China Mieville - The Scar

Bellis said nothing.

“I didn’t know how to… I didn’t know if I could trust you, if you’d care,” he continued. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you, but I didn’t know how far I could go. But dammit, Bellis, I trust you now. And I need your help.

“It’s true, what I told you, that sometimes the grindylow turn against some poor sod for no reason anyone can figure. That people disappear at their whim. The grindylows’ whim, the deeplings.” But it’s not true, what I said then, about that happening to me. I know exactly why the grindylow wanted to kill me.

“If they chose, the grindylow could swim upriver to the top of the Bezheks, where all the rivers join together, and they could cross into the Canker. Be swept downriver on the other side of the mountains, all the way to New Crobuzon.

“Others could cross into the ocean through the tunnels, come at the city by sea. They’re euryhalinic, the grindylow, happy in freshwater or brine. They could make their way to Iron Bay. To the Gross Tar, and New Crobuzon. All it would take for the grindylow to get to the city is determination. And I know they have that.”

Bellis had never seen Silas so tense.

“When I was there, there were rumors. Some big plan was in the offing. One of my clients, a magus, a kind of thug-priest, its name came up again and again. I started to keep my eyes and ears open. That’s why they want to kill me. I found something out.

“The grindylow don’t do secrecy; they don’t do policing as we do. There was evidence in front of me for weeks, but it took me a long time to recognize it. Mosaics, blueprints, librettos, and such-like. Took me a long time to understand.”

“Tell me what you found,” said Bellis.

“Plans,” he said. “Plans for an invasion.”

“It would be like nothing you can imagine,” he said. “Gods know our history’s littered with betrayal and fucking blood, but… ‘Stail, Bellis… You’ve never seen The Gengris.” There was a desperation in his voice that Bellis had never heard before. “You’ve never seen the limb-farms. The workshops, the fucking bile workshops. You’ve never heard the music .

“If the grindylow take New Crobuzon, they wouldn’t enslave us, or kill us, or even eat us all. They wouldn’t do anything so… comprehensible.”

“But why?” said Bellis, finally. “What do they want? Do you think they can do it?”

“I don’t godsdamned know. No one knows a thing about them. I suspect the New Crobuzon government has more plans about what to do if fucking Tesh invades than if the grindylow do. We’ve never had any reason to be scared of them. But they have their own… methods, their own sciences and thaumaturgies. Yes,” he said. “I think they have a chance.

“They want New Crobuzon for the same reason every other state or savage on Ragamoll does. It’s the richest, the biggest, the most powerful. Our industries, our resources, our militia-look at everything we have. But unlike Shankell or Dreer Samher or Neovadan or Yoraketche, The Gengris… The Gengris has a chance.

“They can come with surprise… Poison the water, come into the sewers. Every godsdamn crevice and crack and water tank in the city would be a fucking encampment. They can storm us with weapons we’d never understand, in an endless guerrilla war.

“I’ve seen what the grindylow can do, Bellis.” Silas sounded exhausted. “I’ve seen it, and I’m scared.”

From outside came the far-off sound of monkeys squabbling sleepily.

“That’s why you left,” said Bellis in the quiet that followed.

“That’s why I left. I couldn’t believe what I’d found out. But I dithered… I fucking farted time away.” His anger welled up suddenly. “And when I realized that there was no fucking mistake, that this wasn’t a confusion, that they really did intend to unleash some godsforsaken unthinkable apocalypse on my hometown… then I left. I stole the sub, and left.”

“Do they know that… you know?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I took some stuff with me, so that it looks like I stole and ran.”

Bellis could see that he was tight with tension. She could remember some of the heliotypes she had seen in his notebook. Her heart lurched, and slow alarm crept through her with her blood, like a sickness. Bellis struggled to grasp what he was telling her. It was too big for her; it made no sense. She could not contain it. New Crobuzon… How could it be threatened?

“Do you know how long?” she whispered.

“They have to wait till Chet to harvest their weapons,” he said. “So maybe six months. We have to find out what Armada’s planning to do, because we have to know where we’re going, with this fucking rockmilk and all. Because we… we have to get a message back to New Crobuzon.”

“Why,” Bellis breathed, “didn’t you tell me before?”

Silas laughed hollowly. “I didn’t know who on this place to trust. I was trying to get away from here myself, trying to find some way home. It took me a long time to believe that… that there wasn’t any. I thought I could just take the message to New Crobuzon myself. What if you didn’t believe me? Or what if you were a spy? What if you told our new fucking rulers-”

“Well, what about that?” Bellis interrupted. “Isn’t it worth thinking about? Maybe they’d help us get a message…”

Silas stared at her with nasty incredulity.

“Are you mad?” he said. “You think they’d help us? They don’t give spit what happens to New Crobuzon. They’d most likely welcome its fucking destruction-one less competitor nation on the sea. You think they’d let us ride to the rescue? You think they’d care? The bastards would probably do everything they could to hold us back , to let the grindylow do their worst. And, besides, you’ve seen how they treat… Crobuzoner officials and agents. They’d search my notes, my papers, and it would come out that I have a commission. That I work for New Crobuzon. Jabber Almighty, Bellis, you saw what they did to the captain. What do you think they’d do to me?”

There was a long silence at that.

“I needed… I need someone to work with me. We have no friends in this city. We have no allies. And thousands of miles away, our home’s in danger, and we can’t trust anyone to help us. So it’s up to us to get a message back.”

After he said that there was a pause that became a silence. It dragged out, longer and longer, and became terrible because they both knew it should be filled. They should be coming up with plans.

And both of them tried. Bellis opened her mouth several times, but words dried in her throat.

We’ll hijack one of their boats , she wanted to say but could not; the idiocy of it choked her. We’ll sneak out just the two of us in a dinghy; we’ll get through the guard boats and row and sail for home . She tried to say that, tried to think it without scorn, and almost moaned. We’ll steal an airship. All we need are guns and gas, and coal and water for the engine, and food and drink for a two-thousand-mile journey, and a map, a chart of where in the godsforsaken fucking middle of the fucking entire Swollen Ocean we are, for Jabber’s sake …

Nothing, there was nothing, she could say nothing; she could think nothing.

She sat and tried to speak, tried to think of ways she could save New Crobuzon, her city which she treasured with a ferocious, unromantic love, and which lay under the most baleful threat. And the moments passed and passed, and Chet and the summer and the grindylow harvest kept coming closer, and she could say nothing.

Bellis imagined bodies like puffy eels, eyes and slablike recurved teeth heading under cold water toward her home.