Free Railsea by China Miéville

train. Maybe hangovers were survivable. Whether he should or not, & despite that little flurry of familiar frustration with himself, Sham felt not too too bad.

SIXTEEN
    A T ONE CORNER OF THE RAILSEAFRONT WAS THE T EKNIQALL Noshhouse, a combination eaterie, chatterie (at its many tables the captains & officers of moletrains & explorers were doing obviously secret, muttering business), announcerie & technickerie. Sham stopped. In the shadow behind its awnings, he saw Captain Naphi talking to the owner.
    She was describing something big with her hands. She handed over a piece of paper, & the man nodded & placed it in the information window, among many such flyers. Sham squinted to make out the larger words.
    INFORMATION LEADING TO .
    REWARD .
    PHILOSOPHY .
    He was about to continue. He was about, indeed, to creep away, not eager to have Naphi’s imperious melancholy spoil his mood. But there was to be no creeping. She saw him & beckoned him over. Not a flicker on his face, of course, but Sham felt his heart pitch.
    “One more thing,” the captain said to the cafékeeper. “You have ordinators?” She pulled a handful of paper from one pocket. “I have something for you,” she said to Sham. LARGE MOLDYWARPE , Sham read as he took them. UNIQUE COLOUR .
    She clenched her artificial hand so a hatch opened within it. Inside was the camera memory.
That’s mine!
Sham thought as she extracted it.
Finder’s rule!
The café owner was nodding them towards the back. “Come. I shall check this,” the captain said. “& then I’ll tell you where you’re going.”
    In the sideroom was a collection of ordinators, cobbled-together equipment, tangled tubing, jury-rigged screens from movographs, black-&-white flickering projectors, lettered keys, the hmph of a diesel generator keeping the data safely on the machines.
    Sham had had a go on an ordinator once or twice, but they didn’t interest him overmuch. There weren’t many in Streggeye Land, & those there were, he’d been told, were not up-to-date. The captain cleared away wires that piled around the screen like fairytale brambles around a castle. While a glow slowly grew on the screen, she raised her left arm & with a rapid-fire
clickclickclick
different bits of it came to the fore: special machinery, magnifying glass, mini-telescope, leather-needle. It was her way of fiddling. Like someone else might drum their fingertips on a table. Sham stood politely, waited, murdering the captain in his mind. She inserted the plastic into the ordinator’s slot.
    Bad enough to find it & have it nicked
, Sham thought.
Without you taunting me with it
. He wondered whether the memory, so long mouldering in the cold ground, nibbled by animals, would even be readable, or if there was anythingon it. Then suddenly a man looked out at him from the screen.
    A big, bearded man, in his fifties, perhaps. He stared at the lens full on, pulling his head slightly back, his arm jutting in perspective. The typical stance of people taking a flatograph of themselves, holding a camera at arm’s length. He didn’t smile, the man, but he had humour in his face.
    Digitally degraded, the picture looked dirt-flecked. Behind the photographer, a woman was visible. She was out of focus, her expression unclear, folding her arms & glancing with what just might be patience, indulgence, affection.
    You’re the skull
, Sham thought.
One of you’s who I found
. He moved minutely from foot to foot.
    Naphi pressed something; the image shifted. Two children. Not on a train: the backdrop was a town. Under a strange, tumbledown, unfocused arch of ill-matched white blocks. A little girl, an even younger boy. Skin the dark grey typical of Manihiki. Smiling. They stared right at Sham. He frowned. The captain glanced at him as if he’d said something.
    A stern boy! A thoughtful girl! Hands by their sides, hair neat … but then, again, a shift. Too fast, the children were gone, & Sham was looking at a gloomy room full of junk,