The Scar - China Mieville [246]
The iron carapace began to creak under the pressure. Every ten or twelve seconds there would be another sudden shuddering creak, as if the pressure increased in sudden, discrete zones.
The percussive stroke became stronger the lower they went, until suddenly Johannes realized that it was not just their own craft, not just the metal around them that shook, but the sea—the whole sea, the tons of water to all sides—vibrating, spasming with sympathetic shock, in echoes of the thunderous strokes rising from below.
The avanc’s heart.
When miles of wire had been played out by the huge wheel on the Hoddling, a safety catch snapped into place and halted their plunge. The Ctenophore jerked, buffeted by the arterial booming around them. The avanc’s heart felt solid through the metal.
Chion lit a lantern. The three bathynauts stared at each other’s sweat-moist, sepia faces. They looked grotesque, drowned in shadows. With every heartbeat that made the bathyscaphos tremble, a tic of fear and awe passed over every one of them. Darkness flickered around the close cabin, over its gauges and dials.
Chion began to work at the levers, pushing cards into the analytical engine by her side. There was a heart-stopping moment when nothing happened, and then the sphere began to shudder with the sound of its engines.
“It should be a couple of hundred yards below us,” said Chion. “We’ll take it slowly.”
With a puttering groan, the Ctenophore curved down, pulling toward the avanc.
The lamp flared into life again. The cold beam speared into the unceasing marine light. Johannes studied the water, its suspension of particles, and saw it judder with the avanc’s heart. His mouth was thick with saliva at the thought of the millions of tons of water eager to crush them.
Something became sensible below them, like a ghost. Johannes was chilled. They descended toward a great flat zone of lighter darkness—a ruptured, pebbled field that insinuated itself into visibility. At first utterly faint, it grew in solidity, its random, rugged contours sliding into sight in the phosphor beam. Slimed and rocky, it stretched out on all sides, broken by stains, lichen growths of the deepest sea. It harbored deepwater animal life. Johannes saw the faint flickerings of blind, eel-like hagfish; squat echurians; thick, blanched trilobites.
“We’re in the wrong place,” said Chion thickly. “We’re coming down above the ocean floor.” But as she spoke the last word her voice broke and became a trembled whisper as she realized her mistake. Johannes nodded with a kind of triumph and awe, like a man in the presence of his god.
The avanc’s heart beat again, and a huge ridge cracked the vista, reconfiguring it suddenly, rising twenty feet high, sending dust and muck particles spinning. The thick crest burst up across the surface of the gnarled plain, scoring as far as Ctenophore’s lamp could pierce, and branching, splitting into two or three, tracing pathways across the plateau.
It was a vein.
Filling with blood, pulsing, protruding, and sinking slowly back again.
The submersible was perfectly positioned. They were above the avanc’s back.
Even Krüach Aum, emotionless as he was, seemed stunned. They hunkered together and muttered for comfort.
The landscape below them was all beast.
The Ctenophore cruised slowly, twenty-five feet above the avanc’s surface, over a valley between two veins. Johannes gazed down through the dense water. He was mesmerized by the creature’s colors. He would have expected an anemic white, but the thing’s mottled hide contained striations in hundreds of shades, coiled in whorls as distinct as fingerprints: pebbled grey, reds, ocher.
In places the avanc’s skin was broken by jags that looked like rock or horn