Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  Derkhan was staring at him curiously.

  She spoke slowly.

  “You must be thinking of Lin all the time,” she said.

  Isaac looked away. He said nothing for a moment. Then he gave a quick nod.

  “Always,” he said abruptly, his face collapsing into the most shocking sadness. “Always. I can’t . . . I haven’t time to mourn. Yet.”

  A little way away, the road curved and separated into a small clutch of alleys. From one of these hidden culs-de-sac came a sudden metallic bang. Isaac and Derkhan tensed and flinched backwards against the chainlink fence.

  There was a whispering, and Lemuel peered around the corner of the alley.

  He caught sight of Isaac and Derkhan, grinned triumphantly. He pushed his hands in a shoving motion, indicating that they should get into the dump. They turned and found their way to the tear in the wire mesh, checked that they were not watched and wriggled through into the wasteground.

  They moved quickly away from the street and turned corners in the muck, until they crouched in a space that was hidden from the city. Within two minutes, Lemuel came loping after them.

  “Afternoon, all,” he grinned, triumphantly.

  “How did you get here?” said Isaac.

  Lemuel sniggered. “Sewers. Got to keep out of sight. Not so dangerous with the lot I’m with.” His smile faltered as he took them in. “Where’s Yagharek?” he said.

  “He insisted that he had to go somewhere. We told him to stay, but he wasn’t having any of it. He says he’ll find us here tomorrow at six.”

  Lemuel swore.

  “Why did you let him go? What if they pick him up?”

  “Damn, Lem, what in Jabber’s name was I supposed to do?” hissed Isaac. “I can’t sit on him. Maybe it’s some damn religious thing, some bloody Cymek mystical rubbish. Maybe he thinks he’s about to die and he has to say goodbye to his damn ancestors. I told him not to, he said he was going to.”

  “Fine, whatever,” muttered Lemuel irritably. He turned to look back behind him. Isaac saw a small group of figures approaching. “These are our employees. I’m paying them, Isaac, and you’re owing me.”

  There were three of them. They were immediately and absolutely recognizable as adventurers; rogues who wandered the Ragamoll and the Cymek and Fellid and probably the whole of Bas-Lag. They were hardy and dangerous, lawless, stripped of allegiance or morality, living off their wits, stealing and killing, hiring themselves out to whoever and whatever came. They were inspired by dubious virtues.

  A few performed useful services: research, cartography and the like. Most were nothing but tomb raiders. They were scum who died violent deaths, hanging on to a certain cachet among the impressionable through their undeniable bravery and their occasionally impressive exploits.

  Isaac and Derkhan eyed them without enthusiasm.

  “This,” said Lemuel, pointing to them each in turn, “is Shadrach, Pengefinchess and Tansell.”

  The three looked at Isaac and Derkhan with ruthless, swaggering arrogance.

  Shadrach and Tansell were human, Pengefinchess was vodyanoi. Shadrach was obviously the hard man of the group. Large and sturdy, he wore a miscellaneous collection of armour, studded leather and flat, hammered pieces of iron strapped to shoulders, front and back. It was spattered with slime from the sewers. He followed Isaac’s eyes to his outfit.

  “Lemuel told us to expect trouble,” he said in a curiously melodic voice. “We came dressed for the occasion.”

  In his belt swung an enormous pistol and a big, weighty machete-sword. The pistol was carved into an intricate shape, a monstrous horned face, its mouth the muzzle. It would vomit forth the bullets. A flared blunderbuss flapped on his back, along with a black shield. He would not be able to walk three steps in the city like that without being arrested. No wonder they had come through the city’s underside.

  Tansell was taller than Shadrach, but much more slight. His armour was smarter, and seemed designed at least in part for aesthetics. It was a burnished brown, layers of stiff curboille, wax-boiled leather engraved with spiral designs. He carried a smaller gun than Shadrach and a slender rapier.

  “So what’s happening, then?” said Pengefinchess, and Isaac realized from the vodyanoi’s voice that she was female. There were, with vodyanoi, no physical characteristics for an inexpert human to recognize that were not hidden below the loincloths.

  “Well . . .” he said slowly, watching her.

  She squatted like a frog before him and met his gaze. She wore a voluminous white one-piece garment—incongruously and bizarrely clean, given her recent journey—that fitted close around her wrists and ankles, leaving her large, amphibious hands and feet free. She carried a recurved bow and sealed quiver over her shoulder, a bone knife in her belt. A large pouch of some thick reptile skin was strapped to her belly. Isaac could not tell what was within.

  As Isaac and Derkhan watched, something bizarre happened below Pengefinchess’s clothes. There was a quick movement, as if something wrapped itself around her body at speed and then removed itself. As the weird tide passed, a large patch of the white cotton of her shift became sodden with water, clinging suddenly to her, then drying as if every atom of liquid was suddenly sucked out. Isaac stared, thunderstruck.

  Pengefinchess looked down casually.

  “That’s my undine. She and I have a deal. I provide her certain substances, she clings to me, keeps me wet and alive. Lets me travel in much drier places than I’d otherwise manage.”

  Isaac nodded. He had never seen a water elemental before. It was unsettling.

  “Has Lemuel warned you of the sort of trouble we’re facing?” Isaac said. The adventurers nodded, unconcerned. Even excited. Isaac tried to swallow his exasperation.

  “These moth-things aren’t the only thing you can’t afford to look at, sirrah,” said Shadrach. “I can kill with my eyes closed, if I have to.” He spoke with soft, chilling confidence. “This belt?” He tapped it nonchalantly. “Catoblepas hide. Killed it in the outskirts of Tesh. Didn’t look at that, neither, or I’d be dead. We can handle these moths.”

  “I damn well hope so,” said Isaac grimly. “Hopefully, no actual fighting’ll be necessary. I think Lemuel feels safer with some backup, just in case. We’re hoping the constructs’ll take care of things.”

  Shadrach’s mouth curled minutely, in what was probably contempt.

  “Tansell’s a metallo-thaumaturge,” said Lemuel. “Aren’t you?”

  “Well . . . I know a few techniques for working metal,” Tansell replied.

  “It’s not a complex job,” said Isaac. “Just need a bit of welding. Come this way.”

  He led them through the rubbish to where they had hidden the mirrors and the other materials for the helmets.

  “We’ve got easily enough stuff here,” said Isaac, squatting beside the pile. He picked up a colander, length of copper piping and, after a moment of sifting, two sizeable chunks of mirror. He waved them at Tansell vaguely. “We need this to be a helmet that’s going to fit snug—and we’re going to need one for a garuda who’s not here.” He ignored the glance that Tansell exchanged with his companions. “And then we need these mirrors attached to the front, at an angle so we can easily see directly behind us. Think you can manage that?”

  Tansell looked at Isaac contemptuously. The tall man sat cross-legged before the pile of metal and glass. He put the colander on his head, like a child playing at soldiers. He whispered under his voice, a weird lilting, and he began to massage his hands with quick and intricate movements. He pulled at his knuckles, kneaded the balls of his palms.

  For several minutes, nothing happened. Then quite suddenly, his fingers began to glow from within, as if the bones were illuminated.

  Tansell reached up and began to caress the colander, as gently as if he stroked a cat.

  Slowly, the metal began to shape itself under his coaxing. It softened at each momentary touch, fitting more snuggly onto his head, flattening down,
distending at the back. Tansell pulled and kneaded it gently until it was quite flush over his hair. Then, still whispering his little sounds, he tweaked at the front, adjusting the lip of the metal, curling it up and away from his eyes.

  He reached down and picked up the copper pipe, gripped it between his hands and channelled energy through his palms. Obstreperously, the metal began to flex. He coiled it gently, placing the two ends of the copper against the colander-helmet just above his temples, then pressing down hard until each piece of metal broke the surface tension of the other and began to spill across the divide. With a tiny fizz of energy, the thick piping and the iron colander fused.

  Tansell shaped the bizarre extrusion of copper that jutted from the newborn helmet’s front. It became an angled loop extending about a foot. He fumbled for the pieces of mirror, clicked his fingers until someone handed them to him. Humming to the copper, cajoling it, he softened its substance and pushed one, then the other piece of mirror into it, one in front of each of his eyes. He looked up into them, each in turn, adjusting them carefully until they offered him a clear view of the wall of rubbish behind him.

  He tweaked the copper, hardened it.

  Tansell removed his hands and looked up at Isaac. The helmet on his head was unwieldy, and its provenance from a colander was still absurdly obvious, but it was perfect for their needs. It had taken him a little more than fifteen minutes to fashion.

  “I’m going to put a couple of holes in, thread a piece of leather through for a chinstrap, just in case,” he muttered.

  Isaac nodded, impressed.

  “That’s perfect. We need . . . uh . . . seven of those, one of them for a garuda. That’s a rounder head, remember. I’m going to leave you to it for a minute.” He looked over at Derkhan and Lemuel. “I think I’d better liaise with the Council,” he said.

  He turned and traced his way through the dump labyrinth.

  “Good evening, der Grimnebulin,” said the avatar, in the heart of the rubbish. Isaac nodded a greeting to it, and to the enormous skeleton shape of the Council itself, which waited beyond. “You did not come alone.” His voice was emotionless as ever.

  “Please don’t start,” said Isaac. “We are not going to get into this on our own. We are one fat scientist, a crook and a journalist. We need some fucking professional back-up. These are people who kill exotic animals for a damn living, and they have not the slightest damn interest in telling anyone about you. All they know is that some fucking constructs are going to be there with us. Even if they could work out who or what you were, they’ve probably broken at least two-thirds of New Crobuzon’s laws by now, so they ain’t about to damn well go running to Rudgutter.” There was silence. “Just damn well compute it, if you want. You are in no risk at all from the three reprobates busy making helmets.”

  Isaac imagined that he felt a trembling under his feet, as the information raced through the Council’s innards. After a long pause, the avatar and the Council nodded warily. Isaac did not relax.

  “I’ve come for those of yourself you can risk for tomorrow’s business,” he said. The Council nodded again.

  “Very well,” said the Construct Council slowly with the dead man’s tongue. “First, as we discussed, I will take the part of caretaker. Have you the crisis engine?”

  Something hard moved across Isaac’s face. It went quickly.

  “Right here,” he said, and put one of his bags down in front of the avatar. The naked man opened it and bent down to peer inside at the tubes and glass within, giving Isaac a sudden, vile view into the scabbing hollow of his skull. He picked it up and walked over to the Council with it, depositing it before the enormous figure’s crotch.

  “So,” said Isaac. “You hang on to that, just in case they find our shack. Good idea. I’ll be back for it in the morning.” He glowered. “Which of you are coming with us? We need some power behind us.”

  “I cannot risk discovery, Grimnebulin,” the avatar said. “If I were to come in my hidden selves, those construct bodies that work by day in grand houses and building sites and bank vaults, biding their time and accumulating knowledge, and they were to come back battered and broken, or not come back at all, I would leave myself open to the inquiry of the city. And I am not ready for that. Not yet.” Isaac nodded slowly. “Accordingly, I will be coming with you in those shapes that I can afford to lose. That will arouse confusion and bewilderment, but not suspicion of the truth.”

  Behind Isaac, the rubbish began to skitter and fall away. He turned.

  From the reams of discarded objects, particular aggregations of trash were separating themselves. Like the Construct Council itself, they were clotted together from the materia of the dump.

  The constructs mimicked the form and size of chimpanzees. They clattered and clanged as they moved, with a weird and unsettling sound. Each was unique. Their heads were kettles and lampshades, their hands were vicious-looking claws ripped from scientific instruments and scaffolding joints. They were armoured in great scabs of metal plating torn, roughly welded and riveted to their bodies, which scampered across the wasteland in an unsettling half-simian motion. They were created with an extraordinary sense of found aesthetics.

  If they lay still, they would be invisible: nothing but a random accretion of old metal.

  Isaac gazed at the chimp-things, swinging and jumping, dripping water and oil, ticking with clockwork.

  “I have downloaded into each of their analytical engines,” said the avatar, “as much memory and capacity as they will hold. These of me can obey you, and understand the urgency of doing so. I have given them viral intelligence. They have been programmed with the data to recognize the slake-moths, and to attack them. Each is built with acid or phlogistic agent within its midriff.” Isaac nodded, wondering at the casual ease with which the Council created these murderous machines. “You have worked out the best plan?”

  “Well . . .” said Isaac. “We’re going to prepare tonight. Work out some kind of . . . uh . . . gear up, you know, plan with our . . . additional staff. Then tomorrow at sixish we’ll meet Yag here, assuming the stupid bastard hasn’t got himself killed. And then we’re going to get into the Riverskin ghetto, using Lemuel’s expertise.

  “Then we go moth-hunting.” Isaac’s voice was hard and staccato. He spat out what he needed to say quickly. “The thing is we’ve got to separate them. We can take one, I think. Otherwise, if there are two or more, then one will always be in front of us, able to flash the wings. So we’re going to scope the place out, see if we can work out where they are. It’s hard to say without seeing it. We’ll take the amplifier and channeller you used on me, as well. It might help us get one interested, get it sniffing. Push a little peak through the background mental noise, or something. Can you attach other helmets to the one engine? D’you have any extras?” The avatar nodded. “You’d better give them to me, and show me the different functions. I’ll get Tansell to adjust them, add some mirrors.

  “Thing is,” said Isaac thoughtfully, “it can’t just be the strength of the signal that attracts them, or it would only ever be the seers and communicatrixes and so on that got taken. I think they like particular flavours. That’s why the runt came for me. Not because there was a big waving trail above the city, any old trail, but because it recognized and wanted that particular mind. And . . . well, now, maybe the others are going to recognize it as well. Maybe I was wrong that only the one would ever recognize my mind. They must’ve sniffed it last night.” He looked at the avatar thoughtfully. “They’re going to remember it as the trail their brother or sister was after when it got killed. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing . . .”

  “Der Grimnebulin,” said the dead man after a moment, “you must bring at least one of my little selves back with you. They must download what they have seen into me, the Council. I can learn so much of the Glasshouse from this. It can only help us. Whatever happens, one must get free.”

  There were several moments of silence. The
Council waited. Isaac thought for something to say, and then could not. He looked up into the avatar’s eyes.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. Have your monkey-selves ready then. And then I will . . . I will . . . see you again,” he said.

  The city basked in extraordinary night-heat. The summer reached a critical moment. In the striae of dirty air above the city’s core, the slake-moths danced.

  They flitted giddily over the minarets and crags of Perdido Street Station. They twitched their wings infinitesimally, edging expertly up the thermals. Skeins of inconstant emotion spun out from their cavorting.

  With silent pleadings and caresses they courted each other. Wounds, already half healed, were now forgotten, in trembling, febrile excitement.

  The summer here, in this once verdant plain on the edge of the Gentleman’s Sea, came a month and a half earlier than for the slake-moths’ siblings across the water. The temperature had slowly spiralled, reaching twenty-year highs.

  Thermotaxic reactions were triggered in the slake-moths’ loins. Hormones swam in their ichor tides. Unique configurations of flesh and chymicals spurred their ovaries and gonads into untimely productivity. They became suddenly fertile, and aggressively aroused.

  Aspises and bats and birds fled the air in terror, pungent as it was with psychotic desires.

  The slake-moths flirted with ghastly and lascivious aerial ballet. They touched tentacles and limbs, unfolded new parts they had never seen before. The three less damaged moths tugged their sibling, the victim of the Weaver, on wafts of smoke and air. Gradually, the most wounded moth stopped licking its multitude of wounds with its trembling tongue, and began to touch its fellows. Their erotic charge was utterly infectious.

  The polymorphous four-way wooing became fraught and competitive. Stroking, touching, arousing. Each moth in turn spiralled moonward, drunk on lust. It would split the seal on a gland hidden under its tail and exude a cloud of empathic musk.

  Its fellows lapped at the psychoscent, sported like porpoises in clouds of carnality. They rolled and played then swept up and sprayed the sky themselves. For now, their sperm ducts were still. The little metadroplets were rich with the slake-moths’ erogenous, ovigenic juices. They bickered lecherously to be female.