Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  “And your problem…is interesting.” Representations of forces and lines of power, of femtomorphic resonances and energy fields were beginning to leap into his consciousness. “It’s easy enough to get you into the air. Balloons, force manipulation and whatnot. Even easy to get you up there more than once. But to get you up there whenever you want it, under your own steam…which is what you’re after, yes?” Yagharek nodded. Isaac stroked his chin.

  “Godspit…! Yes…now that is a much more…interesting conundrum.”

  Isaac was beginning to retreat into his computations. One prosaic part of his mind recalled that he had no appointments for some time, and that meant he could immerse himself in research for a little while. Another pragmatic level did its job, evaluating the importance and urgency of his outstanding work. A couple of piss-easy analyses of compounds that he could put off more or less indefinitely; a half-promise to synthesize an elixir or two—easy to get out of…apart from that, it was only his own research into vodyanoi watercræft. Which he could put to one side.

  No, no, no! he contradicted himself suddenly. Don’t have to put watercræft aside…I can integrate it! It’s all about elements arsing about, misbehaving…liquid that stands free, heavy matter that invades the air…there’s got to be something there…some common denominator…

  With an effort he brought himself back to his laboratory, realized that Yagharek was staring at him impassively.

  “I’m interested in your problem,” he said simply. Immediately Yagharek reached into a pouch. He held out a huge handful of twisted, dirty gold nuggets. Isaac opened his eyes wide.

  “Well…uh, thank you. I’ll certainly accept some expenses, hourly rates, etc…” Yagharek handed Isaac the pouch.

  Isaac managed not to whistle as he weighed it in his hand. He peered into it. Layer on heavy layer of sifting gold. It was undignified, but Isaac felt almost spellbound. This represented more money than he had ever seen in one place, enough to cover a lot of research costs and still live well for months.

  Yagharek was no businessman, that was certain. He could have offered a third, a quarter of this and still had almost anyone in Brock Marsh panting. He should have kept most of it back, dangled it if interest waned.

  Maybe he has kept most of it back, thought Isaac, and his eyes widened even further.

  “How do I reach you?” said Isaac, still gazing at his gold. “Where are you living?”

  Yagharek shook his head and was silent.

  “Well, I have to be able to reach you…”

  “I will come to you,” said the garuda. “Every day, every two days, every week…I will make sure you do not forget my case.”

  “No danger of that, I assure you. Are you really saying I can’t get messages to you?”

  “I do not know where I will be, Grimnebulin. I shun this city. It hunts me. I must keep moving.”

  Isaac shrugged helplessly. Yagharek stood to leave.

  “You understand what I want, Grimnebulin? I do not want to have to take a potion. I do not want to have to wear a harness. I do not want to climb into a contraption. I do not want one glorious journey into the clouds, and an earthbound eternity. I want you to let me leap from the earth as easily as you walk from room to room. Can you do that, Grimnebulin?”

  “I don’t know.” Isaac spoke slowly. “But I think so. I’m your best bet, I reckon. I’m not a chymist, or a biologist, or a thaumaturge…I’m a dilettante, Yagharek, a dabbler. I think of myself…” Isaac paused and laughed briefly. He spoke with heavy gusto. “I think of myself as the main station for all the schools of thought. Like Perdido Street Station. You know it?” Yagharek nodded. “Unavoidable, ain’t it? Fucking massive great thing.” Isaac patted his belly, maintaining the analogy. “All the train-lines meet there—Sud Line, Dexter, Verso, Head and Sink Lines; everything has to pass through it. That’s like me. That’s my job. That’s the kind of scientist I am. I’m being frank with you. Thing is, you see, I think that’s what you need.”

  Yagharek nodded. His predatory face was so sharp, so hard. Emotion was invisible. His words had to be decoded. It was not his face, nor his eyes, nor his bearing (once again proud and imperious), nor his voice that let Isaac see his despair. It was his words.

  “Be a dilettante, a sciolist, a swindler…So long as you return me to the sky, Grimnebulin.”

  Yagharek stooped and picked up his ugly wooden disguise. He strapped it to himself without obvious shame, despite the indignity of the act. Isaac watched as Yagharek draped the huge cloak over himself and stepped quietly down the stairs.

  Isaac leant thoughtfully on the railing and looked down into the dusty space. Yagharek paced past the immobile construct, past haphazard piles of papers and chairs and blackboards. The light beams that had burst through walls pierced by age were gone. The sun was low, now, behind the buildings across from Isaac’s warehouse, blocked by massed ranks of bricks, sliding sideways across the ancient city, lighting the hidden sides of the Dancing Shoe Mountains, Spine Peak and the crags of Penitent’s Pass, throwing the jagged skyline of the earth into silhouettes that loomed up miles to the west of New Crobuzon.

  When Yagharek opened the door, it was onto a street in shadow.

  Isaac worked into the night.

  As soon as Yagharek left Isaac opened his window and dangled a large red piece of cord from nails in the brick. He moved his heavy calculation engine from the centre of its desk to the floor beside it. Sheafs of programme cards spilt from its storage shelf to the floor. Isaac swore. He patted them together and replaced them. Then he carried his typewriter to his desk and began to make a list. Occasionally he would leap upright and pace over to his makeshift bookshelves, or rummage through a pile of books on the floor, till he found the volume he was looking for. He would take it to the desk and flick through from the back, searching for the bibliography. He laboriously copied details, stabbing with two fingers at the typewriter keys.

  As he wrote, the parameters of his plan began to expand. He sought more and more books, his eyes widening as he realized the potentiality of this research.

  Eventually he stopped and sat back in his chair, pondering. He grabbed some loose paper and scrawled diagrams on it: mental maps, plans of how to proceed.

  Again and again he returned to the same model. A triangle, with a cross firmly planted in the middle. He could not stop himself grinning.

  “I like it…” he murmured.

  There was a knock at the window. He rose and paced over to it.

  A small scarlet idiot face grinned at Isaac from outside. Two stubby horns jutted from its prominent chin, ridges and knobs of bone unconvincingly imitated a hairline. Watery eyes gazed above an ugly, cheerful grin.

  Isaac opened the window onto the rapidly dwindling light. There was an argument between klaxons as industrial boats fought to crawl past each other in the waters of the Canker. The creature perched on Isaac’s window-ledge hopped up into the open window-frame, grasping the edges with gnarled hands.

  “Wotcher, captain!” it gabbled. Its accent was thick and bizarre. “Saw the red wossname, scarf thing…Says to meself, ‘Time for da bossman!’” It winked and barked stupid laughter. “Wossyer pleasure, captain? Atcher service.”

  “Evening, Teafortwo. You got my message.” The creature flapped its red batwings.

  Teafortwo was a wyrman. Barrel-chested creatures like squat birds, with thick arms like a human dwarf’s below those ugly, functional wings, the wyrmen ploughed the skies of New Crobuzon. Their hands were their feet, those arms jutting from the bottom of their squat bodies like crows’ legs. They could pace a few clumsy steps here and there balancing on their palms, if they were indoors, but they preferred to careen over the city, yelling and swooping and screaming abuse at passers-by.

  The wyrmen were more intelligent than dogs or apes, but decidedly less than humans. They thrived on an intellectual diet of scatology and slapstick and mimicry, picking names for each other gleaned without understanding from popular song
s and furniture catalogues and discarded textbooks they could just about read. Teafortwo’s sister, Isaac knew, was called Bottletop; one of his sons Scabies.

  The wyrmen lived in hundreds and thousands of nooks, in attics and annexes and behind hoardings. Most picked a living from the margins of the city. The huge dumps and rubbish-heaps at the outskirts of Stoneshell and Abrogate Green, the waste-scape by the river in Griss Twist, all swarmed with wyrmen, squabbling and laughing, drinking from stagnant canals, fucking in the sky and on the earth. Some, like Teafortwo, supplemented this with informal employment. When scarfs flapped on roofs, or chalk marks defaced walls near attic windows, the odds were that someone was calling some wyrman or other for a task.

  Isaac foraged in his pocket and held up a shekel.

  “Fancy earning this, Teafortwo?”

  “Betcha, captain!” shouted Teafortwo. “Look out below!” he added and shat loudly. The stool spattered on the street. Teafortwo guffawed.

  Isaac handed him the list he had made, rolled into a scroll.

  “Take that to the university library. You know it? Over the river? Good. It’s open late, you should catch ’em open. Give that to the librarian. I’ve signed it, so they shouldn’t give you any trouble. They’ll load you up with some books. Think you can bring them back to me? They’ll be pretty heavy.”

  “No problem, captain!” Teafortwo swelled his chest like a bantam. “Big strong lad!”

  “Fine. Manage it in one go and I’ll slip you a bit more moolah.”

  Teafortwo clutched the list and turned to go with some rude childish yell, when Isaac grabbed the edge of his wing. The wyrman turned, surprised.

  “Problem, boss?”

  “No, no…” Isaac was staring at the base of his wing, thoughtfully. He gently opened and closed Teafortwo’s massive wing with his hands. Under that vivid red skin, horny and pock-marked and stiff like leather, Isaac could feel the specialized muscles of flight winding through the flesh to the wings. They moved with a magnificent economy. He bent the wing through a full circle, feeling the muscles tug it into a paddling, scooping motion that would shovel air out and under the wyrman. Teafortwo giggled.

  “Captain tickle me! Saucy devil!” he screamed.

  Isaac reached for some paper, having to stop himself from dragging Teafortwo with him. He was visualizing the wyrman wing represented mathematically, as simple component planes.

  “Teafortwo…tell you what. When you get back, I’ll toss you another shekel if I can take a few heliotypes of you and do a couple of experiments. Only half an hour or so. What do you say?”

  “Lovely-jubbly, captain!”

  Teafortwo hopped onto the window-sill and lurched out into the gloaming. Isaac squinted, studying the rolling motion of the wings, watching those strong muscles unique to the airborne send eighty or more pounds of twisted flesh and bone powering through the sky.

  When Teafortwo had disappeared from sight, Isaac sat and made another list, by hand this time, scribbling at speed.

  Research, he wrote at the top of the page. Then below it: physics; gravity; forces/planes/vectors; UNIFIED FIELD. And a little below that, he wrote: Flight i) natural ii) thaumaturgical iii) chymico-physical iv) combined v) other.

  Finally, underlined and in capitals, he wrote PHYSIOGNOMIES OF FLIGHT.

  He sat back, not relaxed but poised to leap. He was humming abstractedly. He was desperately excited.

  He fumbled for one of the books he had fished from under his bed, an enormous old volume. He let it topple flat onto the desk, relishing the heavy sound. The cover was embossed in unrealistic fake gold.

  A Bestiary Of The Potentially Wise: The Sentient Races Of Bas-Lag.

  Isaac stroked the cover of Shacrestialchit’s classic, translated from the Lubbock vodyanoi and updated a hundred years ago by Benkerby Carnadine, human merchant, traveller and scholar of New Crobuzon. Constantly reprinted and imitated, but still unsurpassed. Isaac put his finger on the G of the thumb-index and flipped the pages, until he found the exquisite watercolour sketch of the Cymek bird-people that introduced the essay on the garuda.

  As the light ebbed from the room he turned on the gaslamp that sat on his desk. Out in the cool air, away to the east, Teafortwo beat his wings heavily and grasped the sack of books that dangled below him. He could see the bright glimmer of Isaac’s gasjet, and just beyond it, outside the window, the sputtering ivory of the streetlamp. A constant stream of night-insects spiralled it like elyctrons, finding their occasional way through a crack in the glass and immolating themselves in its light with a little combustive burst. Their carbonized remains dusted the bottom of the glass.

  The lamp was a beacon, a lighthouse in that forbidding city, steering the wyrman’s way over the river and out of the predatory night.

  In this city, those who look like me are not like me. I made the mistake once (tired and afraid and desperate for help) of doubting that.

  Looking for a place to hide, looking for food and warmth at night and respite from the stares that greet me whenever I set foot on the streets. I saw a young fledgling, running easily along the narrow passageway between drab houses. My heart nearly burst. I cried out to him, this boy of my own kind, in the desert tongue . . . and he gazed back at me and spread his wings and opened his beak and broke into some cacophonous laughter.

  He swore at me in a bestial croaking. His larynx fought to shape human sounds. I cried out to him but he would not understand. He yelled something behind him and a group of human street-children congregated from holes in the city, like spirits spiteful to the living. He gesticulated at me, that bright-eyed chick, and he screamed curses too fast for me to understand. And these, his comrades, these dirty-faced roughnecks, these dangerous brutalized amoral little creatures with pinched faces and ragged trousers, spattered with snot and rheum and urban dirt, girls in stained shifts and boys with jackets too big, grabbed cobblestones from the earth and pelted me where I lay in the darkness of a decaying threshold.

  And the little boy whom I will not call garuda, who was nothing but human with freakish wings and feathers, my little lost non-brother threw the stones with his comrades and laughed and broke windows behind my head and called me names.

  I realized then as the stones splintered my pillow of old paint that I was alone.

  And so, and so, I know that I must live without respite from this isolation. That I will not speak to any other creature in my own tongue.

  I have taken to foraging alone after nightfall when the city quiets and becomes introspective. I walk as an intruder on its solipsistic dream. I came by darkness, I live by darkness. The savage brightness of the desert is like some legend I heard a long time ago. My existence grows nocturnal. My beliefs change.

  I emerge into streets that wind like dark rivers through cavernous brick rockfaces. The moon and her little shining daughters glimmer wanly. Cold winds ooze like molasses down from the foothills and the mountains and clog the night-city with drifting rubbish. I share the streets with aimlessly moving scraps of paper and little whirlwinds of dust, with motes that pass like erratic thieves under eaves and through doors.

  I remember the desert winds: the Khamsin that scourges the land like smokeless fire; the Föhm that bursts from hot mountainsides as if in ambush; the sly Simoom that inveigles its way through leather sandscreens and library doors.

  The winds of this city are a more melancholy breed. They explore like lost souls, looking in at dusty gaslit windows. We are brethren, the city-winds and I. We wander together.

  We have found sleeping beggars that clutch each other and congeal for warmth like lower creatures, forced back down evolutionary strata by their poverty.

  We have seen the city’s night-porters fish the dead from the rivers. Dark-suited militia tugging with hooks and poles at bloated bodies with eyes ripped from their heads, the blood set and gelatinous in their sockets.

  We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other
, drawing maps and messages in the faecal mud.

  I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things.

  My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits.

  Sometimes I make my way to the warehouse where Grimnebulin reads and writes and scrawls, and I climb silently to the roof, and I lie with my back to the slate. The thought of all that energy of his mind channelled towards flight, my flight, my deliverance, lessens the itching in my ruined back. The wind tugs me harder when I am here: it feels betrayed. It knows that if I am made whole it will lose its nighttime companion in the brick mire and midden of New Crobuzon. So it chastises me when I lie there, suddenly threatening to pull me from my perch into the wide stinking river, clutching my feathers, fat petulant air warning me not to leave it; but I grip the roof with my claws and let the healing vibrations pass up from Grimnebulin’s mind through the crumbling slate into my poor flesh.

  I sleep in old arches under the thundering railtracks.

  I eat whatever organic thing I find that will not kill me.

  I hide like a parasite in the skin of this old city that snores and farts and rumbles and scratches and swells and grows warty and pugnacious with age.

  Sometimes I clamber to the top of the huge, huge towers that teeter like porcupine spines from the city’s hide. Up in the thinner air, the winds lose the melancholy curiosity they have at street level. They abandon their second-floor petulance. Stirred by towers that poke above the host of city light—intense white carbide lamps, smoke-burnished red of lit grease, tallow twinkling, frenetic sputtering gas flare, all anarchic guards against the dark—the winds rejoice and play.