The Steam Mole (8 page)

Lampy had spent the last two years around his father's “friends,” if you could call them that. He hadn't had much contact with other white men, besides that kind. This one with the strange accent and mad ideas was something different.

He was a bit soft. He didn't want to kill Quint.

But then…he hadn't held back, either, taking the train, dealing with the guards and the fireman. And he wasn't stupid.

There was something else, too. Thanks to the Irishman, Lampy knew he could get away from all the things that crowded in on his head. Away to the desert and the open land where things were…cleaner. Clearer.

He'd come back to his father when his uncle had been shot. Now…he wasn't sure how or where he was going to go, but he was never going back to the city fringes again. He was staying out here.

Free.

“End o' the line. Get out all you layabouts. End o' the line,” bellowed the conductor, as the clamps on the rolling line released and left the carriage stationary at the Dajarra platform. He hadn't bothered to check the baggage wagon that Mick had smuggled her into. It was odd to not be moving after two days. The clank and rattle were almost part of her now.

Clara took a deep breath, adjusted her hat, took a tighter grip on her parasol, and picked up her reticule and bandbox. She wondered what Mrs. Darlington would have said of her appearance after all this time sleeping on the train, with quite inadequate facilities for washing and no mirror to do her hair properly. Huh. She liked clothes, but this was more important.

She stepped out onto the platform and walked away. The key, she'd decided, was to make sure that the train had left before they could put her onto it. After that…well, she really didn't have a plan, beyond vague ideas about how close this was to Queensland. And now that she'd seen the scale of the country, she wondered if she'd been absolutely silly. In hindsight the whole idea was just crazy. She'd had too little sleep and too much worry…

And now she was here, walking along the platform to the wrought-iron stairs, trying to look as if she walked this way every day. Above her, steel girders soared to the high, pitched roof of the power station, to her left were the huge winding drums rolling endless silver cable. The smell of coal and the wafts of hot oil pervaded
the place. And so far, although they stared, no one had challenged her. A lot of the men looked as if they might, though.

And then someone did. “'Scuse me, Missy,” said a tall, young man with a puce Spencer-coat with green epaulettes.

Her stomach knotted.

The big, young man beamed at her. “Can I carry yer bag, Missy?”

“Er. Yes, please.” She handed it to him gratefully.

“Where are you going, Missy?” he asked.

“I would like to go and see Mr. McGurk.”

He nodded. That obviously made her being there perfectly all right. And having someone escort her was obviously all the passport she needed. “We could walk a little slower, please,” she said.

So they positively dawdled. It would have driven Clara mad…if she hadn't been playing for time. Mick from Sheba had said the clankers normally only stayed as long as it took to off-load mail, men, and supplies, and to take aboard anyone who had to go back. Her bag carrier was doing his best to engage in small talk, but, Clara realized, he must have used up nearly all his courage coming to talk to her. He couldn't be more than three years older than her. Every time he said anything he turned puce enough to match his jacket. She did her best at small talk for him. He was, she discovered, a sub-foreman on the steam mole
Passara
. He told her of the
Passara's
virtues, and the number of tons of coal she used, and the number of chains they dug, and of re-tipping the drill bits, as they walked along corridors lit with brass fittings…rather like those in the submarine. And then they came to a large wooden door with a brass nameplate that read: H.M. McGurk, Forward Operations Manager.

Her escort set her bag down.

“Thank you kindly, sir,” Clara said, curtseying as if this was Dublin not Dajarra Power Station.

He bowed. “It's an honor, Missy.” He blushed to the roots of his hair. “If I could ask your name, Missy?”

“Clara. Clara Calland,” she said, offering her hand politely.

He shook it as if it were a flimsy piece of porcelain. “Tom Whelan, Missy. Anything, absolutely
anything
that I can do for you, just ask for me.”

It made her smile. She wasn't really used to boys falling over themselves for her yet. But as Sandy had said on the way to Alice, they didn't see many girls up here. Her escort blushed all over again, and having run out of things to say, fled. Clara braced herself, a little lifted by this, and knocked.

“Enter,” said a slightly testy voice from inside. Clara's courage shrank down again as she did. The little, round, bald-headed man behind the desk full of papers, tapping away at a small pneumatic abacus, didn't look up for a moment…and then did.

He dropped his pipe, and hastily had to rescue it and his papers. He stood up. He was shorter than she was. “Good gracious. To what do I owe this pleasure?” He sounded, now, more amused than irritated. But just a little wary, too. “What brings you to Dajarra, young lady?”

There was no point in delaying too much now. The train had almost certainly headed back to Sheba. “Please, sir, I have to speak to Tim Barnabas.”

He blinked. “And I assume he's here at my station. You're a very determined young woman, to get all the way here. Has he got you into the family way? I can put a garnishee on his pay for that.”

Clara was shocked. “No!”

McGurk took this in. “I think I may have started on the wrong foot,” he said, more gently. “Perhaps if we start again. Your accent says to me you're not from Westralia.”

“I'm from Ireland. I only arrived in Westralia about two weeks ago, with my mother, on the submarine. Maybe fifteen days…It's hard to keep track with the funny hours.”

“Ah,” said Mr. McGurk. “Yes, I do remember noticing that one of the new contract workers came off a submarine. We do get foreign people trickling over the border with the metal smugglers, but not many submariners. Pardon me. We don't often get young ladies
here. Actually, I don't think we've ever had one here before. A bit of a surprise to me. I…um…do get letters about…other matters from women. I was mistaken. So, you've come from Ceduna to see Mr. Barnabas. Alone?”

Clara nodded. “I didn't know how else to speak to him.”

“There is telephony as far as Sheba. And we get telegrams relayed to us on the trains.”

“It's not something I could explain on a telegram. It's…well, my mother is dying.” Clara felt a tear run down her cheek.

McGurk was silent for a while. And then he said, quietly, “I'm sorry. I completely misunderstood.” He stood up and looked at a huge list pinned to the felt on the wall of his office. “Here you are. Tim Barnabas. He's on the steam mole that's currently at the cutting head, under Shift-captain Vister.” He rubbed his chin, awkwardly. “I'm not sure how much good it will do you, young lady, to speak with your father. The company is very inflexible about leave from contracts.”

Clara gaped. Her father? Then she realized what the man thought. Fortunately, he was looking at another list.

“They've finished their shift and will be on their way back soon. They should arrive in three hours.” He smiled at her. “In the meanwhile…maybe you'd like something to eat? A cup of tea? I could show you around the station. It's not often I get to give the guided tour. I think the last person was our Minister of Science and Agriculture, and he used to be an engineer himself.”

It had been a while since Clara had last eaten…but even longer since she'd last washed. “I'd love that. But…is there any chance of…of some ablutions. Or is water too short here?”

He laughed. “You'd be surprised, Miss Barnabas. We're on the great artesian basin and we have a good strong bore. Besides, it's as dry as a…well, very dry out there now, but when we get a wet, we've got flooding problems. It's why the termite way follows the higher ground, although it would be very much easier to keep to the lower areas. We try not to burrow too much. It's keeping the rails at
as slight a gradient and with as few a curves as is possible that's important. We have to do a lot of scouting and surveying to get it right, my word we do. Anyway. Let me organize a bath for you.”

A little later, clean, refreshed, and fed on a meal that reminded her of submarine cooking, complete with tea with condensed milk, Clara got a guided tour. It was plain that Mr. McGurk loved his power station and knew it backward. He also loved showing it off. She would have pretended to be impressed anyway, but there was no need to pretend.

“The station makes use of evaporative cooling—we copied the design from the magnetic termite mounds. The roof is designed to avoid the sun, and the building is three-quarters underground. We built it in a slight hollow, and have valved vents at the rooftop to let hot air out at night and draw in from the cooler air at ground level. During the day air is vented at ground level and drawn in from the top of the roof and across the damp-wall to cool it before coming out into the halls. We're also using the heat in the smokestack to power the ammonia-expansion chillers. Out in the desert it can go from a hundred and twenty degrees in the daytime in summer to near cold enough to freeze at night. Here we keep the air much cooler in the day and warmer at night. It's a full-time job for the station air men, keeping it so, opening and closing the right vents, cranking up the screens…”

“I thought it was just a building,” said Clara, slightly humbled and awed.

“My word, no. Westralia is far ahead in ways to make the desert livable,” he said proudly.

It had to be, Clara realized when he took her out to the sheds. At the end of a long adobe tunnel, the sheds were there to keep the dust off material stored there. They were made of adobe with a lime plaster but were roofed in corrugated iron. The heat in the shed was terrible, sending little runnels of sweat down her back, but the machine in it was fascinating. It had huge, tracked wheels and a vast
boring head—and a little tower above it that was obviously intended to telescope in.

McGurk hauled open one of the double doors and said, “The team will be going out in an hour or so. Stand out here in the shade, Miss. It's slightly cooler.

It was. Slightly. Compared to the inside of the power station it was hot to the edge of unbearable, and Clara could feel her linen blouse sticking to her, sweat beading along the band of her chip-straw hat. “That's a scouting steam mole. I wanted you to see it because it's as near as you'll get to seeing the big steam mole as a unit. The machines working on the tunnels are just so big it's hard to visualize the whole thing. They, of course, have to run on rails, whereas the scout here runs on these endless tracks. It can drill, just like the big ones—it needs to get the samples so we know what the terrain is going to be ahead, and so it can shelter during the day. They sometimes spend a week or two scouting the best route forward. It's difficult planning a termite way. We need to consider the soils, the gradients, the run-off of the water…”

Clara was relieved to go back into the coolness of the station. She understood now why they built these termite runs. She was glad to bathe her face and hands, drink a cool glass of lemonade, and go down to meet the steam mole with Mr. McGurk. She wasn't entirely comfortable about how it was all going to work out when he saw that Tim was obviously not her father. But she was going to see Tim again, and in just a few minutes. Her heart beat faster for that. They watched the tunnel.

McGurk consulted his watch and chain and said, “They're a little late.”

Clara began nervously imagining disasters. The time from then until they heard the mournful hoot of the steam mole from the tunnel seemed to have been hours, but it was probably only five minutes. The long, digging train, like a sort of land submarine, slid up to the platform. The hatch was un-dogged and men started coming out. Clara looked eagerly for her Tim. Yes, he was hers.

They were rather silent and subdued looking men.

McGurk stepped forward to a tall man with a grim expression and a rather flushed face. “Ah. Shift-captain Vister. You look like you've had a problem. This is Miss Clara Barnabas. She's come all the way from Ceduna to see one of your crew, a Mr. Tim Barnabas, I believe. Where is he?”

Clara watched the ruddy face of the man turn ghostly white and him start to stutter something incomprehensible.

“Mr. McGurk, he put him off the mole!” said one of the other men there.

“Shut up, Samuels,” hissed Vister. “You're for the high jump. I will not have you on my shift—”

“I will not shut up!” said the other man, as red-faced as Vister was white. “McGurk, he as good as murdered the kid. Pushed him off at the eight mile.”

“The black bastard made me do it. He went mad!”

Clara stood there, clutching her parasol and reticule, mind full of horror.

McGurk stepped closer to the shift-captain. “What? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” said Vister, waving his hands as if pacifying a big dog. “He insisted on getting off. We tried to stop him. He was dangerous.” Vister pointed at a big man with a swollen black eye and blood still on his clothes. “Look what he did to poor Foreman Gore. I had no choice.”

“You're going to be doing some explaining to the WMP!” grated McGurk.

“He was only a damned abo! Why did you put a blackfeller on my mole? And the company won't like you calling in the WMP!” blustered Vister.

McGurk paid him no attention. “Move this mole!” he commanded. “You. Barrett. Get the Puffing Billy crew. I want this mole on the carousel and the Puffing Billy ready to roll down the tunnel
in five minutes. You hear me? Five minutes! Run to it. Samuels. Not you. You stay right here. I want the story. And you. Get a seat for the young lady.”