The Scar - China Mieville [93]
Bellis opened the book to its last section and held it out for him to see. The pages were crammed with strange-looking mathematic notations.
“The last twenty pages are taken up with equations, thaumaturgic notes, references to his colleagues. Aum calls it a data
appendix. It’s almost impossible to translate. I don’t understand it—it’s high theory, crypto-algebra and the like. But it’s incredibly carefully done. If it’s a fake it’s needlessly complex. What he’s done . . . Aum has checked the details—of the dates, the techniques, the thaumaturgies, and the science . . . He’s worked out how it was done. These last pages . . . They’re an exposition, a scientific treatise, explaining how you’d go about it. How you’d raise an avanc.
“Silas, this book was written and printed in the last Kettai Vullfinch Year. That was twenty-three years ago. Which incidentally means that Tintinnabulum and his cohorts have it wrong—he thought Aum was writing in the last century. It was printed in Kohnid in Gnurr Kett, part of the imprint Shivering Wisdom. There aren’t too many Kettai works in this library, as you’d expect. And of those there are, the vast bulk are in Base Kettai. But there are a few High Kettai, and I’ve looked at them all. Shivering Wisdom publish in High Kettai: philosophy and science and ancient texts, gnostic mechonomy and the like.
“Shivering Wisdom obviously think this is on the level, Silas. If it’s a fraud, it’s taken in a scientific publishing house—as well, dammit, as the best fucking minds on Armada.
“What else are the Lovers’ scientists reading, Silas? My friend Johannes’ book Theories of MegaFauna. Another of his, about transplane life. Radical theories about the nature of water, books on maritime ecology. And they’re going crazy to find this little book here, probably because Tintinnabulum and his hunters have seen a few references to it, and they can’t damn well find it. Jabber’s sake, what do you think that’s all about?
“Silas, I’ve read this thing.” She made him meet her eyes. “This is for real. This is a book on how to raise an avanc. And how to control it. The anophelius Aum writes about . . . the avanc broke loose from him easy.” She leaned forward.
“But he was one man. Armada’s a city. He scavenged steam engines: Armada has whole industrial districts. There are giant chains under the city—did you know that? What do you think they plan on doing with them? And Armada has the Sorghum.” She let that sink in and saw his eyes change fractionally. “This city has hundreds of gallons of fucking rockmilk, Silas, and the means to get hundreds more. Jabber knows what thaumaturgy they can fuel with that shit.
“The Lovers think they can succeed where Aum’s man failed,” she said simply. “They’re heading for the sinkhole, to call up an avanc. They’re going to harness it to the city. And they’re going to control it.”
“Who else knows about the book?” said Silas, and Bellis shook her head.
“No one knows,” she said. “Only the boy, Shekel. He has no idea what it is, what it means.”
You did the right thing bringing this to me, Bellis had said. I’ll see what this is all about and pass it right on to Tintinnabulum as soon as I’ve seen if it’s of any use.
She remembered Shekel’s disquiet, his fear. He visited Tintinnabulum’s Castor often, to be with Angevine. Bellis knew, with a quick stab of pity, that he had not taken the book there directly himself because he was afraid that he had made a mistake. His reading was still inexpert, and faced with something of such apparent importance, his confidence had left him. He had stared at the combination of letters spelling Krüach, and had looked at the name he had copied from Tintinnabulum’s paper, and had seen that they were the same, but still, but still.
But still he was not quite sure. He did not want to make a fool of himself, or waste people’s time. He had taken it to Bellis, his friend and teacher, to check, to make sure. And ruthlessly, she had taken it from him, knowing that it gave her power.
The Lovers were bringing them south to a fissure