Stair by stair he ascended. He felt no surprise and only a very dull foreboding as he saw pools of weird spittle on each stair, saw the fresh scrapings left by some sharp-clawed newcomer. He heard his own heart pulsing with what seemed tranquillity, and he wondered if he was numb to shock.
But when he reached the top and turned to see the hutch thrown on its side, its thick wire mesh burst from within, little fingers of metal exploding away from the central hole, and when he saw the chrysalis split and empty and saw the trail of dark juices dribbling from within its husk, Isaac heard himself cry out aghast and felt his body shudder into immobility as an icy tide of gooseflesh swept him up. Horror billowed up within him and around him like ink in water.
“Oh dear gods . . .” he whispered through dry and quivering lips. “Oh Jabber . . . what have I done?”
The New Crobuzon militia did not like to be seen. They emerged in their dark uniforms at night, to perform duties such as fishing the dead from the river. Their airships and pods meandered and buzzed over the city with opaque ends. Their towers were sealed.
The militia, New Crobuzon’s military defence and its internal correction agents, only appeared in their uniforms, the infamous full-face masks and dark armour, the shields and flintlocks, when they were acting as guards at some sensitive locus, or at times of great emergency. They wore their colours openly during the Pirate Wars and the Sacramundi Riots, when enemies attacked the city’s order from without or within.
For their day-to-day duties they relied on their reputation and on their vast network of informers—rewards for information were generous—and plain-clothed officers. When the militia struck, it was the man drinking cassis in the café, the old woman weighed down with bags, the clerk in stiff collar and polished shoes who suddenly reached over their heads and pulled hoods from invisible folds in the cloth, who slipped enormous flintlocks from hidden holsters and poured into criminal dens. When a cutpurse ran from a shouting victim, it might be a portly man with a bushy moustache (palpably false, everyone would reflect afterwards, why had they not noticed that before?) who would grab the offender in a punishing necklock and disappear with him or her into the crowd, or a militia tower.
And afterwards, no witness could say for sure what those agents had looked like in their civilian guise. And no one would ever see the clerk or the portly man or any of them again, in that part of the city.
It was policing by decentralized fear.
It had been four in the morning when the prostitute and her client had been found in Brock Marsh. The two men walking the dark alleys with their hands in their pockets and their heads jaunty had paused, seeing the crumpled shape in the dim gaslight. Their demeanour had changed. They had looked about them, then trotted into the cul-de-sac.
They found the stupefied pair lying across each other, their eyes glazed and vacant, their breath ragged and smelling of cloying citrus. The man’s trousers and pants were dropped around his ankles, exposing his shrivelled penis. The woman’s clothes—her skirt complete with the surreptitious slit many prostitutes used to finish their work quickly—were intact. When the newcomers had failed to wake them, one man had remained with the mute bodies and the other had run off into the darkness. Both men had pulled dark hoods over their heads.
Some while later a black carriage had pulled up, drawn by two enormous horses, Remade with horns and fangs that glinted with slaver. A small corps of uniformed militia had leapt to the ground and, without words, had pulled the comatose victims into the darkness of the cab, which had sped off towards the Spike that towered over the centre of the city.
The two men remained behind. They waited until the carriage had disappeared over the cobbles of the labyrinthine quarter. Then they looked about them carefully, taking stock of the sparse harvest of lights that glinted from the backs of buildings and outhouses, from behind crumbling walls and through the thin fingers of fruit trees in gardens. Satisfied that they were unobserved, they slipped off their hoods and thrust their hands back into their pockets. They melted suddenly into a different character, laughing quietly with each other and chatting urbanely as, innocuous again, they resumed their graveyard-shift patrol.
In the catacombs under the Spike, the limp pair of foundlings were prodded and slapped, shouted at and cajoled. By early morning they had been examined by a militia scientist, who scribbled a preliminary report.
Heads were scratched in perplexity.
The scientist’s report, along with condensed information on all other unusual or serious crimes, was sent up the length of the Spike, stopping at the highest floor but one. The reports were couriered briskly the length of a twisting, windowless corridor, towards the offices of the home secretary. They arrived on time, by half past nine.
At twelve minutes past ten, a speaking tube began to bang peremptorily in the cavernous pod-station that took up the whole floor at the very top of the Spike. The young sergeant on duty was on the other side of the room, fixing a cracked light on the front of a pod that hung, like tens of others, from an intricate cat’s cradle of skyrails which looped and criss-crossed each other below the high ceiling. The tangled rails allowed the pods to be moved around each other, positioned on one or other of the seven radial skyrails that exploded out through the enormous open holes spaced evenly around the outside wall. The tracks took off above the colossal face of New Crobuzon.
From where he stood, the sergeant could see the skyrail enter the militia tower in Sheck a mile to the south-west, and emerge beyond it. He saw a pod leave the tower, way over the shambolic housing, virtually at his own eye-level, and shoot off away from him towards the Tar, which trickled sinuous and untrustworthy to the south.
He looked up as the banging continued, and, realizing which tube demanded attention, he swore and rushed across the room. His furs flapped. Even in summer, it was cold so high above the city, in an open room that functioned as a giant wind tunnel. He pulled the plug from the speaking tube and barked into the brass.
“Yes, Home Secretary?”
The voice that emerged was small and distorted by its journey through the twisting metal.
“Get my pod ready immediately. I’m going to Strack Island.”
The doors to the Lemquist Room, the mayor’s office in Parliament, were huge and bound in bands of ancient iron. There were two militia stationed outside the Lemquist Room at all times, but one of the usual perks of a posting in the corridors of power was denied them: no gossip, no secrets, no sounds of any kind filtered to their ears through the enormous doors.
Behind the metal-girdled entrance, the room itself was immensely tall, panelled in darkwood of such exquisite quality it was almost black. Portraits of previous mayors circled the room, from the ceiling thirty feet above, spiralling slowly down to within six feet of the floor. There was an enormous window that looked out directly at Perdido Street Station and the Spike, and a variety of speaking tubes, calculating engines and telescopic periscopes stashed in niches around the room, in obscure and oddly threatening poses.
Bentham Rudgutter sat behind his desk with an air of utter command. None who had seen him in this room had been able to deny the extraordinary surety of absolute power he exuded. He was the centre of gravity here. He knew it at a deep level, and so did his guests. His great height and muscular corpulence doubtless added to the sense, but there was far more to his presence.
Opposite him sat MontJohn Rescue, his vizier, wrapped as always in a thick scarf and leaning over to point out something on a paper the two men were studying.
“Two days,” said Rescue in a strange, unmodulated voice, quite different from the one he used for oratory.
“And what?” said Rudgutter, stroking his immaculate goatee.
“The strike goes up. Currently, you know, it’s delaying loading and unloading by between fifty and seventy per cent. But we’ve got intelligence that in two days the vodyanoi strikers plan to paralyse the river. They’re going to work overnight, starting at the bottom, working their way u
p. A little to the east of Barley Bridge. Massive exercise in watercræft. They’re going to dig a trench of air across the water, the whole depth of the river. They’ll have to shore it up continuously, recræfting the walls constantly so they don’t collapse, but they’ve got enough members to do that in shifts. There’s no ship that can jump that gap, Mayor. They’ll totally cut off New Crobuzon from river trade, in both directions.”
Rudgutter mused and pursed his lips.
“We can’t allow that,” he said reasonably. “What about the human dockers?”
“My second point, Mayor,” continued Rescue. “Worrying. The initial hostility seems to be waning. There’s a growing minority who seem to be ready to throw in their lot with the vodyanoi.”
“Oh, no no no no,” said Rudgutter, shaking his head like a teacher correcting a normally reliable student.
“Quite. Obviously our agents are stronger in the human camp than the xenian, and the mainstream are still antagonistic or undecided about the strike, but there seems to be a caucus, a conspiracy, if you will . . . secret meetings with strikers and the like.”
Rudgutter spread his enormous fingers and looked closely at the grain of the desk between them.
“Any of your people there?” he asked quietly. Rescue fingered his scarf.
“One with the humans,” he answered. “It is difficult to remain hidden on the vodyanoi, who usually wear no clothes in the water.” Rudgutter nodded.
The two men were silent, pondering.
“We’ve tried working from the inside,” said Rudgutter eventually. “This is far the most serious strike to threaten the city for . . . over a century. Much as I’m loath to, it seems we may have to make an example . . .” Rescue nodded solemnly.
One of the speaking tubes on the mayor’s desk thumped. He raised his eyebrows as he unplugged it.
“Davinia?” he answered. His voice was a masterpiece of insinuation. In one word he told his secretary that he was surprised to have her interrupt him against his instructions, but that his trust in her was great, and he was quite sure she had an excellent reason for disobeying, which she had better tell him immediately.
The hollow, echoing voice from the tube barked out tiny little sounds.
“Well!” exclaimed the mayor mildly. “Of course, of course.” He replugged the tube and eyed Rescue. “What timing,” he said. “It’s the home secretary.”
The enormous doors opened briefly and slightly, and the home secretary entered, nodding in greeting.
“Eliza,” said Rudgutter. “Please join us.” He gesticulated at a chair by Rescue’s.
Eliza Stem-Fulcher strode over to the desk. It was impossible to tell her age. Her face was virtually unlined, its strong features suggesting that she was probably somewhere in her thirties. Her hair, though, was white, with only the faintest peppering of dark strands to suggest that it had once been another colour. She wore a dark civilian trouser suit, cleverly chosen in cut and colour to be strongly suggestive of a militia uniform. She drew gently on a long-stemmed white clay pipe, the bowl at least a foot and a half from her mouth. Her tobacco was spiced.
“Mayor. Deputy.” She sat and pulled a folder from under her arm. “Forgive me interrupting unannounced, Mayor Rudgutter, but I thought you should see this immediately. You too, Rescue. I’m glad you’re here. It looks as if we may have . . . something of a crisis on our hands.”
“We were saying much the same thing, Eliza,” said the mayor. “We’re talking about the dock strike?”
Stem-Fulcher glanced up at him as she drew some papers from the folder.
“No, Mr. Mayor. Something altogether different.” Her voice was resonant and hard.
She threw a crime report onto the desk. Rudgutter put it sideways between himself and Rescue, and both twisted their heads to read it together. After a minute Rudgutter looked up.
“Two people in some sort of coma. Odd circumstances. I presume you are showing me more than this?”
Stem-Fulcher handed him another paper. Again, he and Rescue read together. This time, the reaction was almost immediate. Rescue hissed and bit the inside of his cheek, chewing with concentration. At almost the same time, Rudgutter gave a little sigh of comprehension, a tremulous little exhalation.
The home secretary watched them impassively.
“Obviously, our mole in Motley’s offices doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s totally confused. But the snatches of conversation she’s noted down . . . see this? ‘The moss are out . . . ?’ I think we can all agree that she misheard that, and I think we can all agree on what was really said.”
Rudgutter and Rescue read and reread the report wordlessly.
“I’ve brought the scientific report we commissioned at the very start of the SM project, the feasibility study.” Stem-Fulcher was speaking quickly, without emotion. She dropped the report flat on the desk. “I’ve drawn your attention to a few particularly relevant phrases.”
Rudgutter opened the bound report. Some words and sentences were circled in red. The mayor scanned them quickly: . . . extreme danger . . . in case of escape . . . no natural predators . . .
. . . utterly catastrophic . . .
. . . breed . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mayor Rudgutter reached out and unplugged his speaking tube again.
“Davinia,” he said. “Cancel all appointments and meetings for today . . . no, for the next two days. Apologies wherever necessary. No disturbances unless Perdido Street Station explodes, or something of that magnitude. Understood?”
He replaced the plug and glared at Stem-Fulcher and Rescue.
“What by damn, what in Jabber’s name, what the godshit was Motley playing at? I thought the man was supposed to be a professional . . .”
Stem-Fulcher nodded.
“This was something that came up when we were arranging the transfer deal,” she said. “We checked his record of activity—much of it against us, it has to be pointed out—and gauged him to be at least as capable as ourselves of ensuring security. He’s no fool.”
“Do we know who’s done this?” asked Rescue. Stem-Fulcher shrugged.
“Could be a rival, Francine or Judix or someone. If so, they’ve bitten off a godsdamned sight more than they can chew . . .”
“Right.” Rudgutter interrupted her with a peremptory tone. Stem-Fulcher and Rescue turned to him and waited. He clenched his fists together, put his elbows on the table and closed his eyes, concentrating so hard that his face seemed ready to splinter.
“Right,” he repeated, and opened his eyes. “First thing we have to do is verify that we are faced with the situation that we think we’re faced with. That might seem obvious, but we have to be a hundred per cent sure. Second thing is come out with some kind of strategy for containing the situation quickly and quietly.
“Now, for the second objective, we all know we can’t rely on human militia or Remade—or xenians come to that. Same basic psychic type. We’re all food. I’m sure we all remember our initial attack-defence tests . . .” Rescue and Stem-Fulcher nodded quickly. Rudgutter continued. “Right. Zombies might be a possibility, but this is not Cromlech: we don’t have the facilities to create them in the numbers or quality that we need. So. It seems to me that the first objective can’t satisfactorily be dealt with if we’re relying on our regular intelligence operations. We have to have access to different information. So for two reasons, we have to elicit assistance from agents better able to deal with the situation—different psychic models from our own are vital. Now, it seems to me there are two possible such agents, and that we have little choice but to approach at least one of them.”
He was silent, taking in Stem-Fulcher and Rescue with his eyes, one by one. He waited for dissent. There was none.
“Are we agreed?” he asked quietly.
“We’re talking about the ambassador, aren’t we?” said Stem-Fulcher. “And what else . . . you don’t mean the Weaver?” Her eyes furrowed in dismay.
�
�Well, hopefully it won’t come to that,” said Rudgutter reassuringly. “But yes, those are the two . . . ah . . . agents I can think of. In that order.”
“Agreed,” said Stem-Fulcher quickly. “As long as it’s in that order. The Weaver . . . Jabber! Let’s talk to the ambassador.”
“MontJohn?” Rudgutter turned to his deputy.
Rescue nodded slowly, fingering his scarf.
“The ambassador,” he said slowly. “And I hope that will be all we need.”
“As do we all, Deputy Mayor,” said Rudgutter. “As do we all.”
Between the eleventh and fourteenth floors of the Mandragorae Wing of Perdido Street Station, above one of the less popular commercial concourses that specialized in old fabrics and foreign batiks, below a series of long-deserted turrets, was the Diplomatic Zone.
Many of the embassies in New Crobuzon were elsewhere, of course: baroque buildings in Nigh Sump or East Gidd or Flag Hill. But several were there in the station: enough to give those floors their name and let them keep it.
The Mandragorae Wing was almost a self-contained keep. Its corridors described a huge concrete rectangle around a central space, at the bottom of which was an unkempt garden, overgrown with darkwood trees and exotic woodland flowers. Children scampered along the paths and played in this sheltered park while their parents shopped or travelled or worked. The walls rose enormously around them, making the copse seem like moss at the bottom of a well.
From the corridors on the upper floors sprouted sets of interconnected rooms. Many had been ministerial offices at one time. For a short while, each had been the headquarters of some small company or other. Then they had been empty for many years, until the mould and rot had been swept away and ambassadors had moved in. That was a little more than two centuries previously, when a communal understanding had swept the various governments of Rohagi that from now on diplomacy would be greatly preferable to war.
There had been embassies in New Crobuzon far longer. But after the carnage in Suroch put a bloody end to what were called the Pirate Wars or the Slow War or the False War, the number of countries and city-states seeking negotiated resolutions to disputes had multiplied enormously. Emissaries had arrived from across the continent and beyond. The deserted floors of the Mandragorae Wing had been overrun by the newcomers, and by older consulates relocating to tap the new welter of diplomatic business.
Perdido Street Station Page 28
