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.”