China Mieville - The Scar

He sat back, aware that it was not one iota as simple as he had presented it, but still he felt excited.

“In the very worst case,” he said, “Aum’s dead. In which case we’ve lost nothing. Perhaps there’ll be others there, who remember him, who can help us.”

“That’s not the worst case,” said Uther Doul. The atmosphere shifted: all whispering stopped, and everyone in the room faced him-except the Lovers, who listened gravely without turning.

“You’re talking,” Doul continued softly, in his singer’s voice, “as if this is just a place, like other places. It’s not. You have no idea what you’re saying. Do you understand what you’ve discovered? What Aum’s race means? This is the island of the mosquito-people. The worst case is that the anophelii women come upon us on the beach and suck us dry, leaving our husks to rot. The worst case is that we are all instantly butchered.”

There was a silence.

“Not me,” someone said. Johannes gave a half smile. It was Breyatt, a cactacae mathematician. Johannes tried to catch his eye. Well scored , he thought.

The Lovers were nodding.

“Your point is taken, Uther,” said the Lover. He stroked his small mustache. “But let’s not… exaggerate. There are ways around the problem, as this gentleman points out…”

“This gentleman is cactus,” said Doul. “For those of us with blood the problem remains.”

“Nevertheless-” The Lover spoke with authority. “-I think it would be foolish to suggest that there’s no way this can be done. That’s not how we proceed. We start by working out what’s to our advantage, what is the best plan… Then we work our way around problems. If it seems that our best chance of success lies on this island, then that’s where we’ll go.”

Doul did not move. He looked impassive. There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest that he had been overruled.

“Godsdammit!” Johannes barked in frustration, and everyone turned to him. He was shocked at his own outburst, but he continued without losing momentum. “Of course there are problems and difficulties,” he said passionately, “of course it’ll take organization, it’ll take work and effort and… and maybe we’ll need protecting, and we can bring cactacae fighters with us, or constructs, or I don’t damn well know what… But what’s going on here? Are you all in the same room as me?”

He picked up Aum’s book and held it reverentially like a sacred sutra.

“We have the book . We have a translator. This is the testimony of one who knows how to raise an avanc . This changes everything… Does it matter where he lives? So his home is inhospitable.” He stared at the Lovers. “Is there anywhere we wouldn’t go for this? Surely we can’t even consider not going.”

When they broke up, the Lovers spoke noncommittally. But everything was different now, and Johannes knew he was not alone in knowing that.

“It may be time to announce our intentions,” the Lover said as they gathered their notes.

The room was full of people trained into a culture of secrecy. Her suggestion shocked them. But, Johannes realized, it made sense.

“We knew we’d have to be open about this some time,” she continued. Her lover nodded.

There were scientists from Jhour and Shaddler and The Clockhouse Spur taking part in the attempt to raise the avanc, and the rulers of those ridings had been consulted out of courtesy. But the inner circle was all Garwater: those who once had not been, the Lovers had, in a breach of tradition, persuaded to defect. Information about the project was tightly circumscribed.

But a plan of such magnitude could not be hidden forever.

“We have the Sorghum ,” said the Lover, “so we decide where we all go. But what will the rest of the city think while they sit stranded in some patch of sea waiting for our landing party to return? What are they going to think when we reach the sinkhole, raise the damned avanc? Their rulers won’t talk: our allies take our lead, and our enemies don’t want this in the open. They’re afraid of which way their people will turn.

“Perhaps,” she concluded slowly, “it’s time to bring the citizens to our side. Enthuse them…”

She looked at her partner. As always, they seemed to be communicating silently.

“We need lists,” the Lover said, “of everyone who should go to the island. We must look at new arrivals-there may be expertise we’ve missed. And we need security details for all candidates. And we have to represent all ridings.” He smiled, his scars tracing the contours of his face, and picked up Bellis’ translation.

When Johannes reached the door, the Lovers called his name.

“Come with us,” said the Lover, and Johannes’ stomach yawed uneasily.

Oh Jabber, he thought. What now? I’ve had enough of your company.

“Come and talk to us,” the Lover continued, and waited while his partner finished for him.

“We want to talk to you about this woman, Coldwine,” she said.

Past midnight, Bellis was woken by a repeated banging on her door. She looked up, thinking it must be Silas, until she saw him lying motionless and awake beside her.

It was Johannes. She tugged her hair out of her face and blinked at him on her doorstep.

“I think they’re going to go ahead,” he said. Bellis gasped.

“Listen, Bellis. They were… well, intrigued by you. What they’ve heard has suggested that… well, that you’re not their material. Nothing bad, you know?” He was eager to mollify her. “Nothing, you know, dangerous… but not exactly sympathetic. Like a lot of press-ganged: best left aboard at all costs. It’s normally years before incomers get letters of pass.”

Was that all it was? thought Bellis slowly. The misery and loneliness, the aching for New Crobuzon that made her feel something had been torn from her-was it just an everyday symptom, shared by a thousand like her? Was it so banal?

“But… well I told them all the things you’d said to me,” Johannes said, and smiled. “And I can’t promise anything, but… I think you’d be the best person, and I told them that.”

Silas seemed to be sleeping when she returned to bed, but something in the shallowness of his breath told her he was not. She leaned over him as if about to kiss him hard, her lips found his ear, and she whispered, “It’s working.”

They came for her the next morning.

It was after Silas had left, heading for Armada’s underworld to perform his opaque, illegal activities. To the work that kept him under the city’s skin, that made him too dangerous even to attempt passage to the anophelii island.

Two of the Garwater yeomanry, pistols slung easy in their belts, steered Bellis to an aerostat cab. It was not far from Chromolith to the Grand Easterly . The mass of the enormous steamer stretched out above the city. Its six colossal masts, its chimneys, its bare decks unadorned by houses or towers.

The sky was full of aerostats: Scores of little cabs studding the air like bees around a hive; outlandish vessels built for freight, transporting heavy goods between the ridings; the peculiar little single-rider balloons with their pendulous occupants. A little way out were warflots, elliptical flying guns. And above them all the massive, crippled Arrogance .

They wound over the skyscape of Armada, lower than Bellis was used to, rising and sinking with the topography of roofs and rigging. Warrens of brick like New Crobuzon slums passed below. Built on the cramped space of deck tops, they looked precarious: their outer walls too close to the water, the alleyways that riddled them impossibly thin.

Beyond the haze above the Gigue , whose fore was an industrial district of foundries and chymical plants, the Grand Easterly was approaching.