The Scar - China Mieville [102]
Trauma, then.
She placed the appendix open, flat, on a strategic nail on her floor, trod on it, and kicked it hard. The nail hooked into the equations and footnotes and yanked them away, to lie in a crumpled pile.
It was perfect. There were three pages at the start of the appendix, where terms were discussed and defined, and then the paper was torn out by its roots. Only the ragged fringes remained, little wedges of half-eradicated words. It looked like the result of a random, stupid accident.
They burned the appendix, whispering like reprobate children.
It did not take long for all the pages to vent as smoke and particles out over Armada, where the wind took and dissipated them.
Tomorrow we make our move, thought Bellis. Tomorrow we start.
The wind was from the south. The fingers of smoke from Armada’s chimneys pointed back the way they had come.
Standing on the deck of the Shadeskinner and looking out, with her back to the city, Bellis could pretend that she was on a normal ship.
The clipper was part of Garwater’s suburbs: the people there lived below in preexisting cabins. No houses were built on its decks. The Shadeskinner was bronze-trimmed wood, and rope and old canvas. It was without any taverns or cafés or whorehouses, and very few people lingered on its deck. Bellis stared at the ocean, just like a passenger on a clipper at sea.
She stood alone for a long time.
The sea glimmered under the gaslights.
Finally, at a little past nine in the evening, she heard hurried footsteps.
Johannes Tearfly stood before her, the expression on his face unreadable. She nodded at him, slowly, and said his name.
“Bellis, I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said. “Your message . . . It was short notice and I couldn’t rearrange everything. I got here as quickly as I could.”
Is that right? thought Bellis coldly. Or are you almost an hour late to punish me?
But she realized that his voice sounded sincerely contrite: that his smile was uncertain, but not cold.
They walked the deck aimlessly, meandering toward the narrowing front, then turning back again. They talked awkwardly, the memory of their argument heavy on them.
“How goes the research, Johannes?” Bellis said eventually. “Are we nearly . . . wherever we’re going?”
“Bellis . . .” He shucked his shoulders in irritation. “I thought perhaps you might have . . . Dammit, if you’ve called me here just to—“
She cut him off with her hands. There was a long silence and Bellis closed her eyes. When she opened them, her face and voice had softened.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. The fact is, Johannes, that what you said to me hurt. Because I know you’re right.” His face was guarded as she forced the words out. “Don’t misunderstand me,” she said quickly. “This place’ll never be my home. I was taken here by piracy, Johannes: I was stolen.
“But . . . but, you were right that . . . that I’d cut myself off. I knew nothing about the city, and I felt ashamed of that.” He started to interrupt, but she would not let him. “And more than anything, I saw the . . . the chance of it all.” Her voice grew impassioned. She spoke what sounded like uncomfortable truths. “I’ve seen things here, I’ve learnt things . . . New Crobuzon’s still my home, but you’re right that there is nothing that binds me to it but chance. I’ve given up on going home, Johannes,” she said (and instantly her stomach clenched because it was so nearly true), “and it’s made me realize that there are things here worth doing.”
Something seemed to be shifting in him; some expression was burgeoning on Johannes’ face. Bellis suspected that it was delight, and quickly she interrupted it.
“Don’t expect me to fall in love with this damned place, alright? But . . . but for most of the people on the Terpsichoria, for the Remade, this press-ganging is the best thing that could have happened. And as for the rest of us . . . well, it’s fair