The Scar - China Mieville [91]
They ask the whales.
—where is the floating city? they ask the great stupid krill-swillers, the grey and the humpback and the blue. They straddle them like mountaineers and manipulate the pleasure centers of their heavy brains. They bribe them, funneling tons of plankton in a panicked soup into the whale’s gurning grins.
The hunters make the question a demand.
—find the floating city, they say carefully, in concepts simple enough for the whales to understand.
Which they do. The huge animals ponder, their synapses so sluggish the hunters grow impatient (but they know they must wait). Finally, after minutes when the only noise is a sluicing as the whales jaw the water, with a concerted thunder of flukes they break their silence.
They moan across thousands of miles; echo-locating; sounding; sending friendly, stupid messages to each other; doing what they have been told: Looking for Armada.
Part Three
The Compass Factory
Chapter Fifteen
“They’re raising an avanc.”
Silas’ face fluttered with astonishment, with denial, with a gamut of incredulities.
“That can’t be,” he said quietly, shaking his head.
Bellis’ mouth twisted. “Because avancs are legends?” she offered harshly. “Extinct? Stories for children?” She pursed her lips and shook Krüach Aum’s book. “Whoever shelved this, twenty years ago, thought that they were children’s stories, Silas. I can read High Kettai.” Her voice was urgent. “This is not a children’s book.”
The day was waning, and the muttering of the city continued outside. Bellis looked through the window at the light dying in sheets of spectacular colors. She handed Silas the book and spoke again.
“I’ve been doing little else for two days. I’ve been haunting the library like a damned eidolon, reading Aum’s book.” Silas was turning the pages one by one, carefully, his eyes scanning the text as if he could understand it, which Bellis knew he could not.
“It’s in High Kettai,” she said, “but it’s not from Gnurr Kett, and it’s not old. Krüach Aum is anophelii.”
Silas looked up, aghast. There was a very long silence.
“Believe me,” said Bellis. She felt, and sounded, drained. “I know how it sounds. I’ve spent the last two days trying to find out everything I can.
“I thought they were dead, too, but they’re only dying, Silas. They’ve been dying for more than two thousand years. When the Malarial Queendom collapsed they were eradicated in Shoteka, in Rohagi, in most of the Shards. But they managed to survive . . . They’ve clung on to a little hold on some shithole of a rock south of Gnurr Kett. And believe it or not, even after the Queendom, there are people who trade with them.” She nodded grimly. “They have some arrangement with Dreer Samher or Gnurr Kett or both, or something. I can’t work it out.
“And they write books, it seems.” She pointed at the volume. “Gods only knows why it’s in High Kettai. Maybe that’s what they speak now—they’d be the only people in the world who do. I don’t know, Godsdammit, Silas. Maybe it’s all crap,” she snapped with sudden irritation. “Maybe that damn thing’s a forgery or a lie or, yes, a children’s story. But I’ve been told by Tintinnabulum to look for anything by Krüach Aum, so do you think the subject matter of this damn book is just coincidence?”
“What does it say?” he asked.
Bellis took the book from him and slowly translated the first lines.
“ ‘I would lie if I told you that I write this without pride. I am full of it like food, because I have . . . found a story to tell, of what had not been done since the Ghosthead Empire and was achieved once more, a thousand years ago. One of our ancestors, after our queens collapsed and we came here to hide . . . With . . . devices and thaumaturgy . . . he went out over the water . . . to a dark
place . . . and he sent hexes into the mouth of the water and after twenty-one days of heat and thirst and hunger he . . . drew out a great and mysterious thing.’ ” She looked up at Silas and concluded, “ ‘The mountain-that-swims, the godwhale, the greatest beast ever to visit our world, the avanc.’ ”
She closed