China Mieville - The Scar

And then, at around two in the morning, with only half the passengers left on deck, something appeared in the east.

“Gods above,” Johannes whispered.

For a long time it remained a forbidding, unreadable silhouette. And then, as they approached, Bellis saw that it was a huge black tower that reared from the sea. An oily light flared from its peak, a spew of dirty flame.

They were almost upon it. A little over a mile away. Bellis gasped.

It was a platform suspended above the sea. More than two hundred feet long on each side, it hung immensely, its concrete weight poised on three massive metal legs. Bellis could hear it pounding.

Waves broke against its supports. It had a skyline as intricate and twisted as a city’s. Above the three leg-pillars was a cluster of seemingly random spires, and cranes moving like clawed hands; and over them all a huge minaret of girders soared and drooled fire. Thaumaturgic ripples distorted the space above the flame. In the shadows under the platform, a massive metal shaft plunged into the sea. Lights glimmered from its built-up levels.

“What in the name of Jabber is that?” Bellis breathed.

It was awesome and extraordinary. The passengers were gaping like fools.

The mountains of the southernmost Fin were a shadow in the distance. Near the base of the platform were predatory shapes: ironclad ships patrolling. Lights flashed in a complex staccato from the deck of one of them, and there was a corresponding burst from the bridge of the Terpsichoria .

From the deck of the fabulous structure, a klaxon sounded.

They were passing away from it now. Bellis watched it dwindle, venting flame.

Johannes remained still with astonishment.

“I have no idea,” he said slowly. It took a moment for Bellis to realize he was answering her question. They kept their eyes on the enormous shape in the sea for as long as they could make it out at all.

When it was gone they walked in silence toward the corridor. And then, as they reached the door into the cabins, someone behind them shouted.

“Another!”

It was true. Miles in the distance, a second colossal platform.

Bigger than the first. It loomed on four legs of weatherbeaten concrete. This one was sparser. There was one fat, squat tower rising from each corner, and a colossal derrick at its edge. The structure growled like something alive.

Again came a lightflash challenge from the thing’s defenders, and again the Terpsichoria responded.

There was a wind, and the sky was cold as iron. In the shallows of that bleak sea the edifice roared as the Terpsichoria slipped by in darkness.

Bellis and Johannes waited another hour, their hands numb, their breath coiling out of them in visible gusts, but nothing else appeared. All they could see was the water, and here and there the Fins, serrated and unlit.

Chainday 5th Arora 1779. Aboard the Terpsichoria

As soon as I entered the captain’s office this morning, it was clear that something had angered him. He was grinding his teeth, and his expression was murderous.

“Miss Coldwine,” he said, “in a few hours we will be arriving at Salkrikaltor City. The other passengers and crew will be granted a few hours’ leave, but I’m afraid there’ll be no such luxury for you.”

His tone was neutral and dangerous. His desk was cleared of paraphernalia. This disturbed me, and I cannot explain why. Usually he is surrounded by a bulwark of detritus. Without it there was no buffer between us.

“I will be meeting with representatives of the Salkrikaltor Commonwealth, and you will translate. You have worked with trade delegations-you know the formula. You will translate into Salkrikaltor Cray for the representatives, and their translator will render their words into Ragamoll for me. You listen carefully to make sure of him, and he’ll be listening to you. That ensures honesty on both sides. But you are not a participant. Do I make myself entirely clear?” He labored the point like a teacher. “You will not hear anything that passes between us. You’re a conduit, and nothing more. You hear nothing .”

I met the bastard’s eye.

“Matters will be discussed of the highest security. On board a ship, Miss Coldwine, there are very few secrets. Mark me.” He leaned toward me. “If you mention what is discussed to anyone-to my officers, your puking nun, or your close friend Dr. Tearfly-I will hear of it.”

I am sure I do not need to tell you that I was shocked.

Thus far I have avoided confrontation with the captain, but his anger made him capricious. I will not appear weak to him. Months of bad feeling is a smaller price than to cower strategically whenever he comes close.

Besides which I was enraged.

I put frost in my voice.

“Captain, we discussed these matters when you offered me this post. My record and references are clear. It is beneath you to question me now.” I was very grand. “I am not some press-ganged seventeen-year-old for you to intimidate, sir. I will do my job as contracted, and you will not impugn my professionalism.”

I have no idea what had angered him, and I do not care. The gods can rot his bastard hide.

And now I sit here with the “puking nun”-although in fact she seems a little better, and has even simpered about taking a service on Shunday-and finish this letter. We are approaching Salkrikaltor, where I will have my chance to seal it and leave it, to be picked up by any New Crobuzon ship passing. It will reach you, this long farewell, only a few weeks late. Which is not so very bad. I hope it finds you well.

I hope that you miss me as I miss you. I do not know what I will do without this means to connect me with you. It will be a year or more before you hear from me again, before another ship steams or sails into the harbor at Nova Esperium, and think of me then! My hair long and braided with mud, no doubt, abjuring clothes, marked with sigils like some savage shaman! If I still remember how to write, I will write to you then, and tell you of my time, and ask what it is like in my city. And perhaps you will have written to me, and you will tell me that all is safe, and that I can come home.

The passengers debated excitedly over what they had seen the previous night. Bellis scorned them. The Terpsichoria passed through the Candlemaw Straits and into the calmer water of Salkrikaltor. First the lush island of Gnomon Tor loomed into view, and then, before five in the afternoon, Salkrikaltor City came over the horizon.

The sun was very low and the light was thick. The shoreline of Gnomon Tor rose green and massive a few miles north. In a horizontal forest of lengthening shadows, the towers and rooftops of Salkrikaltor City broke the waves.

They were rendered in concrete, in iron, rock and glass, and in sweeps of hardy cold-water coral. Columns spiraled with walkways, linked by spine-thin bridges. Intricate conical spires a hundred feet high, dark square keeps. A mass of contrary styles.

The outlines of the skyline were a child’s exuberant sketch of a reef. Organic towers bulged like tubeworm casts. There were analogs of lace corals-high-rise dwellings that branched into scores of thin rooms-and squat many-windowed arenas like gargantuan barrel sponges. Frilled ribbons of architecture like fire coral.

The towers of the submerged city rose a hundred feet above the waves, their shapes uninterrupted. Huge doorways gaped at sea level. Green scum marks marked the height of a tide that would cover them.

There were newer buildings. Ovoid mansions carved from stone and ribbed with iron, suspended above the water on struts that jutted from the submerged roofscape. Floating platforms topped with terraces of square brick houses-like those of New Crobuzon-perched preposterously in the sea.