A massive steampunk machine with a conical prow and many iron wheels sits on multiple tracks in a dark, lamp-lit tunnel.

Ahead the tunnel widened into an underground cavern, dimly lit by hundreds of flickering lamps burning in sconces. There was a steady warm breeze blowing through it, carrying a stench of machine oil. And something enormous and bestial waited in the cavern. It rode four sets of double rails arranged around it at intervals of ninety degrees: one set below the machine, one above and one on either side. The rails themselves were supported by a framework of skeletal braces, though at either end of the cavern they vanished into circular tunnels where they were anchored to the walls themselves. I couldn't help but think of the trains in the Santiago which had featured in one of Sky's dreams, braced within a similar set of rails-even though those rails had only been guidance ways for induction fields. This wasn't like that. The train itself was constructed with a four-way symmetry. At the centre was a cylindrical core tipped with a bullet-shaped prow and a single Cyclopean headlight. Jutting from this core were four separate double rows of enormous iron wheels, each of which contained twelve axles and was locked onto one of the pairs of rail lines. Three pairs of huge cylinders were interspersed along each set of twelve main wheels, each connected to four sets of wheels by a bewildering arrangement of gleaming pistons and thigh-thick greased articulated cranks. A mass of pipe-runs snaked all around the machine; whatever symmetry or elegance of design it might have had was ruined by Mostra altro