The Scar - China Mieville [200]
The scale of the project was staggering. The realization that all the misery and money and terrible effort that the Lovers had gone to to secure the avanc, the realization that that was only the first part of their plan, was incredible.
“All this,” breathed Silas, and Bellis nodded.
“All of it,” she said. “The rig, the Terpsichoria, Johannes, the anophelii island, the chains, the fulmen, the fucking avanc . . . all of it. This is what it’s about.”
“Naked power.” Silas mouthed it as if the words were dirty. “I assumed the avanc was to do with the piracy. That’s what they implied: that it would make them more efficient thieves, for Jabber’s sake! That at least would have made some kind of sense. But this . . .” He looked incredulous. “You can tell they’re press-ganged, the Lovers; no fucking serious pirate would pursue this idiocy.”
“They’re dangerous,” said Bellis simply. “They’re fanatics. I’ve no idea if they can really cross the Empty Ocean, but godspit! I do not want to find out. I . . . I’ve heard them, Silas, when they’re alone.” He looked at her piercingly, but did not ask her how. “I know what they’re like. I’m not letting people like that—visionaries, gods help us—command me to the other end of the world, to a place that may not even exist, and that if it does is the most deadly place in Bas-Lag. We’d be traveling further and farther from New Crobuzon. And I’ve still not given up on getting back there.”
Bellis realized she was shaking at the thought of leaving her home so far behind. And if Uther and the others were right? If they survived the crossing?
A multitude of possibilities. The thought chilled her. She found it utterly threatening, existentially undermining. It made her feel so completely contingent that it offended and frightened her.
Like some waterhole in the veldt, she thought unclearly, where the weak and the strong and predatory drink together in a truce: the gazelle, the wildebeest, the mafadet, and the lion. All the possibilities lined up together in fucking harmony, and the winner, the strongest, the fact, the real, letting the others that have failed live, letting them all live. Pacifist and pathetic.
“That’s why they’re not telling,” she said. “They know people won’t stand for it.”
“They’re afraid,” Silas murmured.
“The Lovers are strong,” said Bellis, “but they couldn’t face all the other ridings. And, more to the point, they couldn’t face their own people.”
“Revolt,” breathed Silas, and Bellis smiled without humor.
“Mutiny,” she said. “They’re afraid of mutiny. And that’s why we need Simon Fench.”
Silas nodded slowly; then there was a long silence.
“He’s got to spread the word,” he said eventually. “Pamphlets, rumors, and all. That’s what he does best; I can make sure he does that.”
“I’m sorry, Bellis,” Silas said when she stood to go. “I’ve not been a great friend. I’ve been so . . . Things have been busy, and difficult. I was rude when I saw you, and I’m sorry.”
Observing him, Bellis felt dislike—as well, paradoxically, as the last faint stirrings of what had once been affection. Like a shred of memory.
“Silas,” she said, smiling coldly, “we owe each other nothing. And we’re not friends. But we have a shared interest in the Lovers’ failing. And I can’t stop it, and it’s just possible that you might be able to. I expect you to try, and to tell me what’s happening, and that’s all. That’s all the communication I expect from you. I don’t want you to contact me as a friend.”
Silas Fennec remained in The Pashakan for a long time after Bellis left. He read through some inky pamphlets and newspapers, watching the sky darken. The days were noticeably longer now, and he thought about summer in New Crobuzon.
He waited there a long time: this was where people determined enough to find him were directed. But he drank and read alone. One woman, dressed in rags, looked up at his back curiously as he left the room—that was all the notice that was paid him.
Fennec wound home through the circuitous routes and byways of