Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  “So an abstract individual is a garuda who forgot, for some time, that he or she is part of a larger unit, and owes respect to all the other choosing individuals.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you any wiser, Isaac?” asked Ged gently, and broke off into giggles.

  Isaac wasn’t sure if he was or not.

  “So look, Ged, if I said to you ‘second-degree choice-theft with disrespect,’ would you know what a garuda had done?”

  “No . . .” Ged looked thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t. Sounds bad . . . I think there are some books in the library that might explain, though . . .”

  At that moment, Lemuel Pigeon strode into Isaac’s view.

  “Ged, look,” Isaac interrupted hurriedly. “Beg pardon and all that, I really have to have a word with Lemuel. Can I talk to you later?”

  Ged grinned without rancour and waved Isaac away.

  “Lemuel . . . a word in your ear. Could be profitable.”

  “Isaac! Always a pleasure to deal with a man of science. How’s the life of the mind?”

  Lemuel leant back in his chair. He was dressed foppishly. His jacket was burgundy, his waistcoat yellow. He wore a small top hat. A mass of yellow curls burst out from under it in a ponytail they clearly resented.

  “The life of the mind, Lemuel, has reached something of an impasse. And that, my friend, is where you come in.”

  “Me?” Lemuel Pigeon smiled lopsidedly.

  “Yes, Lemuel,” said Isaac portentously. “You too can forward the cause of science.”

  Isaac enjoyed bantering with Lemuel, although the younger man made him a little uneasy. Lemuel was a chancer, a snitch, a fence . . . the quintessential go-between. He had carved a profitable little niche for himself out of being a most efficient middle-man. Packages, information, offers, messages, refugees, goods: anything that two people wanted to exchange without actually meeting, Lemuel would courier. He was invaluable to those like Isaac who wanted to dredge the New Crobuzon underworld without getting their feet wet or their hands dirty. Similarly, the denizens of that other city could use Lemuel to reach into the realm of the more-or-less legal without beaching, flopping helplessly at the militia’s door. Not that all of Lemuel’s work involved both worlds: some was entirely legal or entirely illegal. It was just that crossing the border was his speciality.

  Lemuel’s existence was precarious. He was unscrupulous and brutal—vicious when necessary. If the going ever got dangerous, he would leave anyone with him in a trail of his dust. Everyone knew that. Lemuel never hid it. There was a certain honesty about him. He never pretended that you could trust him.

  “Lemuel, you young science fiend, you . . .” Isaac said. “I’m conducting a little research. Now, I need to get hold of some specimens. I’m talking anything that flies. And that is where you come in. See, a man in my position can’t be trogging around New Crobuzon looking for fucking wrens . . . a man in my position should be able to put the word out and have winged things fall into his lap.”

  “Put an ad in the newspapers, Isaac old chum. Why’re you talking to me?”

  “Because I’m talking plenty plenty, and I don’t want to know where it comes from. And I’m talking variety. I want to see as many different little flying things as I can, and some of them ain’t easy to come by. Example . . . if I wanted to get hold of, say, an aspis . . . I could pay some buccaneer of a ship’s captain top dollar for a mange-ridden half-dead specimen of same . . . or I can pay you to arrange for one of your honourable associates to liberate some poor stifled little aspis from some fucking gilded cage up in East Gidd or Rim. Capiche?”

  “Isaac old son . . . I begin to understand you.”

  “Of course you do, Lemuel. You’re a businessman. I’m looking for rare flying things. I want things I’ve never seen before. I want inventive flying things. I will not be paying top whack for a basket full of blackbirds—although please don’t take that to mean that blackbirds aren’t wanted. Blackbirds are welcome, along with thrushes, jackdaws and what have you. Pigeons, Lemuel, your very own namesake. But what’s even more welcome are, say, dragonfly-snakes.”

  “Rare,” said Lemuel, looking intently at his pint.

  “Very rare,” agreed Isaac. “Which is why serious amounts of dosh would change hands for a good specimen. You get the idea, Lemuel? I want birds, insects, bats . . . also eggs, also cocoons, also grubs, anything which is going to turn into a flying thing. That could be even more useful, actually. Anything which looks set to be up to dog-sized. Nothing too much bigger, and nothing dangerous. Impressive as it would be to catch a drud or a wind-rhino, I don’t want it.”

  “Who would, Isaac?” agreed Lemuel.

  Isaac stuffed a five-guinea note into Lemuel’s top pocket. The two men raised their glasses and drank together.

  That had been yesterday evening. Isaac sat back and imagined his request worming its way through New Crobuzon’s criminal alleys.

  Isaac had used Lemuel’s services before, when he had needed a rare or forbidden compound, or a manuscript of which there were only a few copies in New Crobuzon, or information on the synthesis of illegal substances. It appealed to Isaac’s sense of humour to think of the hardest elements of the city’s underworld earnestly scrabbling for birds and butterflies in between their gangfights and drugs deals.

  It was Shunday the next day, Isaac realized. It had been several days since he had seen Lin. She didn’t even know about his commission. They had a date, he remembered. They were meeting for dinner. He could put his research aside for a little while and tell his lover everything that had happened. It was something he enjoyed, emptying his mind of all its accumulated odds and ends, and offering them to Lin.

  Lublamai and David had gone, Isaac realized. He was alone.

  He undulated like a walrus, scattering papers and prints all over the boards. He turned his gasjet off and peered up out of the dark warehouse. Through his dirty window he could see the great cold circle of the moon and the slow pirouettes of her two daughters, satellites of ancient, barren rock glowing like fat fireflies as they spun around their mother.

  Isaac fell asleep watching the convoluted lunar clockwork. He basked in the moonlight and dreamt of Lin: a fraught, sexual, loving dream.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Clock and Cockerel had spilt out of doors. Tables and coloured lanterns covered the forecourt by the canal that separated Salacus Fields from Sangwine. The smash of glasses and shrieks of amusement wafted over the dour bargemen working the locks, riding the sluicing water up to a higher level, taking off towards the river, leaving the boisterous inn behind.

  Lin felt vertiginous.

  She sat at the head of a large table under a violet lamp, surrounded by her friends. Next to her on one side was Derkhan Blueday, the art critic for the Beacon. On the other was Cornfed, screaming animatedly at Thighs Growing, the cactacae cellist. Alexandrine; Bellagin Sound; Tarrick Septimus; Importunate Spint: painters and poets, musicians, sculptors, and a host of hangers-on she half-recognized.

  This was Lin’s milieu. This was her world. And yet she had never felt so isolated from them as she did now.

  The knowledge that she had landed the job, the huge request they all dreamed of, the one work that could see her happy for years, separated her from her fellows. And her terrifying employer very effectively sealed her isolation. Lin felt as if suddenly, without warning, she was in a very different world from the bitchy, game-playing, lively, precious, introspective Salacus Fields round.

  She had seen no one since she had returned, shaken, from her extraordinary meeting in Bonetown. She had missed Isaac badly, but she knew that he would be taking the opportunity of her supposed work to be drowning himself in research, and she knew also that for her to venture to Brock Marsh would anger him greatly. In Salacus Fields, they were an open secret. Brock Marsh, though, was the belly of the beast.

  So she had sat for a day, contemplating what she had agreed to do.

  Slowly, tent
atively, she had cast her mind back to the monstrous figure of Mr. Motley.

  Godspit and shit! she had thought. What was he?

  She had no clear picture of her boss, only a sense of the ragged discordance of his flesh. Snippets of visual memory teased her: one hand terminating in five equally spaced crabs’ claws; a spiralling horn bursting from a nest of eyes; a reptilian ridge winding along goat’s fur. It was impossible to tell what race Mr. Motley had started out as. She had never heard of Remaking so extensive, so monstrous and chaotic. Anyone as rich as he must be could surely afford the best Remakers to fashion him into something more human—or whatever. She could only think that he chose this form.

  Either that, or he was a victim of Torque.

  Lin wondered if his obsession with the transition zone reflected his form, or if his obsession came first.

  Lin’s cupboard was stuffed with her rough sketches of Mr. Motley’s body—hastily hidden on the assumption that Isaac would stay with her tonight. She had made scrawled notes of what she remembered of the lunatic anatomy.

  Her horror had ebbed, over the days, leaving her with crawling skin and a torrent of ideas.

  This, she had decided, could be the work of her life.

  Her first appointment with Mr. Motley was the next day, Dustday, in the afternoon. After that, it was twice a week for at least the next month: probably longer, depending on how the sculpture took shape.

  Lin was eager to begin.

  “Lin, you tedious bitch!” yelled Cornfed and threw a carrot at her. “Why are you so quiet tonight?”

  Lin scrawled quickly on her pad.

  Cornfed, sweetheart, you bore me.

  Everyone burst into laughter. Cornfed returned to his flamboyant flirtation with Alexandrine. Derkhan bent her grey head towards Lin and spoke softly.

  “Seriously, Lin . . . You’re hardly speaking. Is something up?”

  Lin, touched, shook her headbody gently.

  Working on something big. Taking up a lot of my mind, she signed at her. It was a relief to be able to speak without writing every word: Derkhan read signing well.

  I miss Isaac, Lin added mock-forlornly.

  Derkhan creased her face sympathetically. She is, Lin thought, a lovely woman.

  Derkhan was pale, tall and thin—though she had gained a small gut as she passed into her middle years. Though she loved the outrageous antics of the Salacus set, she was an intense, gentle woman who avoided being the centre of attention. Her published writing was spiky and merciless: if Derkhan had not liked her work, Lin did not think she could have been Derkhan’s friend. Her judgements in the Beacon were harsh to the point of brutality.

  Lin could tell Derkhan that she missed Isaac. Derkhan knew the true nature of their relationship. A little over a year ago, when Lin and Derkhan were strolling together in Salacus Fields, Derkhan had bought drinks. When she handed over her money to pay, she had dropped her purse. She had bent quickly to retrieve it, but Lin had beaten her to it, picking it up and pausing only very slightly when she saw the old, battered heliotype of the beautiful and fierce young woman in a man’s suit that had fallen from it onto the street, the xxx written across the bottom, the lipstick-kiss. She had handed it back to Derkhan, who had replaced it in the purse without hurrying, and without looking Lin in the eyes.

  “Long time ago,” Derkhan had said enigmatically, and immersed herself in her beer.

  Lin had felt she owed Derkhan a secret. She had almost been relieved a couple of months later when she found herself drinking with Derkhan, depressed after storming out of some stupid row with Isaac. It had given Lin the opportunity to tell Derkhan the truth that she must already have guessed. Derkhan had nodded with nothing but concern for Lin’s misery.

  They had been close since then.

  Isaac liked Derkhan because she was a seditionist.

  Just as Lin thought of Isaac, she heard his voice.

  “Godshit, everyone, sorry I’m late . . .”

  She turned and saw his bulk pushing through tables towards them. Her antennae flexed in what she was sure he would recognize as a smile.

  A chorus of salutation greeted Isaac as he approached them. He looked straight at Lin and smiled at her privately. He caressed her back as he waved at everyone else, and Lin felt his hand through her shirt clumsily spell out I love you.

  Isaac yanked a chair over and forced it between Lin’s and Cornfed’s.

  “I’ve just been to my bank, depositing a few sparkly little nuggets. A lucrative contract,” he shouted, “makes a happy scientist with very bad judgement. Drinks on me.” There was a raucous and delighted crowing of surprise, followed by a group yell for the waiter.

  “How’s the show going, Cornfed?” said Isaac.

  “Oh splendid, splendid!” shouted Cornfed, and then bizarrely added, very loud, “Lin came to see it on Fishday.”

  “Right,” said Isaac, nonplussed. “Did you like it, Lin?”

  She briefly signed that she had.

  Cornfed was only interested in gazing at Alexandrine’s cleavage through her unsubtle dress. Isaac switched his attention to Lin.

  “You would not believe what’s been happening . . .” Isaac began.

  Lin gripped his knee under the table. He returned the gesture.

  Under his breath, Isaac told Lin and Derkhan, in truncated form, the story of Yagharek’s visit. He implored them to silence, and glanced around regularly to make sure that no one else was listening in. Halfway through, the chicken he had ordered arrived, and he ate noisily while he described his meeting in The Moon’s Daughters, and the cages and cages of experimental animals he expected to arrive at his laboratory any day soon.

  When he was finished, he sat back and grinned at them both, before a look of contrition washed over his face, and he sheepishly asked Lin: “How’s your work been going?”

  She waved her hand dismissively.

  There’s nothing, dear heart, she thought, that I can tell you. Let’s talk about your new project.

  Guilt passed visibly over his face at his one-sided conversation, but Isaac could not help himself. He was utterly in the throes of a new project. Lin felt a familiar melancholy affection for him. Melancholy at his self-sufficiency in these moments of fascination; affection for his fervour and passion.

  “Look, look,” Isaac gabbled suddenly, and tugged a piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it on the table before them.

  It was an advertisement for a fair currently in Sobek Croix. The back was crisp with dry glue: Isaac had torn it from a wall.

  Mr. Bombadrezil’s unique and wonderful fair, guaranteed to astound and enthral the most jaded palate. The Palace of Love; The Hall of Terrors; The Vortex; and many other attractions for reasonable prices. Also come to see the extraordinary freakshow, the Circus of Weird. Monsters and marvels from every corner of Bas-Lag! Seers from the Fractured Land; a genuine Weaver’s claw; the living skull; the lascivious snake-woman; Ursus Rex, the man-king of the Bears; dwarf cactus-people of tiny sizes; a garuda, bird-man chief of the wild desert; the stone men of Bezhek; caged dæmons; dancing fish; treasures stolen from the Gengris; and innumerable other prodigies and wonders. Some attractions not suitable for the easily shocked or those of a nervous disposition. Entrance 5 stivers. Sobek Croix gardens, 14th Chet to 14th Melluary, 6 to 11 o’clock every night.

  “See that?” Isaac barked, and stabbed the poster with his thumb. “They’ve got a garuda! I’ve been sending requests all over the city for dubious bits and bobs, probably going to end up with loads of horrible disease-riddled jackdaws, and there’s a fucking garuda on the doorstep!”

  Are you going to go down? signed Lin.

  “Damn right!” snorted Isaac. “Straight after this! I thought we could all go. The others,” he said, his voice dropping, “don’t have to know what it is I’m doing there. I mean, a fair’s always fun anyway. Right?”

  Derkhan grinned and nodded.

  “So are you going to spirit the garuda away, or what?” sh
e whispered.

  “Well, presumably I could arrange to take heliotypes of it, or even ask it to come for a couple of days to the lab . . . I don’t know. We’ll organize something! What do you say? Fancy a fair?”

  Lin picked a cherry tomato from Isaac’s garnish and wiped it carefully clean of chicken stock. She gripped it in her mandibles and began to chew.

  Could be fun, she signed. Your treat?

  “Absolutely my treat!” boomed Isaac, and gazed at her. He stared at her very close for a minute. He glanced round to make sure that no one was watching, and then, clumsily, he signed in front of her.

  Missed you.

  Derkhan looked away for a moment, tactfully.

  Lin broke off the moment, to make sure that she did it before Isaac. She clapped loudly, until everyone at the table was staring at her. She began to sign, indicating Derkhan to translate.

  “Uh . . . Isaac is keen to prove that the talk of scientists being all work and no play is false. Intellectuals as well as dissolute aesthetes like us know how to have a good time, and thus he offers us this . . .” Lin waved the sheet, and threw it into the centre of the table where it was visible to all. “Rides, spectacles, marvels and coconut shies, all for a mere five stivers, which Isaac has kindly offered to underwrite . . .”

  “Not for everyone, you sow!” Isaac roared in mock-outrage, but he was drowned out by the drunken roar of gratitude.