The Steam Mole

by Dave Freer

  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.”

  The shift-captain opened his mouth to speak. “Shut it,” snapped McGurk. “When I get back, Vister, you and every man jack involved are going to be in more trouble than you can imagine. Now get out of my sight.”

  The man fled, and someone brought Clara a hard chair out of an office. No one stayed on the platform. Not with McGurk in that sort of mood.

  Clara sat there, wringing her hands, as McGurk grilled Samuels.

  “Gore picked a fight with the boong, sir. He don’t like them. Only, well, the kid tore into him so bad he knocked the big bast—uh, pardon me, Lady…knocked the big bloke down. And Vister heard the noise and got nasty stopping it, and the kid…well, he give Vister some cheek and Vister lost it. Put him out in the tunnel. I tried to stop it, sir. But, well, Vister got most of the crew on the mole so spooked, no one was backing me up. I begged them to let the kid out at an emergency exit. Vister said he would, but I wouldn’t believe the bast—um…bloke. He’s a piece of work, sir. Gave us a lecture about how we’d never work again if we says a word about what he done. He and that Gore. I was coming straight to see you when we got in. Honest, I was.”

  A little green locomotive came hissing and belching up to the platform.

  “Excuse me, Miss. I’d better go with it,” said McGurk. “Come on Samuels.”

  “I’m going, too,” said Clara, hastily getting to her feet and grabbing his arm. “Please. I can’t wait here.”

  “He’s probably dead, Miss,” said McGurk, quietly. “What a mess. You’d best stay here. It…it could be ugly.”

  “I’ve seen ugly. I need to know,” said Clara, desperate.

  He sighed. “I suppose as you’re the next of kin, you’d see him sooner or later. Up into the cab, Miss.”

  There were four of them there, and very crowded it was, as the little train sealed its airlock double door and the driver sent it down into the black tunnel mouth. The locomotive had a powerful forward lantern and little porthole windows. Clara had to stand on tiptoes to see out of them, but there was nothing to see but the concrete ribs of the adobe tunnel and the furnace of the engine. No one shoveled coal, though, and despite her worry and distress she did wonder how it happened.

  “Is the re-breather kit ready?” asked McGurk.

  “Just changing the charcoal filters, sir,” said the other engineer, warily, while undoing brass tubes on the front of a clumsy looking black leather-and-rubber mask with twin eyepieces. “It’s not been used in a while.”

  McGurk on
ly said, “I see,” but she could read “there will be trouble about that” in his tone. Right now it seemed there was going to be quite a lot of trouble. Some of it might involve her killing that bully of a shift-captain.

  “Exit one,” said the driver.

  It was a door rather like those in the submarine, tightly closed. The little train raced on, past exit two, three, four, five, six, and seven…exit eight, however, was open. With a squall of steel on rails, the Puffing Billy stopped. McGurk breathed a sigh of relief. “He must have got this far. Disciplinary hearing instead of murder charges. We’ll be able to keep the WMP out of this, with luck. Get the re-breather on, Johnstone. Not that it’ll be too bad with the exit open.”

  The engineer donned the mask and went to the airlock. Clara waited, feeling as if the weight of the entire universe had lifted off her shoulders. Tim was alive. Whatever trouble he was in…they were in, he was alive. She’d been seeing his sprawled, lifeless body in her mind’s eye for the last five exits.

  And they waited.

  And waited.

  “We’ll have to get someone else out there,” said McGurk, tersely. “Is there another re-breather?”

  “He’s coming back, sir.”

  “Alone?”

  It was an unnecessary question, as they could all now see the engineer. Alone.

  He came back in through the airlock, stripped off the re-breather, and said, “He’d been there, sir. The upper hatch was open, too. And there was blood on the lower handle.” He held up his hand, stained with drying blood. “But he ain’t at the top. I looked all over. And there’s a willy-willy blowing up from the west. I reckon he must have started walking back. It only goes deep for a few sections. You can follow the ridge of the termite run most of the way. He’s probably the better part of the way back to the power station by now.”

  Clara remembered the sun out there and the distant, heat-shivered skyline, when she’d been to look at the scout mole. “Ca-can,” she struggled to speak through a dry mouth full of gluey spit. Swallowed. “Can we go and look for him? He’s from the tunnels under London. He won’t know how to survive in the desert.”

  “He’s a blackfeller!” said Samuels. “They’re at home out there in the desert, Missy.”

  “I was on the submarine with him all the way from London. He’s lived his whole life underground…in a city.”

  “Wait a minute, young lady. I thought you said he was your father?”

  “No, I said I came to see him about my mother, who is in a coma in Ceduna.”

  Things went downhill from there. McGurk was in no mood for believing her, and he was an angry and worried man. Clara was scared and tired, but she was also angry. It degenerated into a shouting match, and Clara could give as good as she got. It rapidly ended in stony silence from the manager and her as the little Puffing Billy headed back.

  It only occurred to her when the little engine pulled into the platform that she needed McGurk’s cooperation. “So what are you going to do to find him?” she asked.

  “It will have very little to do with you,” said McGurk, savagely. “You’re going to be on the clanker out of here by five o’clock, in the charge of the guard, if I have to put you on it kicking and screaming. I’ve had enough of your tall tales and your using your sex to manipulate us. I should imagine he’s walked the better part of the way back to the power station along the ridge. There are only a few deep areas where you can’t see the tunnel from the surface.”

  “But…but you can’t just leave him out there! It’s hot. It’s—”

  “I have other problems to deal with besides your romantic daydreams,” said McGurk. “If he hasn’t come in by tomorrow we’ll mount a search party.”

  They got out, Clara still seething and trying to work out just what to do next. Mr. McGurk had his ideas. “Samuels, convey this young woman to number three dry storage. That’s empty and has a lockable door. She can wait there until I hand her over to the clanker guard to take into Sheba.

  Clara weighed her chances and decided the best she had right now was at least to get away from McGurk and then, somehow, to take steps to avoid being put on that train. She walked ahead of Samuels.

  “Erm. We didn’t know he wasn’t a blackfeller from hereabouts, Miss,” said Samuels awkwardly, scampering after her. “I tried…”

  “You should have tried harder,” she said. Clara’s sense of justice was not at its best right then, but fair enough, this man had at least made some effort.

  “Not easy when the boss is spitting mad and is a bloke like that Vister. Look, he’ll be all right. He got out of the bad air. They can send the scout mole to fetch him.”

  Clara had forgotten about the scout mole. “Oh. Yes. Look, Mr. Samuels, thank you…and I’m sorry. I was just upset. Can we go and ask them to do that right away?”

  “Reckon McGurk’ll have to order it. But I’ll ask him.”

  “Can you go and ask him now? I…I promise I’ll go to this storehouse on my own.”

  He shook his head. “McGurk would have my guts for garters, Miss. It won’t be long. We’ve got two clankers a day coming in from Sheba.”

  That wasn’t much comfort. And there wasn’t much in number three dry storage either. It wasn’t totally empty. There was a small desk and a chair and various bits of equipment. Trolleys, winches, levers, and coils of rope were neatly stacked in the corner.

  “Sorry about this, Miss,” said Samuels as Clara walked docilely into the storeroom. “It’s clean at least.”

  “And will you ask Mr. McGurk to get the scout mole to look for Tim? He’s never been out in the desert.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Samuels, locking the door.

  Clara took a deep breath and waited. Counted to ten. Then did it again. Locked in…That might work on the sort of women McGurk was used to from Westralia, but it wasn’t going to work on Clara Calland, who’d passed her submariner’s basic ticket. As a result, she knew how a block and tackle worked, and how to multiply the force she could apply to the door. It had a lovely solid bar handle on this side, and looked like it was bolted right through the door to a similar bar on the outside. The hasp lock might stop petty pilfering, thought Clara, setting up her pulley and threading the ropes. There were big, inch-thick staples in the walls, obviously intended for hauling loads in through the big double doors. They obviously hadn’t anticipated brute force being used on the access doors from the inside. The hasp was no match for a gyn tackle. Rubbing her hands, Clara set off walking purposefully, as if she had every right to be there, and knew exactly where she was going. When the scout mole was sent to look for Tim she planned to be hidden on board. And McGurk could whistle.

  But when she got up there, Clara realized that that plan wasn’t going to work. When she’d been there earlier, the machine had simply been parked, inactive. There hadn’t been another person around. Now it had at least eight men working on it like busy ants. Smoke came out of the stack, and coal was being poured into the tender. The water pipe was in the process of being disconnected. The men were so busy they didn’t notice her.

  “I reckon you’re ’bout ready to go, Harry,” said a greaser dropping to the floor from the big piston. “Hullo…it’s the girl.”

  Obviously the news had spread. “Please, are you going out to find Tim?” she asked, giving them her very best I-am-not-the-sort-of-person-who-just-broke-open-your-storeroom smile. “Because I need to go with you.”

  The man up in the cab shook his head. “No. Going out to scout the next section for the northbound line. They don’t have a scout mole there. It’s forty miles or so, and rough country, some of it.”

  “Please, sir, Tim Barnabas is out there.”

  The driver took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head at her. “Look, Miss. Only blackfellers out there. They can survive out there. We can’t.”

  “I know. That’s…that’s why it’s so important to find him quickly. They put him off the steam mole and he got out at emergency exit eight an
d started walking back. Please. He’s…he’s from London. He’s not used to the desert and doesn’t know what to do. Please. You’ve got to help him.”

  “Wish I could. But I got my orders,” said the driver. “Mickey, you want to check the drill-head coupling is greased…”

  “You can’t just leave him out there to die!”

  “I got my orders, Miss,” said the driver, shifting the pipe stem in his jaws.

  “You can’t! Please…”

  He shook his head. “No use bothering me, Miss. Better get back downstairs. It’s smoky when she gets going. Noisy too. No place for a young lady.”

  “Are you just going to leave someone out there?” demanded Clara. She turned to the others. “Are you going to let him?”

  There was an awkward silence, broken by the thunder of feet coming running up the passage. They must have found I’ve escaped, thought Clara, looking for ideas and failing to find a single one. The door burst open.

  “McGurk,” the runner panted, “says you’re to bring all your lot down to level four, Mr. Driver, sir. We’ve got a problem with a bunch of men who’ve locked themselves into the winder room.”

  “What?” said the mole driver.

  “McGurk tried to arrest Shift-captain Vister from in among a bunch of his crew. Told them they were all likely to end in stir. Didn’t go down too well. They had a punch up, and he knocked McGurk down and things got out of hand. There’s trouble down there.”

  The mole driver got down. “All right, lads. Let’s get down there.” He looked at Clara. “You better stay up here out of the way, Miss. Don’t touch anything.”