"China Mieville - The Scar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

slowтАФsmall shattered sounds emerging from him.



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 The Scar

With a single motion, a lazy, predatory twitch, the dark things that huddle in council below him move.
The he-cray sees the darks of a score of eyes, and he knows with a sick-making fear that they are
watching.

And then with a monstrous grace, they rise, and are upon him.




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 The Scar




Part One

Channels




Chapter One

It is only ten miles beyond the city that the river loses its momentum, drooling into the brackish estuary
that feeds Iron Bay.

The boats that make the eastward journey out of New Crobuzon enter a lower landscape. To the south
there are huts and rotten little jetties, from where rural laborers fish to supplement monotonous diets.
Their children wave at travelers, warily. Occasionally there is a knoll of rock or a small copse of
darkwood trees, places that defy cultivation, but mostly the land is clear of stones.

From the decks, sailors can see over the fringe of hedgerow and trees and bramble to a tract of fields.
This is the stubby end of the Grain Spiral, the long curl of farmland that feeds the city. Men and women
can be seen among the crops, or plowing the black earth, or burning the stubbleтАФdepending on the
season. Barges putter weirdly between fields, on canals hidden by banks of earth and vegetation. They
go endlessly between the metropolis and the estates. They bring chymicals and fuel, stone and cement
and luxuries to the country. They return to the city past acres of cultivation studded with hamlets, great
houses, and mills, with sack upon sack of grain and meat.

The transport never stops. New Crobuzon is insatiable.