China Mieville - The Scar

“I have no wish to make you feel uncomfortable. You’re berthing in the passengers’ quarters. You’re eating in the passenger mess. However, as you know, you are not a paying passenger. You are an employee. You have been taken on by the agents of the Nova Esperium colony, and for the duration of this journey I am their representative. And while that makes little difference to Sister Meriope and Dr. Tearfly and the others, to you… it means I am your employer.

“Of course you are not crew,” he continued. “I would not order you as I order them. If you prefer, I would only request your services. But I must insist that such requests are obeyed.”

They studied each other.

“Now,” he said, his tone relaxing a little, “I don’t foresee any onerous demands. Most of the crew are from New Crobuzon or the Grain Spiral, and those that aren’t speak perfectly good Ragamoll. It’s in Salkrikaltor that I’ll first need you, and we’ll not be there for a good week or more, so you’ve plenty of time to relax, to meet the other passengers. We sail tomorrow morning, early. We’ll be away by the time you’re up, I shouldn’t doubt.”

“Tomorrow?” Bellis said. It was the first word she had spoken since entering.

The captain looked at her sharply. “Yes. Is there a problem?”

“Originally,” she said without inflection, “you told me we would sail on Dustday, Captain.”

“I did, Miss Coldwine, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve finished my paperwork a deal quicker than I expected, and my brother officers are ready to transfer their inmates tonight. We sail tomorrow.”

“I had hoped to return to town, to send a letter,” Bellis said. She kept her voice level. “An important letter to a friend in New Crobuzon.”

“Out of the question,” the captain said. “It cannot be done. I’ll not waste any more days here.”

Bellis sat still. She was not intimidated by this man, but she had no power over him, none at all. She tried to work out what was most likely to engage his sympathy, make him acquiesce.

“Miss Coldwine,” he said suddenly, and to her surprise his voice was a little gentler. “I am afraid the matter is in motion. If you wish I can give your letter to Lieutenant-Gaoler Catarrs, but I cannot in truth recommend that as entirely reliable. You’ll have the opportunity to deliver your message in Salkrikaltor. Even if there are no New Crobuzon ships docking there, there is a warehouse, to which all our captains have the keys, for access to information, spare cargo, and mail. Leave your letter there. It’ll be picked up by the next home-bound ship. It won’t be much delayed.

“You can learn from this, Miss Coldwine,” he added. “At sea, you can’t waste time. Remember that: don’t wait.”

Bellis sat on a little longer, but there was nothing at all that she could do, so she thinned her lips and left.

She stood for a long time under Iron Bay’s cold sky. The stars were invisible; the moon and its daughters, its two little satellites, were unclear. Bellis walked, tense against the chill, and climbed the short ladder to the ship’s raised front, heading for the bowsprit.

Bellis held on to the iron railings and stood on the tips of her toes. She could just see out, across the lightless sea.

Behind her the sounds of the crew faded. A way off, she could see two guttering red pins of light: a torch on the bridge of a prison-ship, and its twin in the black surf.

From the crow’s nest, or from somewhere in the rigging, from some indistinct spot a hundred feet or more above her, Bellis heard a strain of mouth-music. It was not like the imbecilic shanties she had heard in Tarmuth. It was slow and complex.

You will have to wait for your letter, Bellis mouthed silently across the water. You will have to wait to hear from me. You’ll have to wait a little while longer, until cray-country.

She watched the night until the last lines of division between shore, sea, and sky were obscured. Then, cosseted by darkness, she walked slowly aft, toward the constricted doorways and stooped passages leading to her cabin, a scrap of space like a flaw in the ship’s design.

(Later the ship moved uneasily, in the coldest hour, and she stirred in her bunk and she pulled the blanket up to her neck, and she realized somewhere below her dreams that the living cargo was coming aboard.)

I am tired here in the dark and I am full of pus.

My skin’s taut with it, stretched till it puckers nor can I touch it without it rages. I’m infected. I hurt where I touch and I touch everywhere to make sure that I hurt that I’m not yet numb.

But still thank whatever makes these veins mine I’m full of blood. I worry my scabs and they brim I brim with it. And that’s a small comfort nor mind the pain.

They come for us when the air’s so still and black without not a seabird cries. They open our doors and shine lights, uncovering us. I am almost ashamed to see how we have surrendered, we’ve surrendered up to filth.

I can see nothing beyond their lights.

Where we lie together they beat us apart, and I wrap my arms around the spastic matter that twitches in my midriff as they begin to herd us.

We wind through tarry passages and engine chambers and I’m all cold to know what this is for. And I’m more eager, I’m quicker than some of the old ones bent double coughing and spewing and afraid to move.

And then there’s a swallowing up, I’m eaten up by the cold gulped down by darkness and gods fuck me blind we are outside.

Outside.

I’m dumb with it. I’m dumb with wonder.

It has been a long time.

We huddle together, each against the next man like troglodytes like myopic trow. They’re cowed by it the old ones, by the lack of walls and edges and the movement of the cold, by water and air.

I might cry gods help me. I might.

All black on black but still I can see hills and water and I can see clouds. I can see the prisons on all sides bobbing a little like fishermen’s floats. Jabber take us all I can see clouds.

Bugger me I’m crooning like I soothe a baby. That’s for me that coddling noise.

And then they push us on like livestock shuffling rattling chains, dripping farting muttering astonished, across the deck crippled under the weight of bodies and fetters, to a swaying rope bridge. And they hurry us along and over it, all our number, and each man pauses a moment in the middle of the low-slung passage between vessels, their thoughts visible and bright like a chymical burst.

They consider leaping.

Into the water of the bay.

But the rope walls around the bridge are high and there’s barbed wire hemming us in and our poor bodies are sore and weak and each man falters, and continues, and crosses the water to a new ship.

I pause like the others in my turn. Like them I’m too afraid.

And then there’s a new deck underfoot, scrubbed iron smooth and clean, vibrating from engines, and more corridors and clattering keys and after all another long unlit room where we collapse exhausted and changed over and raise ourselves slowly to see who our new neighbors are. Around me begin the hissed arguments and bickerings and fights and seductions and rapes that make up our politics. New alliances are formed. New hierarchies.

I sit apart for a while, in the shadows.

I’m still caught in that moment when I entered the night. It’s like amber. I’m a grub in amber. It snares me and damn but it does it makes me beautiful.

I’ve a new home now. I’ll live in that moment as long as I can, till the memories decay and then I’ll come out, I’ll come to this new place we sit in.