busy trying to finish his letter to Clara, to put it with the mail on the supply train returning to Sheba. It couldn't be more than six…seven miles, surely. Walking at night was the right thing to do. He could manage seven miles.

Somehow.

If he was walking the right direction.

The sky was hazy, so he couldn't even use the stars to navigate by.

And walking straight…well, that was out of the question. It was broken, stony ground. And dark.

He just had to do his best.

Slow but steady.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been making that slow but steady progress, with occasional falls, when the moon came up.

Tim's head was in that exhausted, cloudy zone where nothing
made much sense except to put one foot in front of the other. At first he was just grateful for the extra light. There were scrubby bushes here to fall over, too, but then something struck him as wrong.

He'd learned navigation on the submarine. It had been one of the subjects he'd needed for his submariner's ticket. The moon rises in the east.

He was walking the wrong way. Except…except, had he walked east or west when he first wandered away from the termite run?

He honestly didn't know. His head was whirling.

So thirsty.

And there were more of these bushes, and even a tussock to fall over between the stones. He chose the path of least resistance, no longer caring if he walked straight or east or west. Just…one foot in front of the other.

And then things got worse. He fell into a hole. A sandy, scrabbly edged hole, far deeper than he was tall.

He tried to clamber out of it, too weak to grab the crumbly edge and haul himself up. He slipped and fell again, and for a while he just lay there.

And then it dawned on him that his face was laying on something damp.

Damp…in the desert.

That gave him, from somewhere deep inside, a spurt of energy and clarity he'd thought lost to him forever.

Damp sand in a hole…It was definitely damp, sticking together the way the sand on the edge of the pit had not.

On his knees, Tim dug—he could feel the damp through the knees of his dungarees now. He scraped away sand. And more wet sand. And more.

Eventually he stopped. He wondered if he could try sucking the water out of the sand. After a few minutes he sighed to himself and tried to swallow around his swollen tongue, then reached into the hole to start again. He was down nearly a full arm-stretch by now.

He stuck his hand into water.

It was barely enough to cover his palm.

It was still water.

It might have been muddy, but he didn't begin to care.

It trickled between his cracked lips.

Nothing had ever been quite as welcome.

He could have drunk gallons and gallons of it…except it was a slow process. A little bit of the precious stuff cupped in his fingers to each mouthful, and it seeped in very slowly, too.

After far too few mouthfuls to slake his thirst, but enough to help his thinking, Tim started on a second, bigger hole, a little farther across. He found a stick to help dig, and it went easier. With two holes he could let one seep while he drank from the other.

The sky was beginning to pale for another blistering day in the desert by the time Tim had had enough to drink. His head was much clearer, and he started to work things out. This must be a watercourse. Not so much a river as where the floodwater ran when the desert saw rain or run-off from elsewhere. That was why there'd been more vegetation to fall over.

And the hole…well, someone must have dug it. His feet choosing their own path—the course of least resistance—in his state last night had somehow put him on a trail of some kind, to this hole that someone must have dug to reach the water.

Tim had his wits about him enough by now to know that he needed to drink and get himself into as much shade as possible before the sun baked down on this hole. It would be cooler in here for a while yet, but the sky was already a relentless blue, very different from yesterday's wind-blown red.

He knew he had to stay out of the sun. He knew a few hours in it could easily kill him. He just didn't know quite what to do next. He couldn't stay here forever. And yet…to leave the water was simply terrifying. He steeled himself for at least a clamber out of the pit. Now, in daylight, not in the state he'd been in last night, it
wasn't that difficult. It still left him panting and tired, just that little bit of exertion. But in the morning light he could see that this was indeed a river bed—or had been once in wetter times. Walking, except along the trail he'd stumbled onto, would have been difficult. There were more plants here, even some scrubby coppice-like trees up to seven or eight feet tall, with waxy green leaves. In the distance he heard a bird calling. But there was no sign of which way the termite run was. Tim could tell east and west and north and south, but besides the path he'd followed, he had no idea where any humans might be. It was quite a well-trodden path, though. He wondered if he ought to follow it. Surely it couldn't be far to wherever the digger of the hole lived. Unless…unless of course it was an animal. Tim literally had no idea what kind of wild animal might live in Australia. It was too far from the tunnels under Drowned London. He needed some kind of weapon. Or fire…

That would do. People would see the smoke. He should be able to see the smoke of the power station…

Only he had no means of making fire, and the sky showed no trails of smoke.

How had he come so far?

The opportunity to escape came for Jack and his fellow prisoners two days later, thanks to the rain the young aboriginal prisoner, Lampy, had predicted. They were carrying sleepers, and very grateful for that rain and the little bit of cool that came with it. They'd just got back to the pile that had been dumped off the rail car when one of the soldiers pointed to them and said, “Right. You lot. Onto that cattle truck with the gravel. Been a washout at Three-mile Creek.”

So they found themselves shunted down there, to off-load three tons of crushed rock in the rain while the two guards sat and smoked in the cab with the engine driver and fireman. There were five other gangs, each in a cattle truck half-full of gravel. It wasn't, to Jack's eye, going to work. That was fine. He helped to make sure it wouldn't. He dumped his sack-load carefully into the culvert, and tipped a wink at the others—barring Quint—to do the same. They'd got good at working around the would-be trusty. The man was nervous, but still working toward ingratiating himself with the new military guards. And Jack bided his time. They carried load after load, while the rain sheeted down.

“Big rain,” said Jack.

One of the others laughed grimly. “Nothing to what'll be comin'. North end gets plenty…but all at once.”

“Guess we won't tell them the culvert is blocked and the bridge is going to wash away,” said Jack with grim satisfaction.

Naturally, Quint did, as soon as they got near the engine, singing out and pulling them closer, the others angry and reluctant.
Jack had to smile to himself. You couldn't fake this kind of stuff. And Quint had already made himself known to the troopers on guard duty. They weren't the elites training at the camp. They were just sappers, and sour with the job, too.

“Ah, hell's teeth,” a soldier swore as he got down from the cab. He turned to his fellow. “Come on. I'm not getting wet while you sit here like Lord Muck.”

“I'll get my rifle wet,” complained the other.

“Leave it in the bloody cab. Mine's wet already.” He pointed at the prisoners. “Go on, you lot, get back to it.”

They turned and began their chained shuffle while the guards jogged toward the water. When they were a good distance off, Jack fell over, pulling Quint down, and at the same time hitting him with the fist-sized rock he'd picked up in the stream. “Pick him up with me and walk closer to the engine,” he said quietly. “Sorr? Mr. Driver, sorr,” he called out, “this feller's fallen and hit his head.”

The driver put his head out and Jack pitched the rock as hard as he'd ever thrown a cricket ball—but from a lot closer. And he'd been a first class player, once. It hit the driver on the side of the head, and then they were running forward. The fireman, who had come to see why his driver had pitched out of the cab with a groan, took a swing at them with a shovel and found himself grabbed by six desperate men hauling a groaning seventh. They sat on the fireman and held a sharp shovel to his throat.

Jack knew how to get a steam engine going. “More coal, boys,” he said, opening the fire door and the dampers. “And any of you who can shoot, deal with the armed guard if he comes back. He'll be out to kill us, so I suppose we may as well play by their rules.”

“They don't seem to have noticed. They're down at the water,” said Deloraine. “Man, have you gone crazy? Taking the locomotive? They'll shoot us all for this.”

“They'll kill us or work us to death anyway, Rainey,” said Donner.

“It's too late now, anyway,” said Jack. “Here we go.” He turned the
lever and the engine began to roll slowly but steadily away up the hill, with the squealing of metal on metal. “More coal. Come on! More coal.”

Behind them in the rain, someone shouted. Jack opened the throttle as far as it would go. Looking back on the slow curve away from the creek he could see two uniformed men running toward them. And one knelt down.

“How's your shooting?” asked Jack, as something ricocheted off metal farther back on the train.

The adult aboriginal, Marni, had taken the rifle with the calm assurance of someone who'd used one often. “Better n' his,” he said, and shot. “Blast. Winged him.”

Jack could shoot, too, but from the cab of the rattling train, he doubted he could do anything like as well as Marni. The other man still ran after the train, the driver now up and running behind him, with blood on his face.

“Give them the fireman.”

They flung the man off into the bushes. Jack managed, in all the fear and tension, to feel a little sorry for the fellow, but he might be better off of the train.

It was not a very fast little steam locomotive, and there was a slight upgrade from the creek before a flattening, and then they were on a long upgrade away. The runner might almost catch the train, if he was fit enough, on the second grade. Jack had noticed it was the old three-link coupling joining the carriages. He knew enough to know what that meant. He grabbed the fire-door lever and a short section of bar, knelt down next to Lampy, and inserted the points into the leg iron chain. He twisted the two bars in opposite directions, and the chain snapped.

“You need to jump from carriage to carriage to the guard's van,” Jack told Lampy. “The caboose…there'll be a big brake wheel. Release it and get back here as fast as possible.”

Lampy relished being free of that dog chain on his leg, even if it meant he had to make the terrifying jump from the coal tender to the cattle trucks and then onward to the next and the next to the caboose, a little four-wheeled van with a running board and a small verandah. He clambered across to that, and down. And the door was locked. He got onto the running board. Clinging to the rail, he edged his way around to the back verandah, the wheels clickety-clacking on the rails inches from his feet. The back door was open.

The room wasn't empty, though. It had a guard in it. A guard who hadn't…yet…put the brake on properly, because he hadn't…yet…stirred from his drunken stupor. A bottle of cheap rum lay on the floor next to him. Lampy had seen that often enough with his father. But the clack and rattle was bound to wake him eventually, even if the shouts and the gunshots didn't. And it looked like the other prisoners had caught on. There was fighting going on.

He could jump—at this speed that was not that much of a risk, and then he would be free, and given the weather, they would never catch him.

If he went in there…that big drunk might either catch or kill him. It was no time for thinking or hesitating. But he couldn't help but see in his memory his father bleeding, dying, but still swearing at him and trying to get up.

He swallowed, then opened the door quietly. Not that it would make more noise than the steel wheels on the rails, but it was all he could do to soothe his fear. The hot little cabin stank of the cheap rum, only helping bring the bad memories back to his head as he wrestled the brake wheel, with half an eye on the guard. It finally came easily. He could feel the train start to accelerate. The clatter and rattle far louder now than the dragging squeak of the brake had been. But…if the guard woke, he'd just put it on again. The wheel was attached to the shaft with a split-pin.

Lampy hauled at the pin. It didn't move. He looked around for something, anything, to stick through the eye to give him leverage.
Next to the guard's hand lay a clasp knife. The man was definitely stirring. Gritting his teeth, Lampy grabbed the knife, stuck it in the pin eye, and hauled the pin out. The heavy cast iron wheel fell off with a
clang
. Lampy snatched it up…

The drunken guard was awake, staring blearily at him. Lampy flung himself out of the door and hurled the wheel and knife away as the guard staggered toward the doorway. Lampy realized, too late, that he should have hung onto the knife. He had to vault onto the running board of the swaying train and swing himself onto the front verandah, as the guard turned and came staggering back to the locked door. The few seconds it took for the guard to open the door were all it took for Lampy to jump the gap, haul himself up, run frantically along the cattle truck, and jump to the next. And on. At the tender he found the others already busy, still chained, but making a human chain down to the coupling.

The Irishman hung down there.

“Jump, boyo!” he yelled. “Well done.”

Lampy clung to the edge of the swaying tender, and there was another jerk, and the carriages banged the buffers…and then began to slip back as the locomotive accelerated again.

Freed of its load, the little engine surged upward toward the grade.

“Haul me up,” shouted Jack, and they did. They crawled, dragging the semiconscious Quint along, back to the bucketing and rattling little loco's cab.

“I forgot the brake in the caboose,” said Jack. “Devil away, I nearly lost my hand down there.”

“You forgot about the guard, too,” said Lampy.

“To be sure, I never thought of it!” exclaimed Jack. “Sorry lad. You did well, then.”

It was another five miles to the end-of-the-line camp, and Jack
had no intention of being with the train then. He also had very little intention of being chained up for longer than he had to be. The engine had tools, and it had levers. He pulled the various fire irons from the rack. He held them out as he adjusted the throttle with his other hand.

“Break the chain, and we take these with us for the rest later.”

The other prisoners were used to taking his orders by now. “What's the ‘rest' you're talking about?” asked Lampy. Maybe he had doubts after Jack had forgotten the guard. Or maybe he just thought faster than the rest of them.

“We get off in a creek and shake off the dogs by staying in it. We let the engine trickle on. I'd like to send it to blow up and crash at the end of the line, but there's no sense telling them something's wrong before someone gets there from Three-mile Creek.”

“And him?” One of the men pointed at the treacherous Quint.

“It'll be for the best, for now, to take him with us,” said Jack, looking at Quint's frightened eyes.

Jack knew the value of a known traitor, even if those who followed him might easily kill Quint first and listen later.

Besides, he didn't like killing people, least of all in cold blood.