China Mieville - The Scar

Bellis sat with her eyes open, starting now and then as she remembered that she was awake. And as Fennec’s stories lurched east, across one and a half thousand miles, and he began to tell her about the malachite chapels of The Gengris, she was conscious that there was a growing crop of shouts and clattering from below, that Armada was waking beneath them, and she stood and smoothed her hair and clothes, and told him that he had to leave.

“Bellis,” he said from the stairs. Before, when he had used her first name, it had been in the spurious closeness of nighttime. Hearing him call her Bellis like that, with the sun up and people awake around them, was different. But she said nothing, and that gave him permission to continue.

“Bellis, thank you again. For… protecting me. When you said nothing about the letter.” She watched him tight-faced, and was silent. “I’ll see you again, soon. I hope that’ll be all right.”

And again she said nothing, conscious of the distance daylight had brought between them, and of the many things he was not telling her. But, still, she did not mind if he came again. It had been a long time since she had conversed as she had that night.

There were very few clouds that morning. The sky was hard and empty.

Tanner Sack was not going to the docks. He walked afore, through the industrial hulks that surrounded his home. He took a route toward the little tangle of dockside vessels punctuated with pubs and scored with alleys. He had his sea legs, his hips shifting unconsciously with each tilt of the pavements.

He was surrounded by bricks and tarred beams. The sounds of the factory ships and the rig Sorghum ebbed behind him, losing him in the twists of the city. His tentacles swung, and moved very gently. They were wrapped in soothing brine-soaked bandages.

Last night, for the third time in succession, Shekel had not come home.

He was with Angevine again.

Tanner thought about Shekel and the woman, still a little shamed by his own jealousy. Jealous of Shekel or of Angevine-it was a knot of resentment too tangled for him to untie. He tried not to feel deserted, which he knew was not fair. He determined that he would look out for the boy no matter what, would keep a home for him for whenever he came back, would let him go with as much grace as Tanner could muster.

He was just sad that it had come so fast.

Tanner could see the masts of Grand Easterly dominating the skyline to star’d. Aerostats sailed like submersibles through the city’s rigging. He descended to Winterstraw Market and made his way over its little vessels accosted by vendors and jostled by early shoppers.

The water was very close to him here, just below his feet. It slopped all around him in the grooves between the boats that made up the bazaar, awash with rubbish. The smell and sound of it were strong.

He closed his eyes momentarily and imagined himself hovering in the cool saltwater. Descending, feeling the pressure increase as the sea cosseted him. His tentacles grasping at passing fish. Making sense of the mysteries of the city’s underside: the obscure dark shapes in the distance, the gardens of pulp and rockweed and algae.

Tanner felt his resolve waxing, and he walked more quickly.

In The Clockhouse Spur riding he almost became lost in the unfamiliar environs. He referred carefully to his hand-scrawled map. Tanner made his way along winding walkways stretched out over low boats, and across ornately reconfigured caravels, to the Duneroller , a fat old gunship. An unstable-looking tower tottered at the ship’s rear, tethered by guy ropes to the rigging.

This was a quiet quarter. Even the water coursing between these boats seemed subdued. This was a neighborhood of back-alley thaumaturges and apothecaries, the scientists of Booktown.

In the office at the top of the tower, Tanner looked out from the imperfectly cut window. He could see across the restless shipscape to the horizon that pitched gently, swung up and down in the window frame as the Duneroller listed with the sea.

There was no word in Salt for Remaking. Serious augmentation or change was not common. Major work-to ameliorate the effects of the New Crobuzon punishment factories or, rarely, for some more proactive purpose-relied on a handful of practitioners. Self-taught biothaumaturges, specialist doctors, and chirurgeons and-rumor held-a few exiles from New Crobuzon whose expertise had been gleaned years before in the punitive service of the state.

For these serious changes, the word was taken from the Ragamoll. It was that Ragamoll word that filled Tanner’s mouth.

He brought his eyes back to the man behind the desk, patiently waiting.

“I need you to help me,” Tanner said, faltering. “I want to be Remade.”

Tanner had thought about it for a long time.

His coming to terms with the sea felt like a long, drawn-out birth. Every day he spent more time below, and the water felt better against him. His new limbs had adapted completely, were as strong and almost as prehensile as his arms and hands.

He had seen with envy how Bastard John the dolphin policed his watch, passing through the brine with unique motion (as he swept in to punish some slacking worker with a brutal butting); and had watched as cray from their half-sunk ships (suspended at the point of being lost, pickled in time) or the unclear menfish from Bask riding launched themselves into the water, uncontained by harnessing or chains.

When he left the sea, Tanner felt his tentacles hang heavy and uncomfortable. But when he was below, in his harness, his leather and brass, he felt tethered and constrained. He wanted to swim free, across and up into the light and even, yes, even down, into the cold and silent darkness.

There was only one thing he could do. He had considered asking the docks to subsidize him, as they surely would, gaining an infinitely more efficient worker to do their bidding. But as the days went on and his resolution grew, he had dispensed with that plan, and had begun to hoard his eyes and flags.

That morning, with Shekel away and the clear sky blowing salt air into him, he realized, suddenly, that this was truly and completely what he wanted to do. And with a great happiness he understood that it was not because he was ashamed that he would not ask for money, nor because he was proud, but only because the process and the decision were, completely and uniquely and without confusion, his own.

When he was not with Angevine (times that stayed in his head like dreams), Shekel was in the library, moving through the towers of children’s books.

He had made his way through The Courageous Egg . The first time it had taken him hours. He had gone back over it again and again, picking up his pace as much as he could, copying the words that he couldn’t at first read and making the sounds slowly out loud, in order, until meaning wrestled its way through the separated shapes.

It was hard and unnatural at first, but the process began to come more easily. He reread the book constantly, more and more quickly, not interested by the story, but ravenous for the unprecedented sensation of meaning coming up at him from the page, from behind the letters like an escapee. It almost made him queasy, almost made him feel like spewing, it was so intense and unnerving. He turned the technique to other words.

He was surrounded by them: signs visible on the commercial street beyond the windows, signs throughout the library and across the city and on brass plaques in his hometown, in New Crobuzon, a silent clamor, and he knew that there was no way he would ever be deaf to all those words again.

Shekel finished The Courageous Egg and was full of rage.