Railsea

BLOOD RABBIT

(Lepus cruentus)

Reproduced with permission from the archives of the Streggeye Molers’ Benevolent Society.

Credit: China Miéville (illustration credit 7.1)

SEVENTY-THREE

NONE OF YOU HAVE TO,” SHAM SAID. “I DON’T EVEN expect any of you to. I don’t deserve you to. But yeah, of course I’m going on.” He smiled. “With them.”

Caldera smiled, too. Thanks, she mouthed at him.

Of those Bajjer who had stuck the journey this far, most took their own leave after the Fight of the Rescue of the Siblings Shroake. Now the Shroakes were—temporarily at least—saved. A quest, for something that lay beyond pictures the Bajjer & their companions had never even seen, was the only reason to go on. Most of the Bajjer had little interest in quests. There were exceptions. & there were those insistent on revenge on the Manihiki navy train the Shroakes told them was close.

The crew of the Medes, that had once been a moletrain & was now who-knew-quite-what, having performed the rescue they had promised to Sham, were no more obliged to continue than the Bajjer. The captain, if such she still was, fiddled with her tracker.

“I’ll stick with you a bit, though, if you’ve no objection,” Sirocco said.

“Ah,” said Vurinam. “We’re so near now. Why not let’s just see what we find?”

He spoke for the bulk of the crew. Those for whom he did not joined the mass of Bajjer carts, complaining at the unorthodox conveyance, to start a slow way back east to the known world.

“Captain Naphi?” Sham said. She looked up, startled. She still prodded at her tracking mechanism, with a tool extruded from her arm. The one her crew now called her artificial artificial one.

“Should throw that bloody thing to Mocker-Jack,” Fremlo muttered.

“I stay with my train,” Naphi said at last, turned back to what she was doing. So there was that.

Those heading back & those going on separated with camaraderie & without rancour, waving as they parted. The flotilla of sailtrains scattered back towards distant mountains.

The investigators argued over their clue-map. “What’s this sound like?” someone would shout, & yellingly repeat the description Sham, with muttered help from the captain, had given. Then debates: that looks like such-&-such a place; no, you’re mad, that’s wossname; & wasn’t there a story about these or those hills? Bajjer scout-carts would beetle off in candidate directions, until forward motion was agreed, & the Medes, the remaining Bajjer vehicles & the Pinschon hauled on.

Dero & Caldera watched their own train disappear behind them. Their rolling-stock home for so long. “You had to,” Sham said quietly. “It was falling apart.” For a while, neither Shroake said a word.

“Thanks for letting us carry on,” Dero said at last. “For using your train.” Ain’t really mine, Sham thought. He left the Shroakes to their goodbye.

The captain, at the Medes’s rear, intent in her strange work, gave a hm of triumph. Daybe veered overhead. The air so far out seemed to confuse it. It arced, abruptly curved back towards the train. Heading not straight for Sham but for the last carriage. Circled Captain Naphi, standing staring back the way they had come, towards her lost philosophy, like some befuddled antifigurehead. No one bothered her. No one minded her in her backwards command. She fiddled with her machine while the bat circled.

There was salvage even here, & once or twice they saw the remnants of ruined trains. They made slow progress—there were days when they decided they’d taken a wrong move, & the whole group would reverse, or grind on to where junctions allowed them to turn. But they grew better at unpicking clues. Their false starts grew fewer.

They had, after all, a method for knowing when they’d gone right: with a hush & increasingly uncanny sense, Sham would find himself, with a sudden turn of the rails, staring at an exact scene he remembered from the screen. Only the sky would be different, the clouds & upsky coilings. They progressed through old pictures.

The farther they travelled beyond the trade routes of the railsea, filling in specifics on charts marked only with the vaguest rumours, the sparser the railsea, the larger the stretches of unbroken land, the fewer the rails. There was a winnowing of iron possibilities.

The other thing that made them certain they were en route to something hidden, at the edge of the railsea & therefore of the world, was that they were harassed by angels.

SEVENTY-FOUR

IT WAS NIGHT. STILL THEY TRAVELLED. A BAJJER SCOUT reported something in the distance. The explorers woke as the air shook.

“What …?”

“Is that …?”

They came on deck, rubbing their eyes & looking up at the lights low in the sky. In came a flock of flying angels.

“Oh my Stonefaces,” Sham whispered.

The crew watched the air-chopping investigators. They could not make much out: swaying lights, reflections on recurved shells, stars glimpsed through their shimmering. Fables! The watchers at the edge of the world. The heralds of the godsquabble. Getterbirds, utterers in air. They had as many names as most holy things do.

The crew cringed, kept weapons in their hands, whispered to switchers to get ready, anticipating attack. Which did not come. At last the whirling-winged things scattered. Some back the way they had come, back towards the world’s edge, others east, & south.

“Where they going?” said Caldera. “If only we had a plane to see.”

Sham looked at her thoughtfully. “That we don’t,” he said. “But we do have something.”

He scaled the crow’s nest. Remember when I couldn’t do this? he thought. Into the gloom & freezing air. Telescope in hand, Sham waited. He looked for flying lights & considered. If he tried to think full-on about where he was, what he was doing, how he had got there, it was all a great deal too much. So he simply didn’t. Sham just thought of stories about what was ahead. The end of the world, ghostly money, endless sorrow. Sham strained his eyes.

It was not deep night. It was dark but not quite dark. The stars were hidden but not wholly. By sitting still & staring a long, long time, Sham could make out textures in the black. The edge of something, approaching. A horizon. That’s what it was. Dark on dark. A horizon that was definitely, without question, closer than it should be. He caught his breath.

Mountains, rocks, a split, gaps & foreshortened earth.

& then a rush, a whir of lights & another angel rushed into view. It roared around him, filling the air with dust & noise. He clung to the ladder & grit his teeth. He could see his crewmates shouting below, could of course hear nothing. When at last the angel careered off eastward, Sham trained his lens on it.

Daybe gusted off, following it. As if the bat would grab it out of the air & crunch it down. Sham watched the winking diode light from Daybe’s leg. Daybe was no daybat now, staying up all hours, like Sham himself. It did not fly straight, still obviously confused. It veered again for where the captain stood, even so late, alone & left behind by events.

Daybe swooped around her & the mechanism she endlessly probed. Sham stared.

“CAPTAIN.”

Naphi turned. The crew were ranged behind her. For a while there was only the noise of the train. Everyone swayed with its motion.

“Captain,” Sham said again. He stood with a Shroake to either side. “What are you doing?”

She met his stare. “Keeping watch,” she said.

“But for what, exactly?” said Caldera Shroake.

“You know what’s ahead of us, Captain?” Sham said. “An edge. The end of something. I saw it. But you’re looking the other way. What are you watching for? What’s behind us?”

The captain stared at him, & he held her gaze, & as planned Vurinam suddenly blindsided her. The young trainswain stepped in &, gentle enough not to hurt, he grabbed her mechanism. “No!” she shouted, but Vurinam wrested it from her, threw it to Sham. “No!” the captain said again, stepped forwards, but now Benightly was ready. She struggled as he restrained her.

Daybe landed on Sham’s arm. The bat nuzzled the receiver. “You will let me go!” the captain shouted.

“Mbenday,” Sham said. “What does that mean?” He pointed at a blipping & winking & whistling.

The man stared at it. “That little light there?” Mbenday said at last. He looked up. “That’s your little friend. But there’s another one there.” Mbenday pointed at another light, & swallowed. “A big one, it looks like. Coming towards us. Fast.”

Captain Naphi stopped struggling. She stood tall & straightened her clothes.

“How long have you known, Captain?” Sham said. “How long have you known what was coming?” He raised the receiver. “Mocker-Jack.”

There was a collective gasp. “Mocker-Jack the mole,” Sham said. “& we ain’t going after it anymore. It’s coming after us.”

“IT WAS NEVER going to let us go,” the captain said. “We had the hubris to think we were hunting it. We were never hunting it.” She did not sound mad. “Now the gloves are off. The boot is on the other foot.” She smiled. “Mocker-Jack is my philosophy. & I am its.”

“Sirocco,” Sham said. He fiddled with the mechanism & watched Daybe move again. “Signals like this, do they work both ways?”

“Ah,” Sirocco said slowly. She nodded thoughtfully. “Could be. Could be made to.”

“You see Daybe,” Sham said. He wiggled the receiver & the bat bobbed.

“It ain’t tuned to him,” Caldera said. “It’s a different frequency. How come it shows him?”

“Salvage,” Sirocco said. “It’s always a bit iffy. There’s bound to be bleed. Especially when, like right now, that thing you’re holding must be kicking out a lot of power. Ain’t it, Captain? When did you learn to reverse its field?” Sirocco said.

“Sham,” said Vurinam. “D’you think you could please tell the rest of us what the bloody hell you lot are on about?”

“She flipped the signal,” Sham said. “This …” He shook the receiver. “It ain’t finding Mocker-Jack anymore. It’s pulling. The moldywarpe’s finding it.”

The crew stared. “Turn the bloody thing off, then!” Vurinam squawked. Sirocco took it from Sham & hurriedly fiddled.

“How’d you even learn to do this, Captain?” she said.

“You salvors,” Naphi said. “You’ll tell a person anything with the right blandishments. If you can show off about it.”

“Why do you think she stuck with us?” Mbenday said, frantically pulling at his own hair. “She wasn’t going to let us take the Medes. She needs a moletrain.”

“Can we outpace it?” Sham said. “The mole?” Mbenday read the screen, carefully.

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” said the captain.

“No,” said Mbenday. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if I can reverse this,” Sirocco said.

“Much too late. Do you really think,” the captain said, “that Mocker-Jack can’t sniff us now? Can’t feel us? That it doesn’t know the signature of our wheels? It’s coming. This is what we’ve wanted.”

“No, Captain,” Sham shouted. “This is what you’ve wanted. The rest of us been wanting other, bloody, things!”

“It’s really coming quite fast,” Mbenday whispered, staring at the display. “I mean, it’s a few hours away at most. It’s really coming at quite a clip.” He swallowed.

“Wait,” Sham said slowly. “Sirocco, leave it on.”

“What?” said Vurinam. “Are you crazy?”

“Mocker-Jack’s going to find us anyway now. At least this way we know where it is.”

They stood, on the deck, staring, unsure where they were going, what there was to say. Sham hunted an idea. It teased him. “We’re so close,” he said. He pointed in the direction of the dark edge he’d seen approaching.

“Ahoy!” To their star’d flank, two Bajjer scouts approached swinging lanterns in semaphore. They came closer, shouting in every language they knew. They yelled with bullhorns, struggling to make themselves heard & understood.

“What is it?” Sham loudhailered back. “We’re sort of in the middle of something.”

“Is reason is why angels go over there,” one shouted, & pointed east the way they’d come.

“Looking for the mole, yeah?” yelled back Sham.

“No! What? Mole what? Is more.”

“More what?”

“More trains.”

“Pirates?” Sham shouted, & the Bajjer wagged their fingers no.

“Navy,” they bellowed. “Manihiki navy is coming.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

THE RAILSEA SHRUGGED OFF THE NIGHT, & UNCOVERED the ruins of many ancient trains. What graveyard was this? A macabre scene of failed ventures.

Coupled to the back of the Medes, where the captain still stood—what point was there to incarcerating her when all she did was stare, in the direction of her incoming philosophy?—the Pinschon rode the rails on its own stubby wheels. It could not have kept up by tunnelling at this speed. Beyond it, coming for them, the navy was now a visible cloud. Exhaust, fumes, the dust of travel.

“They were never going to let us go,” Caldera said. She turned her charts, looked at them from all angles. “We’re close. To something. I can see where my mum & dad were going, & I can see … I think it looks like we’re heading for somewhere they were trying to avoid …”

“Something got these trains,” Dero said. “Look at them all.”

“We have to think,” Sham said. “We have to think this through.”

They did not have time to investigate, to weave & switch between discarded train shells. But as they emerged from that shatterscape, Dero pointed. A way beyond the thickest thickets of wreck-matter, flipped upside down by some strange catastrophe, balanced on its roof on a makeshift flatbed truck with its wheels still to the rails, was a weirdly battered carriage. Its skyward-pointing floor was tarpaulined, its front buckled into an ugly wedge. Dero & Caldera both gasped. Sirocco eyed the carriage appraisingly.

It had been, Sham realized, part of their parents’ train, part of the first Shroake exploration. “What happened to it?” Sham said.

“They purged them, sometimes,” Dero said. “They taught us that. But that looks …”

“I don’t know what that looks like,” Caldera said.

“Look.” Sirocco pointed to where the navy were becoming visible. “They’re going faster’n us.”

“It’s that same one again,” Dero whispered. “Found us better’n anyone else. It’s like they were here before us.”

“Some of them,” Sham said carefully, thinking of Juddamore’s pictures, “might’ve had information. About where you were going.”

Through the best of the Medes’s scopes, Sham could still see only malicious smudges. Sirocco passed him her own salvaged-up mechanism, nu-salvage & arche-salvage combined. He put his eyes to that & jumped with the bright up-closeness of the quarry. That great navy wartrain, skewering the sky with guns.

“Reeth,” he whispered. Who was it, he wondered, which pirate snatched from railsea death had remembered the pictures well enough to give Reeth clues? Juddamore? Elfrish was gone. Robalson was horribly gone.

The rails grew sparser. The Medes & its companions raced towards a line of rock, a crag-curtain broken by slits as if peered-through by some impatient actor. “We have to box really bloody clever,” Sham said. “Really, bloody, clever.”

The last Bajjer windcarts began to pull away. There were not enough lines to either side of the Medes, now, for them to keep up. “Wait,” Sham shouted across to them. In the rudiments of their language, more than he thought he’d picked up, he begged them not to go. “Come aboard! We’re close!”

“To what?” someone shouted back.

There were arguments on some cars. They lurched line to line in disputation. Sham watched agog as a Bajjer warrior shook her fist at her fellows, turned & leapt magnificently from her cart, across yards of railsea, to slam into the Medes’s side & grab & grip its rail & pull herself aboard as her vehicle veered away. A few brave others did the same, those who were in this for the end. They jumped rapidly increasing gaps.

“Quick!” Sham shouted. But a nearby trainsman mistimed his bound. He leapt & his fingers slipped without purchase on the moler’s flank. A gasp, a scream, a thudding & he was dashed horribly into railside rocks.

Everyone stared aghast. Even the captain looked up in shock. The Bajjer carts receded. It was too late now for any more. None of the warriors still readying themselves to join that fight could do anything but look up at Sham, from already distant rails, & raise hands in inadequate farewell.

They became specks. Sham hoped they had seen his own hand raised, in response & thanks.

“CALDERA HAS—” Dero started to say.

“Go there,” Caldera said. She showed Sham a place on her chart. Pointed at it. She looked at him intently. “There.”

“—an idea,” her brother finished.

Sham wasted not a second. Did not demand clarification. Did not question Caldera Shroake. Just yelled at the switchers, who in turn switched as he demanded without quibbling or enquiry, on these last scattered yards of points, veering a mile or more into a little snarl of lines, a route near mounds & mounts.

You could see the wartrain easily now without fancy salvage business. “Get us over there,” hissed Caldera. She gave more directions & the Medes shuddered.

A getterbird overflew them to investigate the navy, but as it approached, with an abrupt gush of fire a missile roared skyward from the guntrain. The angel exploded in a great flaming yelp, scattering debris.

“Oh my bloody Stonefaces!” Vurinam yelled. “They’re insane! They’re firing on Heaven.”

“They’re going to catch us,” Fremlo said. “There’s no way they’re not.”

There were but two trains, now, in the whole landscape, for all the gnarled derelicts in rust. The wartrain was close enough to see its trainsfolks’ sneers. Molers took positions at their harpoons, as if this might make any bloody difference when the Manihiki warriors reached them.

The Medes careered for the end of the detour in the tangle, by caves & hillocks, towards something Caldera had understood & which, in the chaos, Sham had not clocked they were approaching.

With a soundless & utterly important shift, they rushed suddenly past a last set of wrecks, a final knoll & tunnel, out of the railsea & onto the last, solitary, solo rail.

“LOOK,” BREATHED SHAM. He was there. He was tearing through the picture at which he had stared so many times, his crewmates & friends alongside him.

“I’m looking,” Caldera said.

“Look at it!” The navy would have Sham soon, but this moment was his.

“You saw the ruins,” Caldera said. “The wrecks.” He kept his eyes on that one rail. “Sham. What do you think did that? My parents saw this, but they turned back, remember? Why d’you think I took us just where my parents didn’t go?”

Good question. Good enough to work through Sham’s distraction. He turned to face her. He looked back at Reeth’s train, roaring after them, following them onto the last line. “In about fifteen seconds,” Caldera whispered, “you’re going to know the answer.”

Sham narrowed his eyes. “There was something that …” Twelve seconds.

“Something that kept people out,” Sirocco said. Eight. Seven.

“Something that still does,” said Fremlo. “Something …”

“… something big,” Sham said.

Three.

Two.

One.

Sound came out of the pit they’d passed.

“Go fast,” Caldera said. The noise grew loud. “Really, go fast.” It seemed to be everywhere. Everyone on deck was turning to see what made so terrible a sound. Such a bass grinding. Such whining of metal. Officers turned, too, on the deck of the wartrain. A hill shook.

“I think we got close enough,” Dero said. Loose stones jumped. A curtain of vines at the hole-entrance trembled. The sky was filled with blaring. & from out of the pit, riding the rails, something came.

An angel. Like no thing they had ever seen.

Everyone made noises of terror.

From under the ground, a train of spiked & spiny metal. It spat steam, dribbled fire. Grey smoke rose from a dorsal ridge of chimneys. How many parts were there to it? Who could count its ways? It slipped by segment into the light. Like a convoy of thorned towers.

How old was this bad thing? The birds flew shrieking. Daybe huddled in Sham’s arms. The angel pressed down hard & made its appalling noise. Its front was a wedge-shaped blade. With a blast like low thunder, it came.

It ate up yards. It came so fast. Its weapons glowed. The crew stared like worshippers.

“Welcome,” Sham breathed, “to the outposts of Heaven.”

“That,” Caldera whispered, “is what keeps people from the edge of the world.”

“But,” Dero said, “it ain’t used to facing two of us at once.”

The angel howled onto the one true line behind the Manihiki wartrain. They were all, from rear to front—angel, navy & molers—committed to this single rail. All they could do was go fast.

“Will you move!” That was Captain Naphi. Staring over the Pinschon & the hulking wartrain at the world’s-end protector. She was shouting, however, at her crew. They knew it; they obeyed. They managed to make the Medes accelerate.

The angel closed impossibly fast. It closed on Reeth’s train. Sham could see him, staring at it. Closer. Close. Closed.

Say what you like about those Manihiki officers, they were brave & bolshy souls. They fired & fired. Sent bullets, missiles, lobbed bombs at the incoming angel. It ignored them. Ground through the explosions. It reached the rear carriage.

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.”

SEVENTY-SIX

ANGELS HAVE A THOUSAND JOBS. FOR 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.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

SHAM SWALLOWED. BEYOND 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.”

SEVENTY-EIGHT

NO 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.

BEHIND 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.

THE 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!”