What I Am Reading: "The Scar" By China Miéville
The sequel to Perdido Street Station, the middle of China Miéville's New Crobuzon novels tells an entirely different story from the first. It is actually set in a completely different city; though that city, and the plot itself, labor in the shadow of the metropolis of New Crobuzon. This book is about pirates, though concerned less with their swashbuckling and more with their whalepunk public works projects.
The book ties in directly but very peripherally to Perdido Street Station through its protagonist, Bellis Coldwine, a former lover of Isaac (mentioned very briefly in a reminiscence in the previous book). After the events of the previous book, the New Crobuzon militia's net is closing in on Isaac's known associates, and Bellis decides to lay low in Nova Esperium, one of New Crobuzon's overseas colonies, for a year or so, knowing she will miss the city fiercely despite its threat to her personally.
A linguist, and given passage as a translator, Bellis helps the captain of the merchant ship liaise with the leaders of the underwater city of the lobster people (naturally). Tasked with checking on why one of New Crobuzon's oil rigs has gone missing (another tech-warping anachronism in a world where the main firearms are flintlocks), the ship in fact finds itself rerouted to New Crobuzon by a new passenger, the mysterious Silas Fennec, who possesses enough New Crobuzon authority to override the ship's previous orders.
Before they make it very far, however, the ship is attacked by a pirate submarine, and quickly overwhelmed. Bellis, Fennec, and the other passengers and crew are taken to Armada, a floating pirate city made up of hundreds of ships stitched together and repurposed. The floating ship city idea is not new in fiction, but in Miéville's case, the ships have been turned into gardens and houses and markets and the other essential parts of a city, with what I view as a tenuous grip on the actual size of most sailing vessels. True, many of the constituent ships are specifically cited as larger steamers, but still, the average merchant ship would not have comfortably held more than a building or two, never mind mansions or streets or neighborhoods. Nevertheless, it is fun to have the ships specified and placed into their historical context, and expands the history and geography of the fantasy world, Bas-Lag, the New Crobuzon is part of.
The ship Bellis was traveling on was targeted specifically because of another passenger, the naturalist Johannes Tearfly. The floating city, Armada, does not possess a unified leadership, but is instead made up of different ridings, each with their own system of government. The most powerful, Garwater, is ruled through harsh nautical law by The Lovers, a couple who were assimilated as captives are expected to be and view themselves as one entity, marking each other with identical scars. The Lovers and their lieutenant, Uther Doul, are undertaking an effort to capture a massive inter-dimensional creature called an avanc, and harness it to the city to provide propulsion. Tearfly, a naturalist, was a useful tool in this effort.
Captives are assessed on their likelihood to assimilate to Armada's pirate society, as they will never be allowed to leave, lest the city be revealed to more powerful states. Bellis struggles with this, resentful of her captivity, and for a time refuses to engage with the city on its own terms. This is in contrast to some of the others on her ship, many of whom were Remade (prisoners subjected to punitive bioengineering) and were destined for a live of slavery in the colonies before their Armada press-ganging. This includes one from the same ship, Tanner Sack, who had tentacles grafted onto his body. Faced with this argument by the enthused Tearfly, she begrudgingly leaves her sulk, and takes up work in the impressive library ship.
She also starts conspiring with Silas Fennec, who has spent his time integrating himself into the city’s underworld, and he reveals to her a grave secret. He is a kind of merchant-explorer, a commercial agent who maps the world with a charter from New Crobuzon, a city with a lot of gaps in its maps for such a commercial hub. He has been in the far north, in the inland Cold Claw sea, at the mythical and dangerous city of the Gengris. He had commandeered Bellis' ship, before its capture, because he was racing back to New Crobuzon with word of an impending attack by its nightmarish denizens, the grindylow. This threat to the city she loves burns even brighter than Bellis' desire to return to it, and she resigns herself to the impossibility of an escape from Armada and would be satisfied if she can help Fennec get word to the city.
This is accomplished in a roundabout way: discovered deep in the Armada library is a book that the city's leadership seeks regarding a previous effort to capture an avanc, written by one Krüach Aum, an anophelii. This is a race of mosquito people who, centuries ago, threatened an entire continent with the reavings of their Malarial Queendom, and now as a result are embargoed on a small island by one of the other regional powers, Dreer Samher. They are made useful by the fact that the males of the species are brilliant theoretical scholars, pumped for ideas and problem-solving by the elites while isolated from new ideas and outside influence, communicating in a dead language that Bellis specializes in. The females, meanwhile, are driven by an insatiable hunger for blood, making the island an inhospitable place (an uncomfortable dynamic, but one mimicking that of real mosquitoes). Bellis discovers that Aum, instead of being a dusty scholar from long ago, is likely still alive, and his knowledge of the avanc would likely be of great benefit to the Garwater project. She convinces Johannes Tearfly of this, and is made part of an expedition to consult with (and eventually retrieve) Aum from the island. Writers are always creating races or tribes or other organizations defined as being made up of scholars, and this anophelii one rings just as contrived as any other, but I don't get too picky at this point. There is enough originality elsewhere.
During this expedition, she contacts the pirates hired by Dreer Samher to be the island's custodians, members of the cactacae, cactus-people with sap in their veins instead of blood and thus impervious to the mosquitoes. She tempts them with Silas Fennec's message and promise of reward for whoever delivers it to New Crobuzon. This is a dicey effort, and only succeeds when she plays upon the sympathy of Tanner Sack, who has otherwise assimilated thoroughly to Armada, to the point of undergoing further Remaking to give himself gills so that he can work in the water.
Anyway, Armada collects Aum and proceeds onward, focusing all of its industry on the necessary devices, including augmentation of ancient chains under the city from the apparent prior attempt to capture an avanc generations ago. The summoning, above an underwater hole to another reality, strains the city but goes well, fueled by massive reserves of power and "thaumatergy" (magic). It had a lot of lead-up, both within the book through the character’s discussions and in the story’s world; through capture of the New Crobuzon oil rig to mine and store “rockmilk,” a power source, capture of Tearfly and Aum and endless planning, and considerable labor and industrial output to get the equipment ready. The scene was appropriately dramatic, despite being resolved without complication.
At this point, the Lovers' plan is revealed to Bellis by Doul, who has taken a bit of a shine to her: they are headed for The Scar, a tear in the world made when an ancient civilization, the Ghosthead Empire, came to the world and distorted reality with their landing. They were masters of technology that influenced the potentiality of events, able to harness it to choose the best possible outcomes for their actions. Doul has spent his mysterious life studying this power, and wields a Possible Sword, which can when switched on manifest many possible desired outcomes from any strike (thus necessitating a clumsier fighting style than the normal swordsman's precision). The Lovers wish to use the avanc to bring Armada to the scar, and tap this power of potentiality for themselves. After Bellis tells him, Fennec readies an underground propaganda effort to reveal this decision and sow dissent throughout the city.
Before they can do this comes the great betrayal that Bellis was inadvertently party to, as the New Crobuzon navy tracks the city down through Fennec's package in an effort to rescue him. His warning of the grindylow invasion was a lie to get a hidden plea for rescue to the city authorities. This effort is beaten back, but not until before a massive naval battle sinks most of Armada's fleet. Bellis outs Fennec to Doul, her sense of guarded comradeship with Fennec having been replaced by loathing over his manipulation. At this point, Bellis thinks that the New Crobuzon navy came to get Fennec because of a magic statute he took from the grindylow, which allows him to move in a way that distorts reality and give him considerable infiltration and escape powers.
After Fennec has been caught and Bellis and Tanner Sack have been punished through flogging, Bellis still hopes to turn the tide of public opinion through the revelation of the pursuit of the Scar. However, The Lovers are one step ahead, having revealed their goal to great acclaim and public support. As they sail into the Hidden Ocean, the unknown emptiness surrounding the area of the Scar, the only thing that can stop them is a mutiny by the leader of another riding. The Brucolac, a vampir who runs one riding, has conspired with the grindylow, who have been stalking Fennec. He offers to trade Fennec to them in exchange for their help in an attack on The Lovers. This effort comes to naught when Bellis, believing that Fennic's magic statute is what they are after, tries to offer it to the grindylow. In fact, they have really come for Fennic's notes: in the second example of a public works project, he has sketched out an assessment of the feasibility of a canal that would allow New Crobuzon access to the Cold Claw Sea, threatening the Gengris hold on power. After they abscond with Fennec, alive, the mutiny fizzles, and the Lovers re-assert power.
However, the carnage wreaked by this mutiny has sapped public opinion, and this is pushed to the breaking point as an aeronaut who had earlier fled the city is suddenly sighted and takenaboard, babbling about how he watched the entire city die. This man turns out to be, possibly, a refugee from another potentiality, where Armada reaches The Scar, a massive gash in the ocean as if someone had made a cutaway diagram of the layers of the earth, and plummets over the edge. This conversation, overheard by Bellis and the now-doubting Tanner Sack, is spread far and wide throughout the city, and the populace forces the avanc to turn around and tow them back to inhabited waters. This philosophy was expressed to Doul by the Brucolac, prior to his mutiny:
"We are not an expiditionary force; we are not on some fucking quest. This is a city, Uther. We live; we buy; we sell; we steal; we trade. We are a port. This is not about adventures." (p.871 in e-book)
I would say that this is the novel's philosophy, but it does manage to be about both a city and an adventure, a city's adventure.
In the end, the female Lover sets out in her own ship for the Scar, and the male lover, guided by Doul, steers Armada home. It is possible that Doul's knowledge of potentiality is what has allowed him to manipulate this outcome without having to explicitly betray his employers, that is uncertain. Taciturn and pale, with his magic sword, Doul is a character right of an anime (I don't watch them though, I swear).
He is one of many good characters in the book - he has a longstanding frenemy relationship with the Brucolac, the only political leader with the right idea who is also a vampire who leads a semi-benevolent vampire squad in his riding. Silas Fennec is explicitly not characterized beyond his spy manipulations, when his apartment is raided, it is empty of personal effects. Nevertheless, he has an impressive backstory of adventure and spycraft, and I was glad that he did not die "on-screen." Bellis herself is distant and detached, but driven by the complex motive of both fleeing and venerating New Crobuzon; she resents armada even as she sees it may be better for the Remade. We see the book through her eyes, and resist the temptation to jump in with both feet, enthusiastic about a floating pirate city; and when the battle with the New Crobuzon navy comes, she is not sure who she wants to win. She manifests potentiality as well, spending the entire book writing a letter without ever deciding who she is writing it to. Krüach Aum and Johannes Tearfly are the intellectual characters I would have liked when I was younger, the exceedingly calm Aum just rolling with being plucked from the small island that was all he ever knew and living aboard a massive floating city trying to harness an interdimensional abomination. He and Tearfly, an accomplished naturalist who disgusts Bellis through his accommodations with Armada (until he is rendered redundant after the avanc's capture) die in a bathysphere while investigating the avanc's apparent ill-health (as it was sabotaged by grindylows), and this was a sad fate.
Yes overall it is a good party of characters assembled for this lavish RPG, and a lot of good advice about public sector projects as well: solicit stakeholder input, so your vampire ward-heelers don't consort with aquatic abominations to bring about a mutiny. Assess risk properly, so you don't realize only at the end that your floating city might fall off the side of the world. And in the end, Bellis' speculation on Doul's involvement teaches us that the best administration is often not a master plan, but resembles more closely reacting to crisis, and making the best decision in a compressed timeframe with limited knowledge of outcomes. Well, to be fair, I guess many administrators would love some knowledge of potentiality.