The Scar - China Mieville [105]
It was not a big room. It strained to contain everyone within it. They sat in uncomfortable formality on stiff chairs around a battered table. Tintinnabulum and his companions, Johannes and his colleagues, biomathematicians and thaumaturges and others, mostly human but not all so.
And the Lovers. Behind them, Uther Doul stood by the door, his arms folded.
Johannes, faltering and excited, had been speaking for some time. At the climax of his story, he paused ostentatiously and slapped Krüach Aum’s book onto the table. And after the pause, at the crescendo of the first wave of gasps, he followed it with Bellis’ translation.
“You can see now,” he said with a trembling voice, “why I called this extraordinary meeting.”
The Lover picked up the two documents and carefully compared them. Johannes watched her in silence. Her mouth curled in concentration, and the scars on her face coiled to contain her expression. On the right side of her chin, he noticed the puckered flesh and scab of a new wound. He looked briefly at her lover beside her and saw a matching wound below his mouth, on the left.
Johannes felt the unease he always did at the sight. No matter how often he saw the Lovers, their proximity brought on a nervousness in him that did not fade. They had an extraordinary presence.
Perhaps it’s authority, Johannes thought. Perhaps that’s what authority is.
“Who here speaks Kettai?” the Lover said.
Opposite her, a llorgiss raised an arm.
“Turgan,” she acknowledged.
“I know some,” it said in its breathy tones, “mostly Base, a little High. But this woman is much more proficient than me. I have looked at the manuscripts, and much of the original was beyond me.”
“Don’t forget,” said Johannes, raising his hand, “Coldwine’s High Kettai Grammatology is a standard reference book. There aren’t that many textbooks for High Kettai . . .” He shook his head. “Weird, difficult language. But of those that there are, Coldwine’s is one of the best. If she weren’t on board, if Turgan or someone else had to translate this, they’d probably spend most of their time referring to her damn book anyway.”
His hands were jerking in aggressive, choppy movements.
“She’s translated into Ragamoll, obviously,” he said, “but it’s easy enough to render that into Salt. But, look, the translation is not the most exciting thing here. Maybe I’ve not been clear . . . Aum’s not Kettai. We couldn’t visit a Kettai scientist, obviously. Kohnid’s way off our route, and Armada wouldn’t be safe in those seas . . . but Krüach Aum’s not from Kohnid. He’s anophelii. Their island’s a thousand miles south. And there’s every chance he’s alive.
It brought them up short.
Johannes nodded slowly. “What we have here,” he continued, “is invaluable. We have a description of the process, the effects, we have confirmation of the area involved—all those things. But unfortunately Aum’s footnotes and calculations are missing—as I said, the text is badly damaged. So what we have is merely the . . . the lay description. The science is missing.
“We’re heading for a sinkhole some way off the southern coast of Gnurr Kett. Now, I’ve checked with a couple of cactacae ex of Dreer Samher, who used to deal with the anophelii: where we’re going, we’ll only be a couple of hundred miles from the anophelii island.” He paused, aware that he was speaking too quickly in his excitement.
“Obviously,” he went on, more slowly, “we could continue as previously planned. In which case we know roughly where we’re going; we know more or less the kind of power involved in the summoning; we have some idea of the thaumaturgy involved . . . And we could risk it.
“But we could go to the island. A landing party. Tintinnabulum, some of our scientists, one or other or both of you.” He looked at the Lovers.
“We’d need Bellis to translate,” he went on. “The cactacae who’ve been there can’t help us: when they traded it was all hand signs and head shaking, apparently, but obviously some of the anophelii speak High Kettai. We’d need guards—and engineers, because we’re going to have to start thinking about containment