Blueday 27th of Dust 1779 (although that means nothing here. Here it is 4th Sepredi of Hawkbill Quarto, 6/317), Chromolith Smokestack.

I will not stop looking for clues. At first, when I read Johannes’ books, I opened them at random and skimmed through at random, and pieced together what I could in snippets, waiting for inspiration. But I have realized that I will not make headway thus.

Johannes’ work, he has told me, is one of the driving forces behind this city. The nature of the scheme of which he is part, which he would not describe but which was important enough for Armada to risk an act of gross piracy against the greatest power in Bas-Lag, must be hidden somewhere in the pages of his books. It was, after all, one of those books that made him irresistible to the Lovers. But I cannot even work out which of his works is the "required reading" he described for this secret project.

So I am reading them carefully, taking each in turn; starting with the preface and working through to the index. Gleaning information. Trying to feel what designs might be in these works.

Of course, I am not a scientist. I have never read books like these before. A great deal of what is in them is opaque to me.

"The acetabulum is a depression on the outer side of the os innominatum just where the ilium and ischium fuse."

I read such sentences like poesy: ilium, ischium, os innominatum, ecto-cuneiform and cnemial crest, platelets and thrombin, keloid, cicatrix.

The book that I like least so far is Sardula Anatomy. Johannes was gored once by a young sardula, and it must have been at the time that he researched this book. I can imagine the creature pacing back and forth in a cell, subjected to soporific vapors, and lashing out as it feels itself slipping away. And then dead, and transfered into a cold book that peels away Johannes’ passion along with the sardula’s skin. A drab list of bones and veins and sinews.

My favorite of the books comes as a surprise. It is neither Theories of MegaFauna nor Transplane Life, volumes as much philosophy as zoology, which I therefore expected to feel closer to than the others. I found their abstruse ponderings intriguing but vague.

No, the volume that I read most closely, that I felt I understood, that kept me quite entranced, was Predation in Iron Bay Rockpools.

Such an intricate concatenation of narratives. Chains of savagery and metamorphosis. I can see it all. Devil crabs and ragworms. The oyster drill gnawing a murderous peephole in its prey’s armor. The stretched-out slow-time ripping open of a scallop by a famished starfish. A beadlet anemone devouring a young goby with an implosive burst.

It is a vivid little seascape Johannes has conjured for me, of shell-dust and sea urchins and merciless tides.