The Scar - China Mieville [274]
“Eventually I fell back, exhausted and stunned to be alive, and when I looked down again I could see nothing at all.”
Hedrigall’s voice ebbed away. He spoke again after several seconds of quiet.
“I went higher than I’ve ever been before. High enough to look down and see the Scar as it really is. A crack, that’s all. A crack in the world.
“I don’t know if any other aeronauts got free. But I was more than a mile up, and I saw nothing.
“The wind that high was strong, gusted me south for hours. It took me away from there. Out of that murderous place in the water, where all the currents lead to the Scar. The Arrogance was leaking. Split and burnt by debris. I was coming down.
“I sawed myself some hide from the dirigible, lashed it to wood from the cabin. Made myself a raft, knowing what was coming. I waited by the bay doors till we were scudding low and fast, and I threw out the raft and leapt after it.
“And then finally, only then, curled in my little raft, I let myself remember what I’d seen.
“I was all alone with those memories for two days. I thought I’d die.
“I thought for a moment that maybe if I could stay alive for long enough, the currents might take me and shove me out into the Swollen Ocean, where our other ships are waiting. But I’m not a fool. I knew there was no chance of that.
“And then . . . this.”
For the first time in his extraordinary story, Hedrigall sounded as if he would break down again.
“What is this? What is this?” The hysteria in his voice grew louder. “I thought I was dying. I thought you were a dying man’s dream. I saw you die . . .” He whispered it. “I saw you die. What are you? What city is this? What’s happening to me?”
Hedrigall became dangerous then, shouting, feverish, and terrified. The Lovers tried to soothe him, but it was some time before his rantings became subdued and he fell into a stupefied sleep.
A long silence followed—a long, stretched-out quiet—and Bellis felt herself back in her own skin again as the spell of Hedrigall’s story slowly faded. Her skin was elyctric; she bristled with tension. She felt all drunk on awe from his telling.
“What,” hissed the Lover coldly, his voice fraught, “has happened?”
“It’s the Scar,” Tanner whispered to Bellis. “I know what it is. This close to the Scar, it’s leaking. And that Hed up there . . .” He paused and shook his head, his face haggard and bleached with wonder. Bellis knew what he would say.
“That ain’t the real Hedrigall,” said Tanner, “not the factual one, not the one from . . . from here. Our Hedrigall ran away. That Hedrigall’s leaked out . . . from another possibility. He’s from one where he stayed on, and where we traveled that bit faster, got to the Scar earlier. He’s what happened . . . what will happen.
“Oh my Jabber, oh dear Jabber and shit.”
Above them, the Lovers and Uther Doul were arguing. Someone—Bellis had not heard who—had said the same thing as Tanner. The Lover was reacting violently.
“Dung!” she spat. “Fucking dung! It doesn’t work that way; that’s not what happens. Out of the whole sea, you think we’d happen to find him, even if he had leaked through? This is a fucking setup. That’s Hedrigall, alright. It’s our Hedrigall, and he never left. This is a setup to turn us back. He is not effluvium from the Scar.”
She was furious. She let no one else speak. She raged at Uther Doul, and even at the Lover, to Bellis’ amazement; he was asking her to calm down, to just think . . . So close to what she sought, the Lover felt it threatened, and she was thundering.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “This is shit, and we will keep this lying bastard locked up until we get the truth from him. We say he’s recovering; we wait; we find out what really happened. We don’t accept this crap he’s spouted to us.”
“Is she mad?” hissed Tanner Sack to Bellis. “What’s she talking about?”
“This is obviously designed to create panic,” the Lover continued. “This is a plan