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

of Tarmuth to the other. Each different company has built its own line to link its various concerns, and
each is jealously guarded. The town is an idiotic tangle of railways, all replicating each otherтАЩs journeys.

I donтАЩt know if you know this. I donтАЩt know if you have visited this town.


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 The Scar

The people here have an ambivalent relationship with New Crobuzon. Tarmuth could not exist a solitary
day without the patronage of the capital. They know it and resent it. Their surly independence is an
affectation.

I had to stay there almost three weeks. The captain of theTerpsichoria was shocked when I told him I
would join him in Tarmuth itself, rather than sailing with him from New Crobuzon, but I insisted, as I
had to. My position on this ship was conditional on a knowledge of Salkrikaltor Cray, which I falsely
claimed. I had less than a month until we sailed, to make my lie a truth.

I made arrangements. I spent my days in Tarmuth in the company of one Marikkatch, an elderly he-cray
who had agreed to act as my tutor. Every day I would walk to the salt canals of the cray quarter. I would
sit on the low balcony that circled his room, and he would settle his armored underbody on some
submerged furnishing and scratch and twitch his scrawny human chest, haranguing me from the water.

It was hard. He does not read. He is not a trained teacher. He stays in the town only because some
accident or predator has maimed him, tearing off all but one leg from his left side, so that he can no
longer hunt even the sluggish fish of Iron Bay. It might make a better story to claim that I had affection
for him, that he is a lovable, cantankerous old gentleman, but he is a shit and a bore. I could make no
complaints, however. I had no choice but to concentrate, to effect a few focus hexes, will myself into the
language trance (and oh! how hard that was! I have left it so long my mind has grown fat and
disgusting!) and drink in every word he gave me.

It was hurried and unsystematicтАФit was a mess, a bloody messтАФbut by the time theTerpsichoria tied up
in the harbor I had a working understanding of his clicking tongue.

I left the embittered old bastard to his stagnant water, quit my lodgings there, and came to my cabinтАФ
this cabin from where I write.

We sailed away from Tarmuth port on the morning of Dustday, heading slowly toward the deserted
southern shores of Iron Bay, twenty miles from town. In careful formation at strategic points around the
edge of the bay, in quiet spots by rugged land and pine forests, I spotted ships. No one will speak of
them. I know they are the ships of the New Crobuzon government. Privateers and others.

It is now Skullday.

On Chainday I was able to persuade the captain to let me disembark, and I spent the morning on the
shore. Iron Bay is drab, but anything is better than the damned ship. I am beginning to doubt that it is an
improvement on Tarmuth. I am driven to bedlam by the incessant, moronic slap of waves.

Two taciturn crewmen rowed me ashore, watching without pity as I stepped over the edge of the little
boat and walked the last few feet through freezing surf. My boots are still stiff and salt-stained.