The Scar - China Mieville [271]
“I knew what the plan was. In sight of the Scar we’d stop at five miles’ distance. And from there a dirigible would set out, and see if it could cross just that short distance to the Scar. And I was the lookout. Any sign of danger, I was to fire my flares, hang out my flags, call the airship back in.
“I don’t know what danger you thought we might face. You had no idea. I don’t think you knew what the Scar was. What did you think might happen? Did you think it might be crawling with Possible Beasts? Things that might have evolved but didn’t, patrolling?
“It was nothing like that.
“The scale of it. The scale of that fucking thing. It was humbling.
“The city didn’t slow,” he said.
He was silent then, for several seconds. He had spoken his last sentence in the same hypnotic monotone he had been using for a long time, and it took Bellis a few heartbeats to realize what it meant.
Her heart spasmed and began to hammer.
“It didn’t slow,” Hedrigall said. “The avanc wasn’t slowing down at all. The avanc was speeding up.
“We were ten miles away, then we were five miles away, and then four, and the city didn’t stop, and didn’t slow down.
“The world was foreshortened . . . The horizon was only a few thousand yards away, and it was growing closer, and Armada was accelerating.
“I began to panic then.” There was no emotion in Hedrigall’s voice, as if he had bled dry of it in the sea. “I began to fire off my flares, trying to warn you of what you must have known.
“Probably . . . probably there was panic then,” he said. “I wouldn’t know; I couldn’t see. Maybe you were all mesmerized, glass-eyed and stupid. But I bet not. I bet there was panic, as the end of the world crept up. With my flares bursting over you, ignored.
“Three miles, two.
“I was unmoving for a long time. Frozen.
“The southerly wind was strong, so the Arrogance was lowering, stretching back away from the Scar as if it was afraid, as afraid as me. That woke me.
“Who knows what happened? Maybe you knew, before you died. I wasn’t there.
“Maybe it was the avanc. Maybe after weeks of obedience it broke free of the impulses being fed into it. Maybe some spine that was supposed to plug into its brain snapped off, and the beast woke, confused and snared, and it tugged to try to free itself, careering on.
“Maybe the rockmilk engines failed. Maybe some possibility spilt out from the Scar, a possibility that the engines didn’t work. Gods know what happened.
“When I looked down I saw flotillas of little boats being dropped over the sides of the city, and tiny frantic crews hauling at oars and throwing up sails to get away. But the sea fought them, and I saw their sails bellying in all directions. The lifeboats, the yachts, the little skiffs began to eddy in those waters and curl around the city, overtaking it northward, even as they fought to go the other way. But the currents and the waves pulled them on like they were hungry.
“It was only minutes before the first of them reached the Scar. I watched that little dinghy spinning toward the edge, and saw specks that must have been the people inside it jumping out into the sea, and then the stern of the boat tipped suddenly and went over and was gone. Into that airy emptiness.
“There was a trail of them, little boats peppering the sea between the city and the Scar, sliding north toward it. And dirigibles, too. A flock of them, trying to get airborne. Men and women were weighing them down, trying to get aboard, clinging to ropes to drag themselves in. All overloaded, they hauled themselves over the city’s edge and flopped into the sea, where the current took them and they spun like dead whales, shedding their crews, heading for the Scar.
“Armada began to spin, slowly. The horizon lurched and angled as the city coiled clockwise in the water.
“We were half a mile away now and my mind went all cold and I suddenly knew what I had to do. I ran to the Arrogance’s bay and looked down through the hatches. I took up my rivebow and steadied myself on the edge of the bay doors and fired at the rope that held me