The Scar - China Mieville [181]
They were signs of sinkholes.
In this region, the ocean was between three and four miles deep. But below the deadeye the seafloor fell away in a steep cone, into a circular hole that stretched down below the reach of any geo-empath.
The sinkhole was a mile and a half wide, and bottomless.
It stretched so deep that Bas-Lag’s dimension could not possibly contain the water’s gravity and density, and reality was unstable in the shaft’s lower reaches. The sinkhole was a duct between realms. Where the avancs breached.
There was not a time when Krüach Aum and his new subordinates declared their researches over—there was no sudden announcement, no claim that the last problems had been solved. Bellis could not say exactly when she knew that Armada was ready.
Doul did not tell her. The knowledge soaked into her, and into all the other citizens. In rumor and guesswork, in triumphant speculation and then in triumph, the word spread. They’ve succeeded. They know how to do it. They’re waiting.
Bellis wanted not to believe it. The awareness that the scientists had perfected the techniques they needed took her so gently that there was no sudden shock, just a slowly waxing foreboding. How? she thought, again and again. She considered the scale of what was to be attempted, and the question overwhelmed her. How can they do it?
She considered everything that had to be done, all the knowledge that they had had to amass, the machines to be built, the puissance to channel. It seemed impossible. Is it down to me? she wondered incredulously. Without Aum, without his book, could this be done?
With every hour, Bellis could feel the tension, the anxiety and excitement, increasing all around her.
Days after they reached the deadeye, finally, the announcement was made that everyone had been expecting. Posters and criers warned people to be ready, that the research was over, that an attempt was to be made.
As momentous, as extraordinary, as it was, it surprised no one. And after such long official silence, even to Bellis, that final confirmation was almost a relief.
Tanner Sack found the bridle and the now-visible chains a great pleasure to his eye. He had been born and raised in New Crobuzon, where mountains picked out the western sky and the architecture was complex and encompassing. There were times, he would admit, when the endless open skies of Armada, the unbroken water below, troubled him.
He found a comfort in the submerged harness. It gave him something big and real to stare at, breaking the monotonous deeps.
Tanner hung in the still waters of the deadeye.
There were a very few figures in the water—Tanner, Bastard John, the menfish—watching from below.
Everything had been prepared.
It was almost midday. The city was as still as if it were before dawn.
On neighboring ships, Bellis could see people watching from their roofs, or peering from behind railings or from the city’s parks. But there were not many. There was almost no noise. There were no dirigibles in the sky.
“Half the city’s indoors,” she hissed to Uther Doul. He had found her on the deck of the Grand Easterly, gathered with the few Armadans who, like Bellis, felt compelled to watch the attempt from the flagship itself.
They’re frightened, she thought, staring over the empty streets on vessels below. They’ve realized what’s at stake here. Like shipwrecked sailors in a jolly boat tethering themselves to a whale. She almost laughed. And they’re afraid of the storm.
The citizens of Armada dreaded severe storms. The city could not avoid or ride the weather’s tempers, and the worst winds could tear vessel from vessel, throw them together no matter how strong their buffers. Armada’s history was punctuated with the stories of terrible and deadly squalls.
Never before had anyone deliberately called one down.
To puncture the membrane between realities, even at a weak point, to entice the avanc into this plane, a burst of colossal energy was required. Something like that required not just an elyctric