Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  She had found his razor, with a little stubble and bloodrust still staining its blade. The torn remnants of a pair of trousers. A piece of paper discoloured with his blood from where she had rubbed and rubbed it against a red stain on the wall. The last two issues of Runagate Rampant that she had found under the ruins of his bed.

  Umma Balsum watched the pathetic collection emerge.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “I . . . I think he’s in the Spike,” said Derkhan.

  “Well, that’s going to cost you an extra noble straight off,” said Umma Balsum tartly. “Don’t like tangling with the law. Talk me through this stuff.”

  Derkhan showed her each of the pieces she had brought. Umma Balsum nodded at each briefly, but seemed particularly interested in the issues of RR.

  “He wrote for this, did he?” she asked keenly, fingering the papers.

  “Yes.” Derkhan did not volunteer the information that he edited it. She was nervous of breaking the taboo against naming names, even though she had been assured that the communicatrix was trustworthy. Umma Balsum’s livelihood depended for the most part on contacting people in the militia’s possession. Selling out her clients would be a financial miscalculation. “This—” Derkhan turned to the central column, with the headline What We Think “—he wrote this.”

  “Ahhh . . .” said Umma Balsum. “Shame you don’t have it in his original scripture. But this ain’t bad. Got anything else peculiar on him?”

  “He has a tattoo. Above his left bicep. Like this.” Derkhan brought out the sketch she had made of the ornate anchor decoration.

  “Sailor?”

  Derkhan smiled mirthlessly.

  “Got discharged and banged up without setting foot on a ship. Got drunk when he joined up and insulted his captain before the tattoo was even dry.” She remembered him telling the story.

  “Righto,” said Umma Balsum. “Two marks for the attempt. Five marks connection fee if I get him, then two stivers a minute while we’re linked. And a noble on account of he’s in the Spike. Acceptable?” Derkhan nodded. It was expensive, but this kind of thaumaturgy was not just a question of learning a few passes. With enough training, anyone could effect the odd fumbling hex, but this kind of psychic channelling took a prodigious birth-talent and years of arduous study. Appearances and surroundings notwithstanding, Umma Balsum was no less a thaumaturgic expert than a senior Remaker or chimerist. Derkhan fumbled for her purse. “Pay after. We’ll see if we get through first.” Umma Balsum rolled up her left sleeve. Her flesh dimpled and wobbled loosely. “Draw me that tattoo. Make it as like the original as you can.” She nodded, indicating Derkhan to a stool in the corner of the room on which rested a palette with a collection of brushes and coloured inks.

  Derkhan brought the materials over. She began to sketch onto Umma Balsum’s arm. She cast her mind back desperately, trying to get the colours exactly right. It took her about twenty-five minutes to finish her attempt. The anchor she had drawn was a little more garish than Benjamin’s (partly a consequence of the quality of the inks), and perhaps somewhat squatter. Nonetheless, she was sure that anyone who knew the original would recognize hers as a copy of it. She sat back, tentatively satisfied.

  Umma Balsum waved her arm like a fat chicken’s wing, drying the inks. She fiddled with the remnants of Benjamin’s bedroom.

  “. . . bloody unhygenic bloody way to make a living . . .” she murmured, just loud enough for Derkhan to hear. Umma Balsum picked up Benjamin’s razor and, holding it with a practised grip, nicked herself slightly on the chin. She rubbed the bloodstained paper against her cut. Then she lifted up her skirt and pulled the trouser leg as far onto her fat thighs as it would go.

  Umma Balsum reached under the table and brought out a leather and darkwood box. She set it on the table and opened it.

  Inside was a tight, interlocking tangle of valves and tubes and wires, looping over and under each other in an incredibly dense engine. At its top was a ridiculous-looking brass helmet, with a kind of trumpet attachment jutting from the front. The helmet was tethered to the box by a long coiled wire.

  Umma Balsum reached out and extracted the helmet. She hesitated, then placed it on her head. She fastened the leather straps. From some hidden place inside the box she pulled out a large handle, which slotted neatly into a hexagonal hole at the side of the boxed engine. Umma Balsum placed the box at the edge of the table nearest Derkhan. She attached the engine to a chymical battery.

  “Righto,” said Umma Balsum, dabbing absent-mindedly at her still-dripping chin. “Now, you’ll have to get this going by winding that handle. Once the battery kicks in, you keep an eye on it. If it starts to play up, start winding that handle again. You let that current falter, we lose the connection, and without careful disengagement your mate risks losing his mind, and what’s worse so do I. So watch it close . . . Also, if we make contact, tell him not to move around or I’ll run out of cable.” She rattled the wire which attached her helmet to the engine. “Got me?” Derkhan nodded. “Right. Give me that thing he wrote. I’m going to get into character, try and harmonize. Start winding, and don’t stop till the battery takes over.”

  Umma Balsum stood and picked up her chair, shoving it back against the wall, puffing. Then she turned and stood in the relatively open space. She visibly braced herself, then drew a stopwatch out of her pocket, pressed the stud which turned it on and nodded at Derkhan.

  Derkhan began to wind the handle. It was mercifully smooth. She felt oiled gears inside the box begin to connect and catch, calculated tension biting against her arm, powering up the esoteric mechanisms. Umma Balsum had dropped the stopwatch on the table, was holding RR in her right hand, reading Benjamin’s words in an inaudible whisper, her lips moving quickly. She held her left hand slightly raised, and its fingers danced a complicated quadrille, inscribing some thaumaturgic symbols in the air.

  When she reached the end of his article she simply returned to the beginning and began it again, in an endless quick loop.

  The current flowed around and around the coiled wire, visibly jolting Umma Balsum, setting her head vibrating very slightly for a few seconds. She dropped the paper, continuing to recite Benjamin’s words sotto voce from memory. She turned slowly, her eyes quite vacant, shuffling her feet. As she turned, there was a second when the trumpet at the front of her helmet was directly pointed at Derkhan. For a split second, Derkhan felt a pulse of weird æthereo-mental waves buffet her psyche. She reeled slightly, but continued to turn the handle, until she felt another force take it and move it on, and she gently released her hand and watched it go. Umma Balsum moved until she was facing the north-west, until she was aligned with the Spike, out of sight in the centre of the city.

  Derkhan watched the battery and the engine, made sure it maintained a steady circuit.

  Umma Balsum closed her eyes. Her lips moved. The air in the room seemed to sing like a wine glass stroked on its rim.

  Then, suddenly, her body jerked violently. She shuddered. Her eyes snapped open.

  Derkhan stared at the communicatrix.

  Umma Balsum’s lank hair twisted like a boxful of bait worms. It slid back from her forehead and snaked backwards, into an approximation of the greased-down backwards sweep that Benjamin affected when he was not working. A ripple passed through Umma Balsum, from her feet up. It was as if a lightning tide swept along her subcutaneous fat, altering it slightly as it passed. When it had passed out through the crown of her head, her whole body had changed. She was no fatter, and no thinner, but the distribution of tissue had subtly modified her shape. She looked a little broader in the shoulders. Her jawline was more pronounced, and her ample jowls were somehow minimized.

  Bruises flowered on her face.

  She stood for a second, then collapsed suddenly onto all fours. Derkhan let out a little cry, but she saw that Umma Balsum’s eyes were still open and focused.

  Umma Balsum sat suddenly with her legs splayed out, her back leaning against
the sofa’s arm.

  Her eyes moved slowly up as a furrow of incomprehension ploughed her face. She looked up at Derkhan, still frantically staring. Umma Balsum’s mouth (now firmer and thinner lipped) opened in what looked like astonishment.

  “Dee?” she hissed in a voice that oscillated with a deeper echo.

  Derkhan gawped at Umma Balsum idiotically.

  “Ben . . . ?” she faltered.

  “How did you get in here?” hissed Umma Balsum, rising quickly. She squinted at Derkhan in awe. “I can see through you . . .”

  “Ben, listen to me.” Derkhan realized she had to calm him down. “Stop moving. You’re seeing me through a communicatrix who’s harmonized with you. She’s shut herself down into a totally passive recipient state so I can talk straight to you. D’you understand?”

  Umma Balsum, who was Ben, nodded quickly. S/he stopped moving, and sank again to her/his knees. “Where are you?” s/he whispered.

  “In Brock Marsh, down by the Coil. Ben, we don’t have much time. Where are you? What happened? Have they . . . have they . . . hurt you?” Derkhan exhaled tremulously, her tension and despair sweeping through her.

  Two miles away Ben shook his head miserably, and Derkhan saw it in front of her.

  “Not yet,” whispered Ben. “They’ve left me alone . . . for a while . . .”

  “How did they know where you were?” hissed Derkhan again.

  “Jabber, Dee, they’ve always known, haven’t they? I had fucking Rudgutter in here earlier, and he . . . and he was laughing at me. Telling me they’d always known where RR was, just couldn’t be bothered to pick us up.”

  “It was the strike . . .” said Derkhan miserably. “They decided we’d gone too far . . .”

  “No.”

  Derkhan looked up sharply. Ben’s voice, or the approximation that emerged from Umma Balsum’s mouth, was hard and clear. The eyes that gazed at her were steady and urgent.

  “No, Dee, it ain’t the strike. Dammit, I only wish we had the kind of impact on the strike that worried them. No, that’s a fucking cover story . . .”

  “So what . . . ?” began Derkhan hesitantly. Ben interrupted her.

  “I’ll tell you what I know. After I got here, Rudgutter comes in and he’s waving Double-R at me. And you know what he’s pointing at? That really fucking tentative story we had in the second section. ‘Rumours of Fat Sun Deal With Top Mobster.’ You know, the one from that contact I had that was saying the government sold some shit or other, some failed science project, to some crim. Nothing! We had nothing! It was just shit-stirring we were doing! And Rudgutter’s waving it around, and he . . . he’s shoving it in my face . . .” Umma Balsum’s eyes slid away into reverie for a moment as Ben remembered. “He’s on and on at me. ‘What d’ye know about this, Mr. Flex? Who’s your source? What do you know about the moths?’ Seriously! Moths, as in butterflies! ‘;What do you know about Mr. M.’s recent problems?’ “

  Ben shook Umma Balsum’s head slowly. “Did you get all that? Dee, I dunno what the fuck we’re onto here, but we’ve opened up some story which . . . Jabber! . . . which’s got Rudgutter crapping himself. That’s why he took me! He kept saying ‘If you know where the moths are, it’d be best to tell me.’ Dee . . .” Ben staggered carefully to his feet. Derkhan opened her mouth to warn him about moving away, but her words died as he moved carefully towards her on Umma Balsum’s legs. “Dee, you have to chase this. They’re scared, Dee. They’re really scared. We’ve got to use this. I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was on about, but I think he thought I was acting, and I started milking it, ’cause it was making him uncomfortable.”

  Tentatively, carefully, nervously, Ben reached out with Umma Balsum’s hands towards Derkhan. Derkhan’s throat caught as she saw that Ben was crying. Tears rolled down his face without him making a sound. She bit her lip.

  “What’s that whirring noise, Dee?” asked Ben.

  “It’s the motor to the communicating engine. It has to keep going,” she said.

  Umma Balsum’s head nodded.

  Her hands touched Derkhan’s. Derkhan trembled at the touch. She felt Ben clutch her free hand, kneeling before her.

  “I can feel you . . .” Ben smiled. “You’re only half visible, like a fucking spook . . . but I can feel you.” He stopped smiling and groped for words. “Dee . . . I . . . they’re going to kill me. Oh Jabber . . .” he breathed out. “I’m scared. I know these . . . scum . . . will use pain on me . . .” His shoulders shuddered up and down as he lost control of his sobs. He was silent for a minute, looking down, weeping silently for fear. When he looked up, his voice was solid.

  “Fuck ’em! We’ve got the bastards running scared, Dee. You’ve got to chase it! I hereby appoint you editor of fucking Runagate Rampant . . .” He grinned fleetingly. “Listen. Go to Mafaton. I’ve only met her twice, in cafés near there, but I think that’s where she lives, the contact—we met late, and I doubt she’d have wanted to find her way back across the city on her own after, so I’m figuring she’s from round there. Her name’s Magesta Barbile. She hasn’t told me much. Just that some project she was working on in R&D—she’s a scientist—the government terminated and sold off to a crime boss. I thought it could all be a wind-up; I published out of fucking mischief more than ’cause it was a real story. But my gods, the reaction vindicates it.”

  Now Derkhan was crying, a little. She nodded.

  “I’ll chase it, Ben. Promise.”

  Ben nodded. There was a moment of silence.

  “Dee . . .” said Ben eventually. “I . . . I don’t suppose there’s anything you could do with that communico-wossname that would . . . I don’t suppose . . . you can’t kill me, can you?”

  Derkhan let out a gasp of shock and grief.

  She looked around desperately and shook her head.

  “No, Ben. I could only do that by killing the communicatrix . . .”

  Ben nodded sadly.

  “I really don’t know as I’m going to be able to . . . hold back from letting some stuff slip . . . Jabber knows I’ll try, Dee . . . but they’re experts, you know? And I . . . well . . . might as well get it all over with, know what I mean?”

  Derkhan was holding her eyes closed. She wept for Ben, and with him.

  “Oh gods, Ben, I’m so sorry . . .”

  He was suddenly, ostentatiously brave. Stiff-jawed. Pugnacious. “I’ll do me best. Just you make damn sure you chase Barbile, all right?”

  She nodded.

  “And . . . thanks,” he said with a wry smile. “And . . . goodbye.”

  He bit his lip, looked down, then up again and kissed her on the cheek for a long time. Derkhan held him close with her left arm.

  And then Benjamin Flex broke away and stepped back, and with some mental reflex invisible to the distraught Derkhan, he told Umma Balsum that it was time for them to disengage.

  The communicatrix rippled again, quivered and staggered, and with an almost palpable gust of relief her body collapsed back into its own shape.

  The battery continued winding the little handle until Umma Balsum righted herself and walked closer, laid a peremptory hand on it. She stopped the watch on the table, and said: “That’s it, dear.”

  Derkhan stretched out and laid her head on the table. She wept in silence. Across the city, Benjamin Flex was doing the same.

  Both of them alone.

  It was only two or three minutes before Derkhan sniffed sharply and sat up. Umma Balsum was sitting in her chair, calculating sums on a scrap of paper with great efficiency.

  She glanced over at the sound of Derkhan’s brisk attempts to reassert control over herself.

  “Feeling better, deario?” she asked breezily. “I’ve worked out your charge.”

  There was a moment when Derkhan felt sick at the woman’s callousness, but it came and went quickly. Derkhan did not know if Umma Balsum could recall what she heard and said when she was harmonized. And then even if she did, Derkhan’s was only one tragedy in the h
undreds and thousands throughout the city. Umma Balsum made her money as a go-between, and her mouth had told story after faltered story of loss and betrayal and torture and misery.

  There was a certain obscure, lonely comfort for Derkhan in realizing that hers and Ben’s was not a special, not an unusual suffering. Ben’s would not be a special death.

  “Look.” Umma Balsum was waving her piece of paper at Derkhan. “Two marks plus five for connection is seven. I was there for eleven minutes, which makes twenty-two stivers: that’s two and tuppence, brings it to nine marks two. Plus a noble for Spike danger money, and you’re looking at one noble nine and two.”

  Derkhan gave her two nobles and left.

  She walked quickly, without thinking, tracing her way through the streets of Brock Marsh. She re-entered the inhabited streets, where the people she passed were more than shifty-looking figures skulking hurriedly from shadow to shadow. Derkhan shouldered through stallholders and vendors of cheap and dubious potions.

  She realized that she was making her way towards Isaac’s laboratory-house. He was a close friend, and something of a political comrade. He had not known Ben—had not even heard his name—but he would understand the scale of what had happened. He might have some idea of what to do . . . and if not, well, Derkhan would make do with a strong coffee and some comforting.

  His door was locked. There was no answer from within. Derkhan almost wailed. She was about to wander off into lonely misery when she remembered Isaac’s enthusiastic descriptions of some vile pub that he frequented on the river’s bank, The Dead Child or something. She turned down the little alley beside the house and looked up and down the pathway by the water, flagstones broken and erupting with tenacious grass.

  The dirty lapping waves tugged organic filth gently towards the east. Across the Canker, the opposite bank was choked in snarls of bramble and thickets of serpentine weeds. A little way to the north on Derkhan’s side, some tumbledown establishment huddled by the trail. She walked towards it tentatively, speeding up when she saw the stained and peeling sign: The Dying Child.