Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The construct that had swept David’s and Lublamai’s floor for years seemed finally to be giving up the ghost. It wheezed and spun as it scrubbed. It became fixated with arbitrary patches of floor, polished them as if they were jewels. Some mornings it took nearly an hour to warm up. It was becoming caught in programme loops, causing it to endlessly repeat tiny pieces of behaviour.

  Isaac learnt to ignore its repetitive, neurotic whines. He worked with both hands at once. With his left, he scribbled down his notions in diagrammatic form. With his right he fed equations into the innards of his little calculating engine through its stiff keys, slotted punctured cards into its programme slot, fumbling them in and out at speed. He solved the same problems with different programmes, comparing answers, typing out the sheets of numbers.

  The innumerable books on flight that had filled Isaac’s bookshelves had been replaced, with Teafortwo’s help, by an equally large number of tomes on unified field theory, and on the arcane sub-field of crisis mathematics.

  After only two weeks of research, something extraordinary happened in Isaac’s mind. The reconceptualization came to him so simply that he did not at first realize the scale of his insight. It seemed a thoughtful moment like many others, in the course of a whole internal scientific dialogue. A sense of genius did not descend on Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin in a cold shock of brilliant light. Instead, as he gnawed the top of a pencil one day, there was a moment of vaguely verbalized thought along the lines of or wait a minute maybe you could do it like this . . .

  It took an hour and a half for Isaac to realize that what he had thought might be a useful mental model was vastly more exciting. He set out in a systematic attempt to prove himself wrong. He constructed scenario after mathematical scenario with which he tried to rubbish his tentatively scrawled sets of equations. His attempts at destruction failed. His equations held firm.

  It took Isaac two days before he began to believe that he had solved a fundamental problem of crisis theory. He enjoyed moments of euphoria, many more of cautious nervousness. He pored over his textbooks at a crushingly slow pace, searching to make sure he had not ignored some obvious error, had not replicated some long-disproved theorem.

  Still, his equations held. In terror of hubris, Isaac sought any alternative than to believe what was looking more and more like the truth: that he had solved the problem of mathematic representation, quantification, of crisis energy.

  He knew that he should immediately converse with colleagues, publish his findings as “work in progress” in The Review of Philosophical Physics and Thaumaturgy, or the Unified Field. But he was so intimidated by what he had discovered that he avoided that route. He wanted to be sure, he told himself. He had to take a few more days, a few more weeks, maybe a month or two . . . then he would publish. He did not tell Lublamai or David, or Lin, which was more extraordinary. Isaac was a garrulous man, prone to spouting any old tosh, scientific, social or obscene, which came to his mind. His secretiveness was profoundly out of character. He knew himself well enough to recognize this, and to realize what it meant: he was deeply disturbed, and deeply, deeply excited by what he had found.

  Isaac thought back on the process of discovery, of formulation. He realized that his advances, his incredible leaps of theory in the last month, which eclipsed his previous five years’ work, were all in response to immediate, practical concerns. He had reached an impasse in his studies of crisis theory until Yagharek had commissioned him. Isaac did not know why it was so, but he realized that it was with applications in mind that his most abstract theories were advancing. Accordingly, he decided not to immerse himself totally in abstruse theory. He would continue to focus on the problem of Yagharek’s flight.

  He would not let himself think about the ramifications of his research, not at this stage. Everything he uncovered, every advance, every idea he had, he would quietly plough back into his applied studies. He tried to see everything as a means to get Yagharek back in the air. It was difficult—perverse, even—constantly trying to contain and circumscribe his work. He saw the situation as one of working behind his own back, or more exactly, as trying to do research out of the corner of his eye. Yet, incredible as it seemed, with the discipline that was forced on him, Isaac progressed theoretically at a rate he could never have dreamed of six months before.

  It was an extraordinary, circuitous route to scientific revolution, he thought sometimes, chiding himself quickly for his direct gaze at the theory. Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There’s a garuda to get airborne. But he could not stop his heart from thumping with excitement, the occasional almost hysterical grin from racing across his face. Some days he sought Lin out and, if she was not working at her secret piece in her secret location, he would try to seduce her in her flat with a tender, excited fervour that delighted her, for all that she was obviously tired. At other times he spent days in only his own company, immersing himself in science.

  Isaac applied his extraordinary insights and began tentatively to design a machine to solve Yagharek’s problem. The same drawing began to appear more and more in his work. At first it was a doodle, a few loosely connecting lines covered in arrows and question marks. Within days it was appearing more solid. Its lines were drawn in ruled ink. Its curves were measured and careful. It was on its way to becoming a blueprint.

  Yagharek sometimes came back to Isaac’s laboratory, always when the two of them were alone. Isaac would hear the door creak open at night, turn to see the impassive, dignified garuda still steeped in visible misery.

  Isaac found that trying to explain his work to Yagharek helped him. Not the big theoretical stuff, of course, but the applied science which furthered the half-hidden theory. Isaac spent days with a thousand ideas and potential projects swilling violently in his head, and to pare that down, to explain in non-technical language the various techniques he thought might enable him to tap crisis energy forced him to evaluate his trajectories, discard some, focus on others.

  He began to rely on Yagharek’s interest. If too many days passed without the garuda appearing, Isaac became distracted. He spent those hours watching the enormous caterpillar.

  The creature had gorged itself on dreamshit for nearly a fortnight, growing and growing. When it had reached three feet in length, Isaac had nervously stopped feeding it. Its cage was getting much too small. That would have to be the full extent of its size. It had spent the next day or two wandering around hopefully in its little space, waving its nose in the air. Since then it seemed to have resigned itself to the fact that it would get no more food. Its original desperate hunger had subsided.

  It was not moving very much, just shifting around now and then, undulating once or twice the width of the cage, stretching as if yawning. For the most part it just sat and pulsed slightly in and out, with breath or heartbeat or what, Isaac did not know. It looked healthy enough. It looked as if it was waiting.

  Sometimes, as he had dropped the gobs of dreamshit into the caterpillar’s eager mandibles, Isaac had found himself reflecting on his own experience with the drug with a faint, querulous longing. This was not the delusion of nostalgia. Isaac vividly remembered the sense of being awash in filth; of being sullied at the most profound level; the nauseating, disorientating sickness; the panicked confusion of losing himself in a welter of emotion, and losing the confusion, and mistaking it for another mind’s invading fears . . . And yet, despite the vehemence of those recollections, he found himself eyeing his caterpillar’s breakfasts with a speculative air—perhaps even a hungry one.

  Isaac was very disturbed by these feelings. He had always been unashamedly cowardly when it came to drugs. As a student, there had been plenty of loose, smelly fogweed cigarillos, of course, and the inane giggles that went with that. But Isaac had never had the stomach for anything stronger. These inchoate rumblings of a new appetite did nothing to allay his fears. He did not know how addictive dreamshit was, if at all, but he sternly refused to give
in to those faint stirrings of curiosity.

  The dreamshit was for his caterpillar, and for it alone.

  Isaac channelled his curiosity from sensual into intellectual currents. He knew only two chymists personally, both unutterable prudes with whom he would no more raise the question of illegal drugs than he would dance naked down the middle of Tervisadd Way. Instead, he raised the subject of dreamshit in the louche taverns of Salacus Fields. Several of his acquaintances turned out to have sampled the drug, and a few were regular users.

  Dreamshit did not seem to differ in effect between the races. No one knew where the drug came from, but all who admitted to taking it sang paeans of praise to its extraordinary effects. The only thing they all agreed on was that dreamshit was expensive, and getting more so. Not that this put them off their habits. The artists in particular spoke in quasi-mystical terms of communing with other minds. Isaac scoffed at this, claiming (without acknowledging his own limited experience) that the drug was no more than a powerful oneirogen, that stimulated the dream-centres of the brain as very-tea stimulated the visual and olfactory cortexes.

  He did not believe it himself. He was not surprised at the vehement opposition to his theory.

  “I don’t know how, ’Zaac,” Thighs Growing had hissed at him reverentially, “but it lets you share dreams . . .” At this, the other users crammed into a little booth in The Clock and Cockerel had nodded in time, comically. Isaac affected a sceptical face, to maintain his role of killjoy. Actually, of course, he agreed. He intended to find out more about the extraordinary substance—Lemuel Pigeon would be the person to ask, or Lucky Gazid, if he ever reappeared—but the pace of his work in crisis theory overtook him. His attitude to the dreamshit he had shoved into the grub’s cage remained one of curiosity, nervousness and ignorance.

  Isaac was staring uneasily at the vast creature one warm day in late Melluary. It was, he decided, more than prodigious. It was more than a very big caterpillar. It was definitely a monster. He resented it for being so damn interesting. Otherwise he could have just forgotten about it.

  The door below him was pushed open, and Yagharek appeared in the shafts of early sun. It was rare, very rare for the garuda to come before nightfall. Isaac started and leapt to his feet, beckoning his client up the stairs.

  “Yag, old son! Long time no see! I was drifting. I need you to tether me. Get on up here.”

  Yagharek mounted the stairs wordlessly.

  “How do you know when Lub and David are going to be out, eh?” asked Isaac. “You keep watch, or something creepy, right? Damn, Yag, you’ve got to stop skulking around like a fucking mugger.”

  “I would talk to you, Grimnebulin.” Yagharek’s voice was oddly tentative.

  “Fire away, old son.” Isaac sat and watched him. He knew by now that Yagharek would not sit.

  Yagharek took off his cloak and wing-frame and turned to Isaac with folded arms. Isaac understood this to be as close as Yagharek would ever get to expressing trust, standing with his deformity in full view, making no effort to cover himself. Isaac supposed he should feel flattered.

  Yagharek was eyeing him sideways.

  “There are people in the night-city where I live, Grimnebulin, from many kinds of lives. It is not all flotsam that hide themselves.”

  “I never presumed it was . . .” Isaac began, but Yagharek twitched his head impatiently, and Isaac was silent.

  “Many nights I spend in silence and alone, but there are other times I talk to those with minds still sharp under a patina of alcohol and loneliness and drugs.” Isaac wanted to say, “I’ve said we could work out a place for you to stay,” but he stopped himself. Isaac wanted to see where this was heading. “There is a man, an educated, drunken man. I am not sure he believes me real. He may think me a recurring hallucination.” Yagharek breathed deeply. “I spoke to him about your theories, your crisis, and I was excited. And the man said to me . . . the man said to me ‘Why not go all the way? Why not use the Torque?’ “

  There was a very long silence. Isaac shook his head in exasperation and disgust.

  “I am here to put the question to you, Grimnebulin,” Yagharek continued. “Why do we not use the Torque? You are trying to create a science from scratch, Grimnebulin, but Torquic energy exists, techniques to tap it are known . . . I ask as an ignorant, Grimnebulin. Why do you not use the Torque?”

  Isaac sighed very deeply and kneaded his face. Part of him was angry, but mostly he was just anxious, desperate to put a stop to this talk immediately. He turned to the garuda, and held up his hand.

  “Yagharek . . .” he began, and at that moment, there was a bang on the door.

  “Hello?” a cheerful voice yelled. Yagharek stiffened. Isaac leapt to his feet. The timing was extraordinary.

  “Who is it?” yelled Isaac, bounding down the stairs.

  A man poked his face round the door. He looked amiable, almost absurdly so.

  “Hullo there, squire. I’ve come about the construct.”

  Isaac shook his head. He had no idea what the man was talking about. He glanced up behind him, but Yagharek was invisible. He had stepped out of sight away from the edge of the platform. The man in the doorway handed Isaac a card.

  NATHANIEL ORRIABEN’S CONSTRUCT REPAIRS AND REPLACEMENTS it said. QUALITY & CARE AT REASONABLE RATES.

  “Gent came in yesterday. Name of . . . Serachin?” suggested the man, reading from a sheet. “Told us his cleaning model . . . um . . . EKB4C was playing up. Thought it might have a virus and whatnot. I was due tomorrow, but I’ve just come back from another job local and I thought I’d chance that someone was in.” The man smiled brightly. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his oily coveralls.

  “Right,” said Isaac. “Um . . . Look. Not the best time . . .”

  “Righto! Your decision, obviously. Only . . .” The man looked around him before he went on, as if he was about to share a secret. Reassured that no one would hear him who should not, he went on, confidentially. “Thing is, squire, I may not be able to do the appointment tomorrow as originally planned . . .” The face he offered was cod-apology of the most exaggerated kind. “I can happily do my thing over in the corner, won’t make a sound. Take me about an hour if I can do it here, otherwise it’s a job for the repair shop. I’ll know which in five minutes. Otherwise I shan’t be able to do it for a week, I think.”

  “Oh, arse. Right . . . Look, I’m in a meeting upstairs, and it’s absolutely vital that you don’t interrupt us. Seriously. Is that going to be all right?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I’m just going to take the screwdriver to the old cleaner and then give you a little yell when I know what the score is, all right?”

  “Right. So I can just leave you to it?”

  “Perfecto.” The man was already heading towards the cleaning construct, carrying a toolcase. Lublamai had turned the cleaner on that morning, and punched in instructions for it to wash his study area, but it had been a forlorn hope. The construct had puttered in circles for twenty minutes, then stopped, leaning against the wall. It was still there, three hours later, emitting unhappy little clicks, its three attachment-limbs spasming.

  The repairman strode over to the thing, muttering and clucking like a concerned parent. He felt the construct’s limbs, flipped a fob-watch out of his pocket and timed the twitching. He scribbled something in a little notebook. He swivelled the cleaning construct to face him, and gazed into one of its glass irises. He moved his pencil slowly from one side to another, watching the tracking of the sensory engine.

  Isaac was half watching the repairman, but his attention kept flickering back upstairs to where Yagharek waited. This business with the Torque, Isaac thought nervously. It can’t wait.

  “So you all right there?” Isaac shouted nervously at the repairman.

  The man was opening his case and taking out a large screwdriver. He looked up at Isaac.

  “No problem, guv,” he said, and waved his screwdriver cheerfully. He looked back at the construct a
nd shut it off at the switch behind the neck. Its anguished creaks died in a grateful whisper. He began to unscrew the panel behind the thing’s “head,” a roughcast chunk of grey metal at the top of its cylindrical body.

  “Right then,” said Isaac, and jogged back up the stairs.

  Yagharek was standing by Isaac’s desk, well out of sight of the floor below. He looked up as Isaac returned.

  “It’s nothing,” said Isaac quietly. “Someone to fix our construct, which has gone belly-up. I’m just wondering if we’re going to be heard . . .”

  Yagharek opened his mouth to reply, and a thin, discordant whistling sounded up from the floor below. Yagharek’s mouth hung open for a moment, stupidly.

  “Looks like we needn’t have worried,” Isaac said, and grinned. He’s doing that deliberately! he thought. So’s to let me know he’s not listening. Polite of him. Isaac inclined his head in unseen thanks to the repairman.

  Then his mind returned to the business in hand, to Yagharek’s tentative suggestion, and his smile vanished. He sat heavily on his bed, ran his hands through his thick hair and stared up at Yagharek.

  “You never sit, Yag, do you?” he said quietly. “Now why’s that?”

  He drummed his fingers against the side of his head and thought. Eventually he spoke.

  “Yag, old son . . . You’ve already impressed me as to your . . . amazing library, right? I want to throw two names out there, see what they mean to you. What do you know about Suroch, or the Cacotopic Stain?”

  There was a long silence. Yagharek was looking slightly up, through the window.

  “The Cacotopic Stain I know, of course. That is always what one hears when the Torque is discussed. Perhaps it is a bogeyman.” Isaac could not distinguish moods in Yagharek’s voice, but his words were defensive. “Perhaps we should overcome our fear. And Suroch . . . I have read your histories, Grimnebulin. War is always . . . a vile time . . .”

  As Yagharek spoke, Isaac stood and walked to his chaotic bookshelves, flicking through the stacked volumes. He returned with a slim, hardbacked folio book. He opened it in front of Yagharek.