The Scar - China Mieville [191]
Many people watched the Castor from the Sculpture Garden until it disappeared around Armada’s curve. Among them were Angevine and Shekel, holding hands.
“They did their job,” said Angevine. She was still shocked to find herself out of a job, but she sounded only very slightly regretful. “They finished what they were brought here to do. Why would they have stayed?
“Do you know what he said to me?” she continued to Shekel impatiently, and he could tell that she had had this on her mind. “He said they might’ve been tempted to stay longer, but they didn’t want to go where the Lovers are going.”
Tanner watched the Castor’s progress from below.
He was not perturbed that the city was heading north, or that he did not know where it was going. He found a great pleasure in the realization that the summoning of the avanc was not the end of Garwater’s project. He found it hard to understand those who saw in this some betrayal, who were angry, intimidated by their own ignorance.
But don’t you think it’s wonderful? he felt like saying to them. It ain’t over! There’s more to be done! The Lovers’ve got more up their sleeves. There’s more we can do; there’s bigger things at stake. We can keep at it!
He spent more and more hours under the surface, emerging to spend his time alone, or occasionally with Shekel, who was growing more closemouthed as the days passed.
Tanner grew closer to Hedrigall. Ironically, Hedrigall was a voice of opposition to the city’s northerly trajectory, and to the Lovers’ silence. But Tanner knew that Hedrigall’s loyalty to Garwater was as strong as his own, that there was nothing snide in his disquiet. Hedrigall was an intelligent and careful critic who did not deride Tanner’s loyalty as blind or unthinking, who understood the trust and commitment Tanner placed in the Lovers, and who treated Tanner’s defense of them seriously.
“You know they’re my bosses, Tanner,” he had said, “and you know that I ain’t got any soft feelings for my so-called home. Dreer fucking Samher means shit to me. But . . . this is too much, Tanner, man—this silence. Things were working, Tanner. We didn’t have to do all this. They should tell us what’s happening. Without that, they lose our trust; they lose their legitimacy. And godsdammit, mate, that’s what they depend on. There’s only two of them, Croom knows how many thousands of us. This ain’t good for Garwater.”
These sentiments made Tanner uneasy.
He was happiest below the water. The submerged life of the riding continued as before: the clouds of fish, Bastard John, the leather-and-metal-clad divers at the end of their guy ropes, the flickering menfish of Bask, the cray, the shadows of submersibles like stubby whales beyond the city. The sunken supports of the Sorghum, its girder-legs poking from them. Tanner Sack himself, swimming from job to job, mouthing instructions or advice to his colleagues, taking orders and giving them.
But nothing was the same; everything was utterly different. Because at the edges of all that banal activity, framing the mass of keels and undersides like the points of a pentacle, the five great chains angled in a steep slope down and forward into the pitch, tethering the avanc miles below.
Tanner’s days were harder than before. He kept swimming all the time, simply to keep up with Armada. He often found himself grabbing hold of jutting pillars, barnacle-crusted timbers, to allow himself to be towed. At the end of the day, when he hauled himself out of the water and returned to his rooms, he was utterly exhausted.
Thoughts of New Crobuzon clouded his mind more and more. He wondered if the message he had delivered had got through. He hoped it had, very much. He could not think about his erstwhile home ruined by war.
The temperature did not waver. Each day was sweaty and bleached by light. When there were clouds they were fraught,