China Mieville - The Scar

Apart from an arduous research trip to the Wormseye Scrub years previously, this was the furthest Bellis had ever been from New Crobuzon. She watched the small crowd at the dockside. They looked old and eager. Over the wind she heard a smattering of dialects. Most of the shouts were in Salt, the sailors’ argot, a found language riveted together from the thousand vernaculars of the Basilisk Channel, Ragamoll, and Perrickish, the tongues of the Pirate and Jheshull Islands.

Bellis saw Captain Myzovic climb the steep streets toward New Crobuzon’s crenellated embassy.

“Why are you staying on board?” said Johannes.

“I don’t feel any great need for greasy food or trinkets,” she said. “These islands depress me.”

Johannes smiled slowly, as if her attitude delighted him. He shrugged and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain,” he said, as if she had returned his question, “and I have work to do aboard.”

“Why are we stopping here anyway?” said Bellis.

“I suspect it’s government business,” said Johannes carefully. “This is the last serious outpost. Beyond this the New Crobuzon sphere of influence becomes far more… attenuated. There are probably all manner of things to be attended to, out here.

“Luckily,” he said after a silence, “it’s none of our business.”

They watched the still-darkening ocean.

“Have you seen any of the prisoners?” Johannes asked suddenly.

Bellis looked at him in surprise. “No. Have you?” She felt defensive. The fact of the ship’s sentient cargo discomfited her.

When it had come, Bellis’ realization that she had to leave New Crobuzon had been urgent and frightening. She had made her plans in low panic. She needed to get as far away as she could, and quickly. Cobsea and Myrshock seemed too close, and she had thought feverishly of Shankell and Yoraketche, and Neovadan and Tesh. But they were all too far or too dangerous, or too alien, or too hard to reach or too frightening. There was nothing in any of them that could become her home. And Bellis had realized aghast that it was too hard for her to let go, that she was clinging to New Crobuzon, to what defined her.

And then Bellis had thought of Nova Esperium. Eager for new citizens. Asking no questions. Halfway across the world, a little blister of civilization in unknown lands. A home from home, New Crobuzon’s colony. Rougher, surely, and harder and less cosseted-Nova Esperium was too young for many kindnesses-but a culture modeled on her city’s own.

She realized that, with that destination, New Crobuzon would pay her passage, even as she fled it. And a channel of communication would remain open to her: regular if occasional contact with ships from home. She might then know when it was safe to return.

But the vessels that undertook the long, dangerous journey from Iron Bay across the Swollen Ocean carried with them Nova Esperium’s workforce. Which meant a hold full of prisoners: peons, indentured laborers, and Remade.

It curdled the food in Bellis’ stomach to think of the men and women locked below, out of the light, and so she did not think of them. She would have had nothing to do with such a voyage and such harsh traffic if she had had a choice.

Bellis looked up at Johannes, trying to gauge his thoughts.

“I must admit,” he said hesitantly, “I’m surprised I’ve heard no sound at all from them. I had thought they would be let out more often than this.”

Bellis said nothing. She waited for Johannes to change the subject, so that she could continue to try to forget what lay beneath them.

She could hear the bonhomie from Qe Banssa’s waterfront pubs. It sounded urgent.

Under tar and steel, in the damp chambers below. Food bolted and fought over. Shit, spunk, and blood congealing. Shrieks and fistfights. And chains like stone and all around whispers.

“That’s a shame, lad.” The voice was rough from lack of sleep, but the sympathy was genuine. “You’ll most probably get a hiding for that.”

Before the bars of the prison hold, the cabin boy stood looking mournfully at shards of pottery and spilt stew. He had been spooning food into bowls for the prisoners, and his hand had slipped.

“Clay like that looks strong as iron, till you drop it.” The man behind the bars was as filthy and tired as all the other prisoners. Bubbling from his chest, visible beneath a torn shirt, was a huge tumor of flesh from which emerged two long ill-smelling tentacles. They swung lifeless, deadweight blubbery encumbrances. Like most of the transportees, the man was Remade, carved by science and thaumaturgy into a new shape, in punishment for some crime.

“Reminds me of when Crawfoot went to war,” said the man. “Did you ever hear that story?”

The cabin boy picked greasy meat and carrots from the floor and dropped them into a bucket. He glanced up at the man.

The prisoner shuffled back and settled against the wall.

“So one day, at the beginning of the world, Darioch looks out from his treehouse and sees an army coming toward the forest. And bugger me if it ain’t the Batskin Brood come to get back their brooms. You know how Crawfoot took their brooms, don’t you?”

The cabin boy was about fifteen, old for his position. He wore clothes not much cleaner than the prisoners’. He looked the man full on and grinned yes , he knew that story, and the sudden change in him was so marked and extraordinary it was as if he were briefly given a new body. For a moment he looked strong and cocky, and when the smile went and he returned to the slop of food and pottery, some of that sudden swagger remained.

“All right then,” the prisoner continued. “So Darioch calls Crawfoot to him and shows him the Batskins on their way, and he says to him, ‘This is your fuck-up, Crawfoot. You took their stuff. And it happens that Salter’s away at the edge of the world, so you’re going to have to do the fighting.’ And Crawfoot’s bitching and moaning and giving it all this…” The man opened and shut his fingers like a talkative mouth.

He started to continue, but the cabin boy cut him off. “I know it,” he said with sudden recognition. “I heard it before.”

There was a silence.

“Ah well,” the man said, surprised by his own disappointment. “Ah well, I tell you what, son, I’ve not heard it for a while myself, so I think I’ll just carry on and tell it.”

The boy looked at him quizzically, as if trying to decide whether the man was mocking him. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Do what you want. I don’t care.”

The prisoner told the story, quietly, interrupted by coughing and sighs for breath. The cabin boy came and went in the darkness beyond the bars, cleaning the mess, spooning out more food. He was there at the story’s end, when Crawfoot’s chimney-pot-and-china-plate armor shattered, cutting him worse than if he’d worn none at all.

The boy looked at the tired man, the story finished, and grinned again.

“Ain’t you going to tell me the lesson?” he said.

The man smiled weakly. “I reckon you already know it.”

The boy nodded and looked up for a moment, concentrating. “ ‘If it’s nearly right, but it isn’t quite, better to have none, than make do with one,’ ” he recited. “I always preferred them stories without the morals,” he added. He squatted down by the bars.

“Fuck but I’m with you there, lad,” said the man. He paused and held out his hand through the bars. “I’m Tanner Sack.”

The cabin boy hesitated a moment: not nervous, just weighing up possibilities and advantages. He took Tanner’s hand.

“Ta for the story. I’m Shekel.”

They continued.

Bellis came out of sleep when they set sail again, though the bay was still dark. The Terpsichoria juddered and shivered like a cold animal, and she rolled to the porthole and watched the few lights of Qe Banssa move away.