Perdido Street Station Part 27

It was Yagharek.

Isaac was momentarily amazed. This was the first time Yagharek had appeared while David (and Lublamai, of course, although it hardly counted) were in the room. David gazed at the garuda huddling under the dirty blanket, the sweep of the false wings.

"Yag, old son," said Isaac heavily. "Come in, meet David . . . We've had a bit of a disaster . . ." He trudged heavily towards the door.

Yagharek waited for him, hovering half in, half out of the entrance. He said nothing until Isaac was close enough to hear him whisper, a strange thin noise like a bird being strangled.

"I would not have come, Grimnebulin. I do not wish to be seen . . ."

Isaac lost patience quickly. He opened his mouth to speak but Yagharek continued.

"I have . . . heard things. I have sensed . . . there is a pall over this house. Neither you, nor either of your friends, has left this room all day."

Isaac gave a short laugh.

"You've been waiting, haven't you? Waiting till it was all clear, right? So you could maintain your precious anonymity . . ." He tensed, made an effort to calm himself. "Look, Yag, we've had something of a disaster and I really don't have time or inclination to . . . to p.u.s.s.yfoot about you. I'm afraid our project's on hold for a while . . ."

Yagharek sucked in his breath and cried out, faintly.

"You cannot," he screeched quietly. he screeched quietly. "You cannot desert me . . ." "You cannot desert me . . ."

"d.a.m.n!" Isaac reached out and pulled Yagharek in through the door. "Now look!" He marched over to where Lublamai breathed raggedly and gazed and dribbled. He pushed Yagharek before him. He shoved hard, but not with violent pressure. Garuda were wiry and tight-muscled, stronger than they looked, but with their hollow bones and pared-down flesh they were not a match for a big man. But that was not the main reason why Isaac was holding back from exerting himself. The mood between him and Yagharek was testy, not poisonous. Isaac sensed that Yagharek half wanted to see the reason for the sudden tension in the warehouse, even if it meant breaking his ban on being seen by others.

Isaac pointed at Lublamai. David stared vaguely up at the garuda. Yagharek completely ignored him.

"The f.u.c.king caterpillar I showed you," said Isaac, "turned into something that did this to my friend. Ever seen anything like that?"

Yagharek shook his head slowly.

"So you see," said Isaac heavily, "I'm afraid that until I sort out what in the name of Jabber's a.r.s.e I've let loose over the city, and until I've brought Lublamai back from wherever he is, I'm afraid afraid that the problems of flight and crisis engines, exciting as they are, are on something of a that the problems of flight and crisis engines, exciting as they are, are on something of a low burn low burn for me." for me."

"You will let slip my shame . . ." hissed Yagharek quickly. Isaac interrupted him.

"David knows knows about your so-called shame, Yag!" he shouted. "And about your so-called shame, Yag!" he shouted. "And don't don't look at me like that, that's how I look at me like that, that's how I work work, this is my colleague, that's how come I've made f.u.c.king progress in your case . . ."

David was looking sharply at Isaac.

"What?" he hissed. "Crisis engines . . . ?"

Isaac shook his head irritatedly, as if a mosquito was in his ear.

"Making headway in crisis physics, that's all. Tell you later."

David nodded slowly, accepting that now was not the time to discuss this, but his bulging eyes betrayed his amazement. That's all? That's all? they said. they said.

Yagharek seemed to be twitching with nervousness, with a great bulge of misery that washed up through him.

"I . . . I need your help . . ." he began.

"Yeah, as does Lublamai here," shouted Isaac, "and I'm afraid that counts for a d.a.m.n sight more . . ." Then he softened slowly. "I'm not not dropping you, Yag. I've no intention of doing that. But the thing is, I can't carry on just now." Isaac thought for a moment. "If you want to get this done as quick as possible, you could dropping you, Yag. I've no intention of doing that. But the thing is, I can't carry on just now." Isaac thought for a moment. "If you want to get this done as quick as possible, you could help help . . . Don't just f.u.c.king disappear. . . . Don't just f.u.c.king disappear. Stay the f.u.c.k here Stay the f.u.c.k here and help us sort this out. That way, we can get back, sharpish, to your problem." and help us sort this out. That way, we can get back, sharpish, to your problem."

David looked askance at Isaac. Now his eyes said, Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're doing? Seeing that, Isaac bl.u.s.tered, and rallied. Seeing that, Isaac bl.u.s.tered, and rallied.

"You can sleep here, you can eat here . . . David won't care, he doesn't even live here, I'm the only one that does. Then when we hear anything, we can . . . well, we can maybe think of some use for you. If you know what I mean. You can help help, Yagharek. That'd be d.a.m.n useful. The quicker this gets sorted, the quicker we're back on your programme. Understand?"

Yagharek was subdued. It took some minutes before he would speak, and then all he would do was nod and briefly say that yes, he would stay at the warehouse. It was clear that all he could think of was the research into flight. Isaac was exasperated, but forgiving. The excision, the punishment that had befallen Yagharek, had settled on his soul like lead chains. He was selfish, utterly, but he had some reason.

David fell asleep, exhausted and miserable. He slept in his chair that night. Isaac took over caring for Lublamai. The food had pa.s.sed through him, and the first noisome duty was to clean up his s.h.i.+t.

Isaac bundled up the fouled clothes and shoved them into one of the warehouse's boilers. He thought of Lin. He hoped she came to him soon.

He realized he was pining.

CHAPTER T TWENTY-SIX.

Things stirred in the night.

In the morning, in the small hours and again when the sun had risen, more idiot bodies were found. This time there were five. Two vagrants who hid under the bridges of Gross Coil. A baker walking home from work in Nigh Sump. A doctor in Vaudois Hill. A bargewoman out beyond Raven's Gate. A spattering of attacks that disfigured the city without pattern. North; east; west; south. There were no safe boroughs.

Lin slept badly. She had been touched by Isaac's note, to think of him crossing the city just to plant a piece of paper on her door, but she had also been concerned. There was a hysterical tone to the short paragraph, and the plea to come to the laboratory was so utterly out of character that it frightened her.

Nevertheless, she would have come immediately had she not returned to Aspic Hole late, too late to travel. She had not been working. The previous morning she had woken to find a note thrust under her door.

Pressing business necessitates the postponement of appointments until further notice. You will be contacted when resumption of duties is possible. Pressing business necessitates the postponement of appointments until further notice. You will be contacted when resumption of duties is possible.

M.

Lin had pocketed the curt note and wandered to Kinken. She had resumed her melancholy contemplations. And then, with a curious sense of amazement, as if she was watching a performance of her own life and was surprised at the turn of events, she had walked north-west out of Kinken to Skulkford, and boarded the railway. She had taken the two stops north on the Sink Line, to be swallowed by the vast tarry maw of Perdido Street Station. There in the confusion and hissing steam of the enormous central concourse, where the five lines met like an enormous iron and wood star, she had changed trains for the Verso Line.

There had been a five-minute wait while the boiler was stoked in the cavern at the centre of the station. Enough time for Lin to look at herself in incredulity, to ask herself what in the name of Awesome Broodma she was doing. And perhaps in the name of other G.o.ds.

But she had not answered, had sat still while the train waited, then moved slowly, picking up speed and rattling in a regular rhythm, squeezing from one of the station's pores. It wound to the north of the Spike, under two sets of skyrails, looking out over Cadnebar's squat, barbarous circus. The prosperity and majesty of The Crow-the Senned Gallery, the Fuchsia House, Gargoyle Park-was riddled with squalor. Lin gazed into steaming rubbish tips as The Crow segued into Rim, saw the wide streets and stuccoed houses of that prosperous neighbourhood wind carefully past hidden, crumbling blocks where she knew the rats were running.

The train pa.s.sed through Rim Station and plunged on over the fat grey ooze of the Tar, crossing the river barely fifteen feet to the north of Hadrach Bridge, until it picked its way distastefully over the ruinous roofscape of Creekside.

She had left the train at Low Falling Mud, at the western edge of the slum ghetto. It had not taken long to tread the rotting streets, past grey buildings that bulged unnaturally with sweating damp, past kin who eyed her and tasted her in the air and moved away, because her uptown perfume and strange clothes marked her out as one who had escaped. It had not taken her long to find her way back to her broodma's house.

Lin had not come too close, had not wanted her taste to filter through the shattered windows and alert her broodma or her sister to her presence. In the growing heat, her scent was like a badge for other khepri, that she could not remove.

The sun had moved and heated the air and clouds, and still Lin had stood, some little way from her old home. It was unchanged. From within, from cracks in the walls and door, she could hear the skittering, the organic pistoning of little male khepri legs.

No one had emerged.

Pa.s.sers-by had ejected chymical disgust at her, for coming back to crow, for spying on some unsuspecting household, but she had ignored them all.

If she entered and her broodma was there, she thought, they would both be angry, and miserable, and they would argue, pointlessly, as if the years had not gone by.

If her sister was there and told her their broodma had died, and Lin had let her go without a word of anger or forgiveness, she would be alone. Her heart might burst.

If there was no sign . . . if the floors crawled only with males, living like the vermin they were, no longer pampered princes without brains but bugs that stank and ate carrion, if her broodma and her sister had gone . . . then Lin would be standing pointlessly in a deserted house. Her homecoming would be ridiculous.

An hour or more had pa.s.sed, and Lin had turned her back on the putrefying building. With her headlegs waving and her head-scarab flexing in agitation, in confusion and loneliness, she made her way back to the station.

She had grappled fiercely with her melancholy, stopping in The Crow and spending some of Motley's enormous payments on books and rare foods. She had entered an exclusive women's boutique, provoking the sharp tongue of the manageress until Lin had fanned her guineas and pointed imperiously at two dresses. She had taken her time in being measured, insisting each piece fit her as sensuously as it would the human women for whom its designer had intended it.

She had bought both pieces, all without a word from the manageress, whose nose wrinkled as she took a khepri's money.

Lin had walked the streets of Salacus Fields wearing one of her purchases, an exquisite fitted piece in cloudy blue that darkened her russet skin. She could not tell if she felt worse or better than before.

She wore the dress again the next morning as she crossed the city to find Isaac.

That morning by Kelltree Docks, dawn had been greeted with a tremendous shout. The vodyanoi dockers had spent the night digging, shaping, shoving and clearing away great weights of craefted water. As the sun rose hundreds of them emerged from the filthy water, scooping up great handfuls of riverwater and hurling them far out over the Gross Tar.

They had whooped and cheered raggedly, as they lifted the final thin veil of liquid from the great trench they had dug in the river. It yawned fifty or more feet across, an enormous slice of air cut out of the riverwater, stretching the eight hundred feet from one bank to the other. Narrow trenches of water were left at either side, and here and there along the bottom, to stop the river damming. At the bottom of the trench, forty feet below the surface, the riverbed teemed with vodyanoi, fat bodies slithering over each other in the mud, carefully patting at one or other flat, vertical edge of water where the river stopped. Occasionally a vodyanoi would have some discussion with its fellows, and leap over their heads with a powerful convulsion of its enormous froglike hind legs. It would plunge through the airwall into the looming water, kicking out with its webbed feet on some unspecified errand. Others would hurriedly smooth the water behind it, resealing the watercraeft, ensuring the integrity of their blockade.

In the centre of the trench, three burly vodyanoi constantly conferred, leaping or crawling to pa.s.s on information to their comrades around them, then returning again to the discussion. There were angry debates. These were the elected leaders of the strike committee.

As the sun rose, the vodyanoi at the river's bottom and lining the banks unfurled banners. FAIR WAGES NOW FAIR WAGES NOW! they demanded, and NO RAISE NO RAISE, NO RIVER NO RIVER.

On either side of the gorge in the river, small boats rowed carefully to the edge of the water. The sailors within leaned out as far as they could and gauged the distance across the furrow. They shook their heads in exasperation. The vodyanoi jeered and cheered.

The channel had been dug a little to the south of Barley Bridge, at the very edge of the docklands. There were s.h.i.+ps waiting to enter and s.h.i.+ps waiting to leave. A mile or so downstream, in the insalubrious waters between Badside and Dog Fenn, merchant s.h.i.+ps reined in their nervous seawyrms and let the boilers run low. In the other direction, by the jetties and landing bays, in Kelltree's fat ca.n.a.ls beside the drydocks, the captains of vessels from as far as Khadoh gazed impatiently at the vodyanoi pickets that thronged the banks and worried about getting home.

By mid-morning the human wharfmen had arrived to get about the task of unloading and loading. They quickly discovered that their presence was more or less superfluous. Once the remaining work was done preparing those s.h.i.+ps still at anchor in Kelltree itself-at most another two days' work-they were stuck.

The small group who had been in discussion with the striking vodyanoi had come prepared. At ten in the morning about twenty men suddenly streamed out of their yards, climbing the fences around the docks, and jogging to the waterfront by the vodyanoi pickets, who cheered them on with something like hysteria. The men pulled out their own signs: HUMAN AND VODYANOI AGAINST THE BOSSES HUMAN AND VODYANOI AGAINST THE BOSSES!

They joined in the noisy chanting.

Over the next two hours, the mood hardened. A core of humans set up a counter-demonstration inside the dockland's low walls. They screamed abuse at the vodyanoi, calling them frogs and toads. They jeered at the striking humans, denounced them as race-traitors. They warned that the vodyanoi would ruin the dock, making human wages plummet. One or two of them carried Three Quills literature.

Between them and the equally strident human strikers was a great ma.s.s of confused, vacillating dockers. They wandered back and forth, swearing and baffled. They listened to the shouted arguments from both sides.

The numbers began to grow.

On either bank of the river, in Kelltree itself and on the south bank of Syriac Well, crowds were gathering to watch the confrontation. A few men and women ran among them, moving too fast to be identified, handing out leaflets with the Runagate Rampant Runagate Rampant banner at the top. They demanded in closely printed text that the human dockers join the vodyanoi, that it was the only way the demands would be won. The papers could be seen circulating among the human dockers, handed out by person or persons unseen. banner at the top. They demanded in closely printed text that the human dockers join the vodyanoi, that it was the only way the demands would be won. The papers could be seen circulating among the human dockers, handed out by person or persons unseen.

As the day wore on, and the air heated, more and more dockers began to drift over the wall to join the demonstration beside the vodyanoi. The counter-demonstration also grew, sometimes rapidly; but over the s.p.a.ce of the hours, it was the strikers that increased most visibly.

There was a tense uncertainty in the air. The crowd was becoming more vocal, yelling at both sides to do something. There was a rumour that the chairman of the dock authority was coming to speak, another that Rudgutter himself would put in an appearance.

All the time, the vodyanoi in the canyon of air carved into the river busied themselves shoring up the s.h.i.+mmering waterwalls. Occasionally fish blundered through the flat edges and fell to the ground, flapping, or half-sunk rubbish eddied gently into the sudden chasm. The vodyanoi threw everything back. They worked in s.h.i.+fts, swimming up through the water to watercraeft the upper reaches of the riverwalls. They shouted encouragement at the human strikers from the riverbed, among the ruined metal and thick sludge that was the Gross Tar's floor.

At half past three, with the sun blazing hot through ineffectual clouds, two airs.h.i.+ps were seen approaching the docks, from the north and the south.

There was excitement among the crowds, and the word quickly spread through the a.s.sembled that the mayor was coming. Then a third and fourth airs.h.i.+p were noticed, cruising ineluctably over the city towards Kelltree.

The shadow of unease pa.s.sed over the riverbanks.

Some of the crowd dispersed quietly. The strikers redoubled their chants.

By five to four, the airs.h.i.+ps hovered over the docks in an airborne X, a ma.s.sive threatening mark of censure. A mile or so to the east, another solitary dirigible hung over Dog Fenn, on the other side of the river's ponderous kink. The vodyanoi and the humans and the gathered crowds shaded their eyes with their hands and stared up at the impa.s.sive shapes, bullet-bodies like hunting squid.

The airs.h.i.+ps began to sink earthwards. They approached at some speed, the details of their design and the sense of ma.s.s of their inflated bodies quite suddenly discernible.

Just before four o'clock, strange organic shapes floated up from behind the surrounding roofs, emerging from sliding doors at the top of the Kelltree and Syriac militia struts, smaller towers not connected to the skyrail network.

The eddying, weightless objects bobbed gently in the breeze and began to drift almost aimlessly towards the wharfs. The sky was suddenly full of the things. They were big and soft-bodied, each a ma.s.s of twisted, bloated tissue coated with intricate flaps and curves of skin, craters and strange, dripping orifices. The central sac was about ten feet in diameter. Each of the creatures had a human rider, visible in a harness sutured to the corpulent body. Below each such body was a thicket of dangling tentacles, ribbons of blistered flesh that stretched the forty or so feet to the ground.

The creatures' pinky-purple flesh throbbed regularly like beating hearts.

The extraordinary things bore down on the gathered crowd. There was a full ten seconds when those who saw them were too aghast to speak, or to believe what they saw. Then the shouts started: "Men-o'-war!"

As the panic began, some nearby clock struck the hour and several things happened at once.

Throughout the gathered crowd, in the anti-strike demonstration and even here and there among the striking dockworkers themselves, clumps of men-and some women-suddenly reached over their heads and in violent, quick motions tugged on dark hoods. They were fas.h.i.+oned without visible eye- or mouth-holes; dark crumpled blanks.

From the underbelly of each of the airs.h.i.+ps-looming absurdly close now-spilt clutches of ropes that jounced and whiplashed as they fell. They fell through the yards and yards of air, their ends coiling slightly on the pavement. They contained the gathering, the pickets and demonstrations and surrounding crowds within four pillars of suspended rope, two on either side of the river. Dark figures slid expertly, at breakneck speed, the length of the cords. They came in a constant quick drip. They looked like glutinous clots dribbling down the entrails of the disembowelled airs.h.i.+ps.

There were wails from the crowd, which fractured in terror. Its organic cohesion broke. The people fled in all directions, trampling the fallen, grabbing children and lovers and stumbling on cobbles and broken flagstones. They tried to disperse down the side streets that spread like a network of cracks out from the riverbanks. But they ran into the paths of the men-o'-war that bobbed sedately along the alleys' routes.

Uniformed militia were suddenly converging on the picket from every side street. There were shrieks of terror as mounted officers appeared on monstrous bipedal shunn, their hooks reaching out, their blunt eyeless heads swaying as they felt their way with echoes.

The air brimmed with sudden short screams of pain. People blundered in stumbling gangs around corners into men-o'-war tentacles and shrieked as the nerve-agent which riddled the dangling fronds oozed through their clothes and over their bare skin. There were a few breaths of juddering agony, then a cold numbness and paralysis.