Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  He propped himself on his elbows and examined himself. His dark skin was slick and grey. His mouth reeked. Isaac realized that he must have lain almost motionless for the whole night: the covers were a little rucked, that was all.

  The terrified birdsong that had woken him started again. Isaac shook his head in irritation and looked for its source. A tiny bird circled desperately in the air around the inside of the warehouse. Isaac realized that it was one of the previous evening’s reluctant escapees, a wren, obviously afraid of something. As Isaac looked around to see what had the bird so nervous, the lithe reptilian body of an aspis flew like a crossbow bolt from one corner of the eaves to the other. It plucked the little bird from the air as it passed. The wren’s calls were cut short abruptly.

  Isaac stumbled inexpertly out of bed and circled confusedly. “Notes,” he told himself. “Make notes.”

  He snatched paper and pen from his desk and began to scribble down his recollections of the dreamshit.

  “What the fuck was that?” he whispered out loud as he wrote. “Some cove’s doing a damn good job of reproducing the biochymistry of dreams, or tapping it at source . . .” He rubbed his head again. “Lord, what sort of thing is it that eats this . . .” Isaac stood briefly and glanced at his captive caterpillar.

  He was quite still. His mouth gaped idiotically, then worked up and down and finally shaped words.

  “Oh. My. Good. Arse.”

  He stumbled slowly, nervously across the room, seeming to hang back, chary of seeing what he was seeing. He approached the cage.

  Inside, a colossal mass of beautifully coloured grub-flesh wriggled unhappily. Isaac stood uneasily over the enormous thing. He could feel the odd little vibrations of alien unhappiness in the æther around him.

  The caterpillar had at least tripled in size overnight. It was a foot long, and correspondingly fat. The faded magnificence of its coloured patches had returned to their initial, burnished brilliance. With interest. The sticky-looking hairs on its tail-end were wicked-looking bristles. It had no more than six inches of space around it on all sides. It nudged weakly against the sides of the hutch.

  “What happened to you?” hissed Isaac.

  He recoiled and gazed at the thing, which waved its head in the air blindly. He thought quickly, pictured the number of dreamshit lozenges he had given the grub to eat. He looked around and saw the envelope containing all the remains where he had left it, untouched. The thing hadn’t got out and gorged itself. There was no way, Isaac realized, that the little pellets of drug he had left in that hutch contained anything like the number of calories that the caterpillar had used on growth over the night. Even if it had just piled on weight ounce for ounce with what it had eaten, it would not have represented an increase in this league.

  “Whatever energy you’re getting out of your supper,” he whispered, “it’s not physical. What in Jabber’s name are you?”

  He had to get the thing out of the cage. It looked so miserable, flailing pointlessly in that little space. Isaac hung back, slightly afraid and a little disgusted at the idea of touching the extraordinary thing. Eventually he picked up the box, staggering under the massively increased weight, and held it just above the ground in a much larger cage left over from his experiments, a chicken-wire-fronted mini-aviary five feet high that had contained a small family of canaries. He opened the front of the hutch and tipped the fat grub into the sawdust, then quickly closed and latched the front grille.

  He stood back to gaze at his rehoused captive.

  It looked directly at him, now, and he felt its childish pleas for breakfast.

  “Oh steady on,” he said. “I haven’t even eaten yet.”

  He backed uneasily away, then turned and made for his parlour.

  Over his breakfast of fruit and iced buns, Isaac realized that the effects of the dreamshit were wearing off very quickly. It might be the worst hangover in the world, he thought wryly, but it’s gone within the hour. No wonder the punters come back.

  From across the room, the foot-long caterpillar scrabbled around the floor of its new cage. It nosed miserably around the dirt, then reared up again and waved its head in the direction of the packet of dreamshit.

  Isaac slapped his hand over his face.

  “Oh, Hell’s Donkeys,” he said. Vague emotions of unease and experimental curiosity combined in his mind. It was a childish excitement, like that of boys and girls who burnt insects with magnified sun. He stood and reached into the envelope with a big wooden spoon. He carried the congealed lump over to the caterpillar, which almost danced with excitement as it saw, or smelt, or somehow sensed, the dreamshit approaching. Isaac opened a little feeding hatch at the back of the crate and tipped the doses of drug in. Immediately the caterpillar raised its head and slammed it down on the lumpy mess. Its mouth was large enough now that its workings could easily be seen. It slid open and gnawed voraciously at the powerful narcotic.

  “That,” said Isaac, “is as big a cage as you’re going to get, so ease up on the growing, right?” He backed away to his clothes, without taking his eyes from the feeding creature.

  Isaac picked up and sniffed the various clothes strewn around the room. He put on a shirt and trousers with no smell and a minimum of stains.

  Better sort out a “things to do” list, he thought grimly. Top of which is “Beat Lucky Gazid to death.” He stomped to his desk. The triangular Unified Field Theory diagram he had drawn for Yagharek was at the top of the papers that covered it. Isaac pursed his lips and stared at it. He picked it up and looked thoughtfully over to where the caterpillar gnawed happily. There was something else he should do that morning.

  There’s no point putting it off, he thought reluctantly. Maybe I can clear the decks for Yag and learn a little about my friend here . . . maybe. Isaac sighed heavily and rolled up his sleeves, then sat down at a mirror for a rare and perfunctory preen. He poked inexpertly at his hair, found another, cleaner shirt into which he changed, oozing resentment.

  He scribbled a note for David and Lublamai, checked that his giant caterpillar was secure and unlikely to escape. Then he descended the stairs and, pinning his message to the door, walked out into a day full of sharp clear blades of light.

  Isaac sighed and set off to find an early cab to take him to the university and the best biologist, natural philosopher and bio-thaumaturge he knew: the odious Montague Vermishank.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Isaac entered New Crobuzon University with a mixture of nostalgia and discomfort. The university buildings were little changed since his time as a teacher. The various faculties and departments dotted Ludmead with a grandiose architecture that overshadowed the rest of the area.

  The quad before the enormous and ancient Science Faculty building was covered with trees shedding their blossom. Isaac walked footpaths worn by generations of students through a blizzard of garish pink petals. He strode busily up the scrubbed steps and pushed open the great doors.

  Isaac was brandishing faculty identification that had expired seven years previously, but he need not have bothered. The porter behind the desk was Sedge, an old, entirely witless man, whose tenure at the faculty long predated Isaac’s own, and looked set to continue for ever. He greeted Isaac as he always did, on these irregular visits, with an incoherent mutter of recognition. Isaac shook his hand and enquired after his family. Isaac had reason to be grateful to Sedge, before whose milky eyes he had liberated numerous expensive pieces of laboratory equipment.

  Isaac strode up the steps past groups of students, smoking, arguing, writing. Overwhelmingly male and human, there were, nonetheless, the occasional defensive tight-knit group of young xenians or women or both. Some students conducted theoretical debates at ostentatious volume. Others made occasional marginal notes in their textbooks and sucked at rolled cigarillos of pungent tobacco. Isaac passed a group squatting at the end of a corridor, practising what they had just learned, laughing delightedly as the tiny homunculus they had made from ground l
iver stumbled four steps before collapsing in a pile of twitching mulch.

  The number of students around him decreased as he continued up stairs and along corridors. To his irritation and disgust, Isaac found that his heart was speeding up as he approached his erstwhile boss.

  He walked the plush darkwood panelling of the Science Faculty’s administration wing, and approached the office at the far end, on the door of which was written in gold leaf: Director. Montague Vermishank.

  Isaac paused outside and fiddled nervously. He was emotionally confused, striving to maintain a decade’s anger and dislike along with a conciliatory, non-confrontational tone. He breathed deeply once, then turned and knocked briskly, opened the door and walked in.

  “What do you think . . .” shouted the man behind the desk, before stopping abruptly when he recognized Isaac. “Ah,” he said, after a long silence. “Of course. Isaac. Do sit down.”

  Isaac sat.

  Montague Vermishank was eating his lunch. His pale face and shoulders leaned sharply over his enormous desk. Behind him was a small window. It looked out, Isaac knew, over the wide avenues and large houses of Mafaton and Chnum, but a grubby curtain was pulled across it and the light was stifled.

  Vermishank was not fat, but he was coated from his jowls down in a slight excess layer, a swaddling of dead flesh like a corpse’s. He wore a suit too small for him, and his necrotic white skin oozed from his sleeves. His thin hair was brushed and styled with a neurotic fervour. Vermishank was drinking lumpy cream soup. He dipped doughy bread into it regularly and sucked at the resulting mess, chewing but not biting off, gnawing and worrying at the saliva-fouled bread that dripped wan yellow onto his desk. His colourless eyes took Isaac in.

  Isaac stared uneasily and was thankful for his tight bulk and his skin the colour of smouldering wood.

  “Was going to shout at you for failing to knock or make an appointment, but then I saw it was you. Of course. Normal rules do not apply. How are you, Isaac? Are you after money? Need some research work?” asked Vermishank in his phlegmy whisper.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’m not bad, actually, Vermishank,” said Isaac with strained bonhomie. “How’s all your work?”

  “Oh, good, good. Doing a paper on bio-ignition. I’ve isolated the pyrotic flange in a fire-bes.” There was a long silence. “Very exciting,” whispered Vermishank.

  “Sounds it, sounds it,” enthused Isaac. They stared at each other. Isaac could not think of any more small talk. He loathed and respected Vermishank. It was an unsettling combination.

  “So, uh . . . anyway . . .” said Isaac. “I’m here, to be frank, to ask your help.”

  “Oh ho.”

  “Yeah . . . See, I’m working on something that’s a bit off my track . . . I’m more of a theoretician than a practical researcher, you know . . .”

  “Yes . . .” Vermishank’s voice dripped an indiscriminate irony.

  You ratfuck, thought Isaac. I gave you that for free . . .

  “Right,” he said slowly. “Well, this is . . . I mean this could be, though I doubt it . . . a problem of bio-thaumaturgy. I wanted to ask your professional opinion.”

  “Ah ha.”

  “Yes. What I wanted to know was . . . can someone be Remade to fly?”

  “Ooh.” Vermishank leaned back and dabbed soup from around his mouth with bread. Briefly, he wore a moustache of crumbs. He clasped his hands in front of him and waggled his fat fingers. “Fly, eh?”

  Vermishank’s voice picked up an air of excitement previously lacking in his cold tones. He may have wanted to sting Isaac with his heavy contempt, but he could not help being enthused by problems of science.

  “Yeah. I mean, has that been done?” said Isaac.

  “Yes . . . It has been done . . .” Vermishank nodded slowly without taking his eyes from Isaac, who sat up in his chair and snatched a notebook from his pocket.

  “Oh, has it?” said Isaac.

  Vermishank’s eyes lost focus as he thought harder.

  “Yes . . . Why, Isaac? Has someone come to you and asked to fly?”

  “I really can’t . . . uh, divulge . . .”

  “Of course you can’t, Isaac. Of course you can’t. Because you are a professional. And I respect you for that.” Vermishank smiled idly at his guest.

  “So . . . what were the details?” ventured Isaac. He set his teeth before he spoke, to control his shaking indignation. Fuck you, you patronizing game-playing pig, he thought furiously.

  “Oh ho . . . Well . . .” Isaac twisted with impatience as Vermishank raised his head ponderously to remember. “There was a biophilosopher, years ago, at the end of the last century. Calligine, name of. Had himself Remade.” Vermishank smiled fondly and cruelly and shook his head. “Mad thing, really, but it did seem to work. Huge mechanical wings that unfolded like fans. He wrote a pamphlet about it.” Vermishank strained his head over his lardy shoulder, glanced vaguely at the shelves of volumes that covered his walls. He waved with a limp hand that could have signalled anything at all about the whereabouts of Calligine’s pamphlet. “Don’t you know the rest? Not heard the song?” Isaac narrowed his eyes quizzically. Appallingly, Vermishank sang a few bars in a reedy tenor. “So Cally flew high / On um-ber-ella wings / Headed into the sky / Waved his love bye-bye / Went West with a sigh / Disappeared in the land of the Horrible Things . . .”

  “Of course I’ve heard that!” said Isaac. “I never knew it was about someone real . . .”

  “Well, you never took Introductory Bio-Thaumaturgy, did you? As I remember, you did about two terms of the Intermediate course, much later. You missed my first lecture. That’s the story I use to entice our jaded young knowledge-hunters onto the road of this noble science.” Vermishank spoke in a completely deadpan voice. Isaac felt his distaste return with interest. “Calligine disappeared,” Vermishank continued. “Went off flying south-west, towards the Cacotopic Stain. Never seen again.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Uh . . . is that the whole story?” said Isaac. “How did they get the wings on him? Did he keep experimental notes? What was the Remaking like?”

  “Oh, horribly difficult, I’d imagine. Calligine probably got through a few experimental subjects before getting his sums right . . .” Vermishank grinned. “Probably called in a few favours with Mayor Mantagony. I suspect a few felons sentenced to death had a few more weeks of life than they’d expected. Not part of the process that he advertised. But it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that it’s going to take a few tries before you get it right. I mean, you’ve got to connect up the mechanism to bones and muscles and whatnot that haven’t a clue what they’re supposed to be doing . . .”

  “But what if the muscles and bones did know what they were doing? What about if a . . . a wyrman or something, had its wings cut off. Could they be replaced?”

  Vermishank gazed passively at Isaac. His head and eyes did not move.

  “Ha . . .” he said faintly, eventually. “You’d have thought that was easier, wouldn’t you? It is, in theory, but it’s even harder in practice. I’ve done some of this with birds and . . . well, with winged things. First off, Isaac, in theory it’s perfectly possible. In theory, there is almost nothing which can’t be done with Remaking. It’s all just a question of wiring things up right, a bit of flesh-moulding. But flight’s horribly hard because you’re dealing with all sorts of variables that have to be exactly right. See, Isaac, you can Remake a dog, sew a leg back on, or mould it on with a clayflesh hex, and the animal’ll limp along happily. Won’t be pretty, but it’ll walk. Can’t do that with wings. Wings have to be perfect or they won’t do the trick. It’s harder to teach muscles that think they know how to fly to do the same trick differently than it is to teach muscles that haven’t any idea in the first place. Your bird or what have you, its shoulders get all confused by this wing which is just a tad the wrong shape, or the wrong size, or based on different aerodynamics, and it ends up being totally stymied, even assuming you�
��ve reconnected everything up right.

  “So the answer, I suppose I’m saying, Isaac, is that yes it can be done. This wyrman, or whatever, can be Remade to fly again. But it isn’t likely. It’s too damn hard. There’s no bio-thaumaturge, no Remaker, who could promise a result. Either you’re going to have to find Calligine, get him to do it,” hissed Vermishank in conclusion, “or I wouldn’t risk it.”

  Isaac finished scribbling notes and flipped his notebook closed.

  “Thanks, Vermishank. I was sort of . . . hoping you’d say that. That’s your professional opinion, eh? Well, I’ll just have to pursue my other line of enquiry, of which you wouldn’t approve at all . . .” His eyes bulged like a naughty boy’s.

  Vermishank nodded very slightly and a sickly little smile grew and died on his mouth like a fungus.

  “Ha,” he said faintly.

  “Right, well, thanks for your time . . . Appreciate it . . .” Isaac flustered as he stood to go. “Sorry to be so fleeting . . .”

  “Not at all. Any other opinions needed?”

  “Well . . .” Isaac paused with his arm half into his jacket. “Well. Have you heard of something called dreamshit?”

  Vermishank raised an eyebrow. He leaned back in his chair and chewed his thumb, looking at Isaac with half-closed eyes.

  “This is a university, Isaac. Do you think a new and exciting illicit substance would sweep the city and none of our students would be tempted? Of course I’ve heard of it. We had our first expulsion for selling the drug less than half a year ago. Very bright young psychonomer, of predictably avant-garde theoretical persuasion.

  “Isaac, Isaac . . . for all your many, uh, indiscretions . . .” a little simper pretended unconvincingly to rob the insult of its barb “—I wouldn’t have had you down as a . . . a drug person.”

  “No, Vermishank, nor am I. However, living and operating in the quagmire of corruption that I’ve chosen, surrounded by lowlifes, and vile degenerates, I tend to be faced with things like drugs at the various sordid orgies I attend.” Isaac told himself off for losing his patience at the same moment that he decided there was nothing to be gained from further diplomacy. He spoke loudly and sarcastically. He rather enjoyed his ire.