Bellis could hear no pride in his voice.
“But when the situation’s severe, when odds are very bad, when a display’s needed, or I’m in danger . . . then I switch on the motor for a few seconds. And in that situation, precision is the one thing I cannot afford.”
He was silent as a gust of warm wind shook the trees, making them sound as if they shivered at his words.
“A headsman knows where his blade must land. With every nuance of skill, he aims for the neck. He narrows the possibilities. If he were to use a Possible Sword, the vast bulk of the nighs would exist within an inch of the factual strike. The rub is this: the better the headsman, the more precise his strike, the more constrained potentiality, the more wasted the Possible Sword. But, obviously, put a weapon like this in the hands of an amateur, it’s as lethal to him or her as to any quarry—the possibilities that’ll manifest include self-harm, unbalancing, dropping the weapon, and so on. A middle way is needed.
“When I attack with a dumb weapon, I’m an executioner. My blade lands in the space I decide, and not to either side. That’s how I learned to fight; it would be a stupid waste of power to use the Possible Sword so. So when I finally found it, after a very long time of searching, I had to learn swordsmanship again. A very different art: skill without precision.
“Fighting with a Possible Sword, you must never constrain possibilities. I must be an opportunist, not a planner—fighting from the heart, not the mind. Moving suddenly, surprising myself as well as the opponent. Sudden, labile, and formless. So that each strike could be a thousand others, and each of those nigh-swords is strong. That’s how to fight with a Possible Sword.
“So I am two swordsmen.”
When his lovely voice ebbed away, Bellis was aware again of the surrounds of the park, the warm darkness and the noise of roosting birds.
“What’s known about possibility mining,” he said, “I know. That’s how I knew of the sword.”
Uther Doul was stirring things in Bellis’ mind. In New Crobuzon, during her time when the scientist Isaac was her lover, Bellis had observed his obsessions, and had learned certain things.
He had been of chaotic and heretical inclinations. Many of his projects came to nothing. She had watched him chase ideas. And during the months they had spent together, the one that she had seen him worry at with the greatest tenacity was the investigation of what he called crisis energy. It was theoretical physics and thaumaturgy of astonishing complexity. But what she had taken from Isaac’s frantic, off-color explanations was his conviction that underlying the facticity of the world, in all its seeming fastness, was an instability, a crisis pushing things to change from the tensions within them.
She had always found it an idea that accorded with her own instincts. She drew obscure comfort from the sense that things, even while as they were, were always in crisis, always pulled to become their opposite.
In the possibility mining that Uther Doul had just described Bellis saw a radical undermining of crisis theory. Crisis, Isaac had once told her, was manifest in the tendency of the real to become what it was not. If what was and what was not were allowed to coexist, the very tension—the crisis at the center of existence—must dissipate. Where was that crisis energy in the real becoming what it was not, if what it was not was right there alongside what it was?
That was nothing but a vague, pluralist reality. Bellis disliked the notion, intensely. She even felt, bizarrely, some kind of weird residual loyalty to Isaac pushing her to disapprove of it.
“When I first came here,” Doul went on, “I was very tired. Tired of making decisions. I wanted to be loyal. I wanted a wage. I’d learnt and sought and found whatever I’d wanted. I had my sword, I had knowledge, I’d seen places . . . I wanted to rest. To be a henchman, a paid soldier.
“But the Lovers, when they saw my sword, and the books I brought with me, they were . . . fascinated.
“Especially the Lover.
“They were fascinated by what I could tell them. By what I’d learnt.
“In a few places in Bas-Lag,” he said, “possibility machines still remain. There are different kinds, to do different things. I’ve studied them all.
“You’ve seen one of them: the perhapsadian, the instrument in my room. It was used to play possibilities. In an aether rich in potentiality, a virtuoso could once play particular facts and nighs into existence—choose certain outcomes. Quite useless now, of course. It’s old and broken—and anyway, we’re not in a possibility seam.
“This sword . . . you only see an aspect of it. The warrior who once used it and the people it killed, millennia ago, wouldn’t recognize the weapon I carry. When the Ghosthead ruled, they used possibility in architecture, in medicine, in politics and performance and all other spheres. Possible Sonatas, the ghost-notes winking out of existence in echoes above and around the fact-score, changing with every performance. I have been inside the ruins of a Possible Tower . . .” He shook his head slowly. “That is a sight you do not forget.
“They used the science in fighting, in sport and war. There are passages in the Covertiana describing a bout between Possible Wrestlers, a shifting multitude of limbs flickering in and out of existence with every moment, nigh grappling nigh grappling fact grappling nigh again.
“But all of this, the technique of the mining, was a product of the Ghosthead’s arrival—the detonation of their landing. It was through the rent they left that the possibility seams were tapped. That wound,” he said, his eyes flickering over to Bellis and away, and back again, “that scar, left by the Ghosthead . . . that’s where the seam is. If the stories are true, it’s on the far side of the world, at the end of the Empty Ocean.
“No ship’s ever crossed that sea. The waters there . . . they militate against ships. And who’d want to go there? If it exists, it’s thousands of miles away. And there are stories of what lives in the Fractured Land: terrible things, a dreadful ecology. Lightfungus. Dreadcurs. Butterflies with unholy appetites. Even if we could,” he said with strong sincerity, “I’d not want to try to reach the Fractured Land.”
He was staring at Bellis and, under the superb modulations of his voice she sensed a tremulous feeling. She swallowed, trying to concentrate. This is important, now, she told herself. Listen, make sense of this. I don’t know why, but he’s telling me something, he’s letting me know—
And then—
oh good gods above, can that be what he I don’t, Is that possible, that he, surely, have I, have I misunderstood?
Is that what he means?
Her face was set, and she realized she was staring at him, and he her, both mute, staring through the gloom.
Certainly, she thought, giddy, what boat could make it over the ocean to the Fractured Land? Who’d want to go to the Fractured Land? The Land’s not worth it. It’s too far, too dangerous, even for this. Even for this. But what was it he told me, what did they say, how did it go . . . ?
“We have scarred this world, wounded it, made our mark on its remote land . . . and stretching for thousands of leagues across its sea.”
There’s something in the sea. Nothing to hurt us there, not like the land. No monsters there, no lightfungus or butterflies to threaten the miner—the possibility miner. And what’s in the sea is much closer—the Fractured Land would be at the very edge of the world, but the Ghosthead lays say the sea’s scar stretches for countless miles. In toward the world’s center. Toward us. Closer.
No ship has ever made it across the Empty Ocean . . . I believe that. I know the stories, the currents and wind that push incomers away. No ships could cross that ocean.
But what could stop an avanc?
Why is he telling me?
Is that where we’re going, Uther? Across the sea? Across the Empty Ocean, to the remnants of that wound, that fracture? It’s not just the land that was broken open—the sea, too. So is that where we’re going? To mine the possibilities in what’s left of that great . . . cosmic laceration, Uther?
&
nbsp; That’s what the Brucolac meant, isn’t it, Uther? That’s what he was talking about.
Why are you telling me? What have I done? What are you doing? Why do you want me to know?
The avanc can take us to see what happened to the wound in the sea. That’s why it was summoned. That’s why Tintinnabulum was employed; and why the Sorghum was stolen for fuel; and why we went to the island and brought back Aum; and why you, Doul, have been working on a secret project, because of your sword, because of your expertise in this science. This is what everything leads to. This is why the avanc was summoned. It can cross the water that Armada would never breach without it.
It can cross that ocean.
It can take us to the Scar.
Chapter Thirty-five
“How the fuck did you find me?” Silas Fennec was clearly troubled.
“You speak like I’m some ingenue,” whispered Bellis. “What, you think you’re invisible? You think I’m incapable?”
She was dissembling: tracking Fennec had been mostly luck. She had been listening out for word of Simon Fench for days. Since her conversation with Doul, she had redoubled her efforts.
Eventually it had not been she who had tracked him at all, but Carrianne. In response to Bellis’ continuing requests for help, her friend had told her, with her usual sly cheerfulness, that she had heard that the mysterious Mr. Fench had been seen at The Pashakan. It was a pub built belowdecks in the Yevgeny, a hundred-foot sloop in Thee-And-Thine.
Bellis had not ventured much into King Friedrich’s riding since her trip to the glad’ circus. She made her way toward its raucous byways with concealed trepidation.
She had passed along the streets of the Sudden Understanding, the many-masted clipper that formed part of the edge of Urchinspine Docks and that linked Dry Fall and Thee-And-Thine ridings. The enormous vessel was one of the few in Armada that did not rest clearly in the control of one or the other ruler. The main bulk of its body was Dry Fall, but toward its forecastle, responsibility and control blurred with Thee-And-Thine. The streets became more boisterous and untidy.
Bellis had picked her way through rubbish where the feral monkeys bickered with cats and dogs, through the tumbling streets, and into what was indisputably Thee-And-Thine.
This was the most ill-kempt of Armada’s ridings. Its buildings were mostly wood, and many were moldering or salt- and water-stained. It was not that the area was poor—there were plenty of riches, in the gold and silver and jet visible through the windows of some houses, in the vivid silks and satins that were worn by some of its inhabitants, in the quality of goods available. But in a place where everything was for sale, certain goods—such as the right to maintain the architecture and the streets—were not attractive buys.
Slums and factories and shabby opulence bobbed sedately side by side. Finally, Bellis had passed the Salt Godling, Friedrich’s flagship, and had walked into the Yevgeny’s creaking, smelly innards, unclearly torchlit, to The Pashakan.
On her third visit, Silas was there. Bellis was angry at his surly surprise to see her.
“Will you listen to me?” she hissed at him. “I know where we’re going.”
He looked up, sharply, and caught her eye.
She laughed suddenly and unpleasantly. “Do you have déjà vu, Silas?” she said. “Jabber knows I do. Understand that I do not relish this relationship. I seem to find myself doing this with disturbing regularity: telling you that I know a secret, giving it to you to pass on, to make plans with, to do something with. I do not enjoy that. This is the last fucking time, you understand me?” She meant it, absolutely. No matter what might happen, she would not deal with Silas Fennec like this again. There was nothing, less than nothing, between them anymore.
“But whether I like it or not,” she went on, “I have little choice here. I need your help. The only way anything can be done about this is if . . . the word is spread, if more people know. And though no one listens to Bellis Coldwine, it seems that a growing minority are prepared to listen to the troublemaker Simon Fench.”
“Where are we going, Bellis?” Fennec asked.
She told him.
“I wondered why you were fraternizing with that fucking lunatic Doul. Does he know you know?” Fennec seemed stunned.
“I think so,” she said. “It’s hard to tell. It was as if . . . He obviously wasn’t supposed to tell me. But maybe he was so . . . caught up in it, he couldn’t resist. So instead of coming out with it, which would be disloyal, he told me just enough.
“All the time I’d thought he was accompanying the Lovers and Aum and the scientists into those secret meetings because he’s their bodyguard. But it wasn’t that—he’s an expert on this thing, on possibility mining. He knows everything about it, because of once researching that sword of his.
“This is what they’ve been working on. The Lovers want to get to the Scar; they want to tap possibilities, Silas.” Her voice remained cool, though she did not feel it. “Like the Ghosthead Empire, do you understand?”
“That’s why the avanc,” he breathed, and Bellis nodded.
“That’s why. It’s just a means to an end. The Lovers must have been . . . entranced when they saw his sword, when he first came to the city. They heard his stories of the Fractured Land, and the Scar—all the secrets he knows—and it was nothing but a dream, then. But then they think of Tintinnabulum and his crew, who could be enticed. This is the ultimate big game, after all.” She stared out of the little window at a sea that churned slowly by as the avanc progressed.
“And the Lovers already knew about the chains. Armada tried to capture an avanc before. That was a long time ago, and they don’t give a cuss for tradition. But when Doul came, it was different. Before he came, calling the avanc would’ve been . . . a stupid, grandiose, pointless gesture. But now? Everyone knows no ship can cross the Empty Ocean. But what fucking force in Bas-Lag could stop an avanc? All of a sudden, there’s a way to get to this Scar that Doul’s told them all about, the thing that the Ghosthead left behind.”
The scale of the project was staggering. The realization that all the misery and money and terrible effort that the Lovers had gone to to secure the avanc, the realization that that was only the first part of their plan, was incredible.
“All this,” breathed Silas, and Bellis nodded.
“All of it,” she said. “The rig, the Terpsichoria, Johannes, the anophelii island, the chains, the fulmen, the fucking avanc . . . all of it. This is what it’s about.”
“Naked power.” Silas mouthed it as if the words were dirty. “I assumed the avanc was to do with the piracy. That’s what they implied: that it would make them more efficient thieves, for Jabber’s sake! That at least would have made some kind of sense. But this . . .” He looked incredulous. “You can tell they’re press-ganged, the Lovers; no fucking serious pirate would pursue this idiocy.”
“They’re dangerous,” said Bellis simply. “They’re fanatics. I’ve no idea if they can really cross the Empty Ocean, but godspit! I do not want to find out. I . . . I’ve heard them, Silas, when they’re alone.” He looked at her piercingly, but did not ask her how. “I know what they’re like. I’m not letting people like that—visionaries, gods help us—command me to the other end of the world, to a place that may not even exist, and that if it does is the most deadly place in Bas-Lag. We’d be traveling further and farther from New Crobuzon. And I’ve still not given up on getting back there.”
Bellis realized she was shaking at the thought of leaving her home so far behind. And if Uther and the others were right? If they survived the crossing?
A multitude of possibilities. The thought chilled her. She found it utterly threatening, existentially undermining. It made her feel so completely contingent that it offended and frightened her.
Like some waterhole in the veldt, she thought unclearly, where the weak and the strong and predatory drink together in a truce: the gazelle, the wildebeest, the mafadet, and the lion. All the possibilities lined up t
ogether in fucking harmony, and the winner, the strongest, the fact, the real, letting the others that have failed live, letting them all live. Pacifist and pathetic.
“That’s why they’re not telling,” she said. “They know people won’t stand for it.”
“They’re afraid,” Silas murmured.
“The Lovers are strong,” said Bellis, “but they couldn’t face all the other ridings. And, more to the point, they couldn’t face their own people.”
“Revolt,” breathed Silas, and Bellis smiled without humor.
“Mutiny,” she said. “They’re afraid of mutiny. And that’s why we need Simon Fench.”
Silas nodded slowly; then there was a long silence.
“He’s got to spread the word,” he said eventually. “Pamphlets, rumors, and all. That’s what he does best; I can make sure he does that.”
“I’m sorry, Bellis,” Silas said when she stood to go. “I’ve not been a great friend. I’ve been so . . . Things have been busy, and difficult. I was rude when I saw you, and I’m sorry.”
Observing him, Bellis felt dislike—as well, paradoxically, as the last faint stirrings of what had once been affection. Like a shred of memory.
“Silas,” she said, smiling coldly, “we owe each other nothing. And we’re not friends. But we have a shared interest in the Lovers’ failing. And I can’t stop it, and it’s just possible that you might be able to. I expect you to try, and to tell me what’s happening, and that’s all. That’s all the communication I expect from you. I don’t want you to contact me as a friend.”
Silas Fennec remained in The Pashakan for a long time after Bellis left. He read through some inky pamphlets and newspapers, watching the sky darken. The days were noticeably longer now, and he thought about summer in New Crobuzon.