The Scar - China Mieville [19]
You son of a pig, Bellis thought furiously, her face set like ice.
The pilot eased his speed down to almost nothing and maneuvered through a large, dark opening into the wing. They sailed over cray, who directed them on with sweeps of their arms, to the dead end of the concrete corridor. A huge door shut ponderously behind them.
From fat stubby pipes that lined the walls burst a massive unceasing explosion of bubbles. The sea was pushed out through valves and sluices. Slowly the water level fell. The sub settled gradually on the concrete floor and listed to one side. The water came down past the porthole and streaked and streamed it with droplets, and Bellis was staring out into air. With the sea pumped out of it, the room looked shabby.
When the pilot finally undid the screws locking them in, the hatch swung open with a merciful cool blast. The concrete floor was puddled with brine. The room itself smelled of kelp and fish. Bellis stepped from the submersible as the officers adjusted their uniforms.
Behind them stood a cray. She carried a spear—too intricate and flimsy to be anything other than ceremonial, Bellis judged—and wore a breastplate of something vivid green that was not metal. She nodded in greeting.
“Thank her for her welcome,” said the captain to Bellis. “Tell her to inform the council leader that we have arrived.”
Bellis breathed out and tried to relax. She composed herself and brought back to mind the vocabulary, the grammar and syntax and pronunciation and soul of Salkrikaltor Cray: everything she had learned in those intensive weeks with Marikkatch. She offered a quick, cynical, silent prayer.
Then she formed the vibrato, the cray’s clicking barks, audible in air and water, and spoke.
To her intense relief, the cray nodded and responded.
“You will be announced,” she said, carefully correcting Bellis’ tense. “Your pilot waits here. You come our way.”
Large, sealed portholes looked out onto a garden of garish sea plants. The walls were covered by tapestries showing famous moments of Salkrikaltor history. The floor was stone slabs—quite dry—warmed by some hidden fire. There were dark ornaments in the room—jet, black coral, black pearl.
Nodding, welcoming the humans, were three he-cray. One, much younger than his companions, stood a little back, just like Bellis.
They were pale. Compared to the cray of Tarmuth, they spent far more of their lives below the water, where the sun could not stain them. All that distinguished cray upper bodies from humans’ was the little ruff of gills on the neck, but there was also something alien about their submarine pallor.
Below the waist, the crays’ armored hindquarters were those of colossal rock lobsters: huge carapaces of gnarled shell and overlapping somites. Their human abdomens jutted out from above where the eyes and antennae would have been. Even in the air, an alien medium, their multitude of legs worked with intricate grace. They sounded softly as they moved, a gentle percussion of chitin.
They adorned their crustacean hindquarters with a kind of tattoo, carving designs into the shell and staining them with various extracts. The two older cray had an extraordinary array of symbols on their flanks.
One stepped forward and spoke very quickly in Salkrikaltor. There was a moment’s silence.
“Welcome,” said the young cray behind him, the translator. He spoke Ragamoll with a heavy accent. “We are glad you have come and speak with us.”
The discussion started slowly. Council Leader King Skarakatchi and Councilman King Drood’adji made expressions of polite and ritualistic delight that were matched by Myzovic and Cumbershum. Everyone agreed that it was excellent that they had all met, and that two such great cities remained on such good terms, that trade was such a healthy way of ensuring goodwill, and so on.
The conversation shifted quickly. With impressive smoothness, Bellis found herself translating specifics. The conversation had moved on to how many apples and plums the Terpsichoria would leave in Salkrikaltor,