Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  As they wound through the dripping concrete and rusted iron roofs, Lin turned to Isaac.

  What in Jabber’s name was all that? Who’s Savage Peter?

  Isaac signed as he walked.

  Load of bollocks. Came here once with Lemuel on a . . . dubious errand, met Savage. Local big man. Didn’t even know for sure he was still alive! Wouldn’t remember me.

  Lin was exasperated. She could not believe the Spatterkin were taken in by Isaac’s preposterous routine. But they were definitely being led towards the garudas’ tower. Maybe what she’d witnessed was more like a ritual than any real confrontation. Maybe, alternatively, Isaac had kidded and scared no one at all. Maybe they were helping him out of pity.

  The makeshift hovels lapped up against the bases of the towerblocks like little waves. Lin’s and Isaac’s guide beckoned them enthusiastically and gesticulated at the four blocks positioned in a square. In the shadowy space between them a garden had been planted, with twisted trees desperately reaching for direct light. Succulents and hardy weeds burst from the scrubland. Garuda circled under the cloud-cover.

  “There’s your aim, squire!” said the man proudly.

  Isaac hesitated.

  “How do I . . . I don’t want to just plough on up unannounced . . .” he faltered. “Uh . . . how can I attract their attention?”

  The guide held out his hand. Isaac stared at him a minute, then fumbled for a shekel. The man beamed at it and put it in his pocket. Then he turned and stepped a little way back from the building’s walls, put his fingers to his mouth and whistled.

  “Oy!” he yelled. “Bird-bonce! Squire wants to parley!”

  The crowd that still surrounded Isaac and Lin took up the yells enthusiastically. A raucous yelling announced to the garuda above that they had visitors. A contingent of the flying shapes congregated in the air above the Spatters crowd. Then with an invisible adjustment of the wings, three of them plummeted spectacularly towards the ground.

  There was a gasp and appreciative whistling.

  The three garuda dropped like the dead towards the waiting crowd. Twenty feet from the ground they twitched their outstretched wings and broke their precipitous falls. They beat the air heavily, sending massive gusts of wind and dust into the faces and eyes of the humans below them as they hovered up and down, sinking a little, then rising, just out of reach.

  “What you all shouting for?” screeched the garuda on the left.

  “It’s fascinating,” whispered Isaac to Lin. “His voice is avian, but nothing like as difficult to understand as Yagharek . . . Ragamoll must be his native language, he’s probably never spoken anything else.”

  Lin and Isaac stared at the magnificent creatures. The garuda were nude to the waist, their legs covered in thin brown pantaloons. One had black feathers and skin; the other two were dark tan. Lin gazed at those enormous wings. They stretched and beat with a massive span, at least twenty feet.

  “This squire here . . .” began the guide, but Isaac interrupted him.

  “Good to meet you,” he yelled up. “I’ve got a proposal for you. Any chance we could have a chat?”

  The three garuda looked at each other.

  “What you want?” yelled the black-feathered one.

  “Well, look—” Isaac gesticulated at the crowd “—this isn’t really how I was envisaging this discussion. Is there anywhere private we could go?”

  “You bet!” said the first one. “See you up there!”

  The three pairs of wings boomed in concert and the garuda disappeared into the sky, leaving Isaac wailing behind them.

  “Wait!” he shouted. It was too late. He looked around for the guide.

  “I don’t suppose,” Isaac asked him, “the lift’s working in there, is it?”

  “Never got put in, squire.” The guide grinned wickedly. “Best be getting started.”

  “Dear sweet Jabber’s arse, Lin . . . go on without me. I’m dying. I’m just going to lie here and die.”

  Isaac lay on the mezzanine between the sixth and seventh floors. He hissed and wheezed and spat. Lin stood over him, her hands on her hips with exasperation.

  Get up, you fat bastard, she signed. Yes, exhausting. Me too. Think of the gold. Think of the science.

  Moaning as if he were being tortured, Isaac staggered to his feet. Lin chivvied him to the edge of the concrete stairs. He swallowed and braced himself, then staggered on up.

  The stairwell was grey and unlit except by light filtering round corners and through cracks. Only now, as they emerged onto the seventh floor, did the stairs look as if they had ever been used. Rubbish began to build up around their feet. The stairs were grubby rather than thick in fine dust. At each floor were two doors, and the harsh sounds of garuda conversations were audible through the splintered wood.

  Isaac settled into a slow, miserable pace. Lin followed him, ignoring his declarations of imminent heart attack. After several long, painful minutes, they had reached the top floor.

  Above them was the door onto the roof. Isaac leaned against the wall and wiped his face. He was drenched in sweat.

  “Just give me a minute, sweetheart,” he murmured, and even managed to grin. “Oh gods! For the sake of science, right? Get your camera ready . . . All right. Here we go.”

  He stood and breathed slowly, then strode slowly up the last flight to the door, opened it and walked out into the flat light on the roof. Lin followed, her camera in her hands.

  Khepri eyes needed no time to adjust from light to darkness and back again. Lin stepped out onto a rough concrete roof littered with rubbish and broken concrete and saw Isaac desperately shielding his eyes and squinting. She looked coolly around her.

  A little way to the north-east rose Vaudois Hill, a sinuous wedge of high land which rose up as if trying to block the view to the centre of the city. The Spike, Perdido Street Station, Parliament, the Glasshouse dome: all were visible, butting their way over that raised horizon. Opposite the hill, Lin saw miles and miles of Rudewood disappear over uneven ground. Here and there little rock knolls broke free of the leaf-cover. Off to the north there was a long uninterrupted line of sight over to the middle-class suburbs of Serpolet and Gallmarch, the militia tower of St. Jabber’s Mound, the raised tracks of the Verso Line cutting through Creekside and Chimer. Lin knew that just beyond those soot-stained arches two miles away was the twisting course of the Tar, bearing barges and their cargo into the city from the steppes of the south.

  Isaac lowered his hands as his pupils tightened.

  Whirling over their heads aerobatically were hundreds of garuda. They began to drop, to spiral neatly out of the sky and drop to their clawed feet in rows around Lin and Isaac. They fell thickly from the air like overripe apples.

  There were two hundred at least, Lin estimated. She moved a little closer to Isaac nervously. The garuda averaged at least a couple of inches over six feet, not counting the magnificent peaks of their folded wings. There was no difference in height or musculature between men and women. The females wore thin shifts, the males wore loincloths or cut-off trousers. That was all.

  Lin stood five feet tall. She could see no further than the first circle of garuda who surrounded her and Isaac at arms’ length, but she could see more and more dropping from the sky; she had the sense of the numbers building up around her. Isaac patted her shoulder absently.

  A few shapes still swept and hunted and played in the air around them. When the garuda had stopped landing on the roof, Isaac broke the silence.

  “Righto,” he yelled. “Thanks very much for inviting us up here. I want to make a proposition to you.”

  “To who?” came a voice from the crowd.

  “Well, to all of you,” he replied. “See, I’m doing some work on . . . well, on flight. And you are the only creatures in New Crobuzon who can fly and have brains in your bonces. Wyrmen aren’t renowned for their conversational skills,” he said jovially. There was no reaction to his joke. He cleared his throat and continued.
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br />   “So, anyway . . . uh . . . I’m wondering whether any of you would be willing to come and do a couple of days’ work with me, show me some flight, let me take a few prints of your wings . . .” He took hold of Lin’s hand that contained the camera and waved it around. “Obviously I’ll pay for your time . . . I’d really appreciate some help . . .”

  “What you doing?” The voice came from one of the garuda in the front row. The others looked to him when he spoke. This, thought Lin, is the boss man.

  Isaac looked at him carefully.

  “What am I doing? You mean . . .”

  “I mean what for d’you need pics? What you up to?”

  “It’s . . . uh . . . research into the nature of flight. See, I’m a scientist and . . .”

  “Horsecrap. How we know you don’t kill us?”

  Isaac started in surprise. The congregated garuda nodded and cawed in agreement.

  “Why by damn would I want to kill you . . . ?”

  “Just fuck off, mister. No one here wants to help you.”

  There were a few mutterings of unease. It was clear that a few of the assembled might, in fact, have been prepared to take part. But none of them challenged the speaker, a tall garuda with a long scar linking his nipples.

  Lin watched as Isaac opened his mouth slowly. He was trying to turn the situation round. She saw his hand go to his pocket and come away again. If he flashed money on the spot, he could seem like a spiv or a wide-boy.

  “Listen . . .” he said hesitantly. “I really didn’t realize there’d be a problem with this . . .”

  “No, well, see, that may or may not be true, mister. Might be you’re militia.” Isaac snorted derisorily, but the big garuda continued in his sneering tone. “Might be that the murder squads’ve found a way to get to us bird-boys. ‘Just come along to do research . . .’ Well, none of us is interested, ta.”

  “You know,” said Isaac, “I understand that you’re concerned at my motives. I mean, you don’t know me from Jabber and . . .”

  “Ain’t none of us going with you, mister. Simple.”

  “Look. I can pay well. I’m prepared to pay a shekel a day for anyone prepared to come to my lab.”

  The big garuda stepped forward and prodded Isaac aggressively in the chest.

  “Want us to come to your lab to cut us open, see what makes us tick?” The other garuda stepped back as he circled Lin and Isaac. “You and your bugger friend want to cut me into pieces?”

  Isaac was expostulating and trying to deny the charge. He turned slightly away and looked over at the surrounding crowd.

  “So am I to understand that this gent speaks for all of you, or would someone here like to earn a shekel a day?”

  There were a few mutterings. Garuda looked shiftily and uneasily at each other. The big garuda facing Isaac threw up his hands and shook them as he spoke. He was incensed.

  “I speak for all!” He turned and stared slowly at his kin. “Any dissenters?”

  There was a pause, and a young male stepped forward slightly.

  “Charlie . . .” He spoke directly to the self-appointed leader. “Shekel’s a lot of moolah . . . what say a bunch of us go down, make sure there’s no monkey-business, keep it sweet . . .”

  The garuda called Charlie strode over as the other male was speaking and punched him hard in the face.

  There was a communal shriek from the congregation. With a tumult of wings and feathers, great numbers of the garuda burst up and out from the roof like an explosion. Some circled briefly and returned to watch warily, but many others disappeared into the upper floors of other blocks, or off into the cloudless sky.

  Charlie stood over his stunned victim, who had fallen to one knee.

  “Who’s the big man?” shouted Charlie in a strident bird-call. “Who’s the big man?”

  Lin tugged at Isaac’s shirt, began to pull him towards the stairwell door. Isaac resisted half-heartedly. He was visibly appalled at the turn his request had taken, but he was also fascinated to see the confrontation. She dragged him slowly away from the scene.

  The fallen garuda looked up at Charlie.

  “You the big man,” he muttered.

  “I’m the big man. I’m the big man ’cause I take care of you, right? I make sure you’re all right, don’t I? Don’t I? And what’d I always tell you? Steer clear of groundcrawlers! And steer clearest of the anthros. They’re the worst, they’ll tear you up, take your wings away, kill you dead! Don’t trust any of ’em! And that includes fatboy with the fat wallet over there.” For the first time in his tirade he looked up at Isaac and Lin. “You!” he shouted, and pointed at Isaac. “Fuck off out of it ’fore I show you exactly what it’s like to fly . . . straight fucking down!”

  Lin saw Isaac open his mouth, attempt one last conciliatory explanation. She stamped in irritation and pulled him hard through the door.

  Learn to read a damned situation, Isaac. Time to go, Lin signed furiously as they descended.

  “All right Lin, Jabber’s arse, I get the idea!” He was angry, stamping his great bulk down the stairs without any complaints this time. He was energized by his blistering irritation and bewilderment.

  “I just don’t see,” he continued, “why they were so fucking antagonistic . . .”

  Lin turned to him in exasperation. She made him stop, would not let him pass.

  Because they’re xenian and poor and scared, you cretin, she signed slowly. Big fat bastard waving money comes to Spatters, for Jabber’s sake, not much of a haven but all they’ve got, and starts trying to get them to leave it for reasons he won’t explain. Seems to me that Charlie’s bang-on right. Place like this needs someone to look after its own. If I was garuda, I’d listen to him, I tell you.

  Isaac was calming down, even looking a little shamed.

  “Fair enough, Lin. I take your point. I should’ve scouted it out first, gone through someone who knows the area or whatever . . .”

  Yes, and you’ve blown that now. You can’t, it’s too late . . .

  “Yes, quite, thanks ever so for pointing that out . . .” He scowled. “Godspit fuck damn! I ballsed it up, didn’t I?”

  Lin said nothing.

  They did not speak much as they returned through Spatters. They were watched from bottle-glass windows and open doors as they came back the way they’d come.

  As they retraced their paths over the foul pit of nightsoil and rot, Lin glanced back at the tumbledown towers. She saw the flat roof where they had stood.

  Isaac and she were being followed by a small swirling mass of garuda youth, sullenly trailing them in the sky. Isaac turned and his face lightened briefly, but the garuda did not come close enough to talk. They gesticulated rudely from on high.

  Lin and Isaac walked back up Vaudois Hill towards the city.

  “Lin,” Isaac said after minutes of silence. His voice was melancholy. “Back there you said if you’d been garuda you’d have listened to him, right? Well, you’re not garuda, but you are khepri . . . When you were ready to leave Kinken, there must’ve been plenty of people telling you to stick to your own, that humans couldn’t be trusted, and whatnot . . . And the thing is, Lin, you didn’t listen to them, did you?”

  Lin thought quietly for a long time, but she did not answer.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Come on old thing, old plum, old bugger. Eat something, for Jabber’s sake . . .”

  The caterpillar lay listlessly on its side. Its flaccid skin rippled occasionally, and it waved its head, looking for food. Isaac clucked over it, murmured at it, prodded it with a stick. It wiggled uncomfortably, then subsided.

  Isaac straightened up and tossed the little stick to one side.

  “I despair of you, then,” he announced to the air. “You can’t say I haven’t tried.”

  He walked away from the little box with its mouldering piles of foodstuffs.

  Cages were still piled high on the warehouse’s raised walkway; the discordant symphony of squawks and hisses and
avian screams still sounded; but the store of creatures was much depleted. Many of the pens and hutches lay open and empty. Less than half of the original store remained.

  Isaac had lost some of his experimental subjects to disease; some to fights, both in- and inter-species; and some to his own research. A few stiff little bodies were nailed in various poses to boards around the walkway. A vast number of illustrations were plastered to his walls. His initial sketches of wings and flight had multiplied by a massive factor.

  Isaac leaned against his desk. He ran his fingers over the diagrams that littered its surface. At the top was a scribbled triangle containing a cross. He closed his eyes against the continuing cacophony.

  “Oh shut up, all of you,” he yelled, but the animal chorus went on as before. Isaac held his head in his hands, his frown growing more and more piercing.

  He was still stinging from his disastrous journey to Spatters the day before. He could not help running over the events again and again in his mind, thinking about what he could and should have done differently. He had been arrogant and stupid, wading in like an intrepid adventurer, flailing his money as if it were a thaumaturgic weapon. Lin was right. It was no wonder he had managed to alienate probably the city’s entire garuda population. He had approached them as a gang of rogues to be wowed and bought off. He had treated them like cronies of Lemuel Pigeon. They were not. They were a poor, scared community scrabbling for survival and maybe a scrap of pride in a hostile city. They watched their neighbours picked off by vigilantes as if for sport. They inhabited an alternative economy of hunting and barter, foraging in Rudewood and petty pilfering.

  Their politics were brutal, but totally understandable.

  And now he had blown it with the city’s garuda. Isaac looked up at all the pictures and heliotypes and diagrams he had made. Just like yesterday, he thought. The direct approach isn’t working. I was on the right track at the very start. It’s not about aerodynamics, that’s not how to proceed . . . The squalls of his captives intruded on his thoughts.

  “Right!” he shouted suddenly. He stood up straight, and glared at the trapped animals, as if daring them to continue with their noise. Which, of course, they did.