Perdido Street Station Part 30

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 sc.r.a.p of paper with great efficiency.

She glanced over at the sound of Derkhan's brisk attempts to rea.s.sert 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 hundreds 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 n.o.ble for Spike danger money, and you're looking at one n.o.ble nine and two."

Derkhan gave her two n.o.bles 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 pa.s.sed were more than s.h.i.+fty-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 gra.s.s.

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.

Inside, the dark was foetid and warm and unnervingly damp; but in the far corner, past the slouching, collapsed human and vodyanoi and Remade wrecks, sat Isaac.

He was talking in an animated whisper with another man who Derkhan vaguely remembered, some scientist friend of Isaac's. Isaac looked up as Derkhan stood in the door, and after a double-take, he stared at her. She almost ran towards him.

"Isaac, Jabber and f.u.c.k f.u.c.k . . . I'm so glad I found you . . ." . . . I'm so glad I found you . . ."

As she gabbled at him, her hand nervously clenching the cloth of his jacket, she realized with a mortifying lurch that he looked at her without welcome. Her little speech faltered out.

"Derkhan . . . my G.o.ds . . ." he said. "I . . . Derkhan, there's a crisis . . . Something's happened, and I . . ." He looked uneasy.

Derkhan stared at him miserably.

She sat suddenly, collapsed onto the bench beside him. It was like a surrender. She leant on the table, kneaded her eyes which were br.i.m.m.i.n.g suddenly and irrevocably.

"I've just seen a dear friend and comrade get ready to be tortured to death tortured to death and half my and half my life life's been crushed and exploded and stamped on and I don't know why and I've got to find a Doctor f.u.c.king Barbile somewhere in the city somewhere in the city to find out what's going on, and I come to you . . . for . . . because you're supposed to be my to find out what's going on, and I come to you . . . for . . . because you're supposed to be my friend friend and what, you're . . . and what, you're . . . busy busy . . . ?" . . . ?"

Tears oozed from beneath her fingertips and scored their way across her face. She wiped her hands violently across her eyes and sniffed, glancing up for a moment, and she saw that Isaac and the other man were staring at her with an extraordinary, absurd intensity. Their eyes gaped.

Isaac's hand crept across the table and gripped her by the wrist.

"You've got to find who who?" he hissed.

CHAPTER T TWENTY-EIGHT.

"Well," said Bentham Rudgutter carefully, "I couldn't get anything out of him. Yet."

"Not even the name of his source?" asked Stem-Fulcher.

"No." Rudgutter pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. "He just shuts down. But I don't think that'll be too hard to find out. After all, there aren't a huge number of people it can be. It's got to be someone in R&D, it's probably probably someone on the SM project . . . We may well know more when the inquisitors have interrogated him." someone on the SM project . . . We may well know more when the inquisitors have interrogated him."

"So . . ." said Stem-Fulcher. "Here we are."

"Indeed."

Stem-Fulcher, Rudgutter and MontJohn Rescue were standing, surrounded by an elite militia guard unit, in a tunnel deep under Perdido Street Station. Gaslamps made fitful impressions on the murk. The little points of grubby light went on as far as they could see before them. A little way behind them was the lift-cage they had just left.

At Rudgutter's signal, he, his companions and their escort began to walk down into the darkness. The militia marched in formation.

"Right," said Rudgutter. "You've both got the scissors?" Stem-Fulcher and Rescue nodded. "Four years ago it was chess sets," Rudgutter mused. "I remember when the Weaver changed its tastes, it took about three deaths before we worked out what it wanted." There was an uneasy pause. "Our research is quite up to date," said Rudgutter with gallows humour. "I spoke to Doctor Kapnellior before meeting you. He's our resident Weaver 'expert' . . . something of a misnomer. Just means that unlike the rest of us, he's only extremely d.a.m.n ignorant about them, rather than totally. He rea.s.sures me that scissors are still very much the object of desire."

After a moment, he spoke again.

"I'll do the talking. I've dealt with it before." He was unsure himself whether that was an advantage or a disadvantage.

The corridor had come to an end, terminating in a thick door of iron-banded oak. The man at the head of the militia unit slid a huge key into the lock and turned it smoothly. He tugged the door open, bracing himself at its weight, and trooped into the dark room beyond. He was well trained. His discipline was like steel. He must, after all, have been extremely frightened.

The rest of the officers followed him, then Rescue and Stem-Fulcher, and finally Bentham Rudgutter. He pulled the door closed behind them.

As they pa.s.sed into the room, all felt a moment of dislocation, a wispy unease that p.r.i.c.kled across their skin with a quasi-physical momentum. Long threads, invisible filaments of spun aether and emotion, were draped in intricate patterns around the room, and were rippling and sticking to the intruders.

Rudgutter twitched. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed threads that folded out of existence when he looked them full on.

The room was as obscure as if it were shrouded in cobwebs. On every wall, scissors were attached in bizarre designs. Scissors chased each other like predatory fish; they sported on the ceiling; they coiled around and through each other in convoluted, unsettling geometric designs.

The militia and their charges stood still against one wall of the room. No sources of light were visible, but they could still see. The atmosphere in the room seemed monochrome, or disturbed in some way, the light etiolated and cowed.

They stood still for a long time. There were no sounds.

Slowly and silently, Bentham Rudgutter reached into the bag he carried and brought out the large grey scissors he had had an aide buy in an ironmonger's on the lowest commercial concourse of Perdido Street Station.

He parted the scissors without a noise, held them up in the cloying air.

Rudgutter brought the razor edges together. The room reverberated with the unmistakable sound of blade sliding along sharpened blade, and snapping shut with an inexorable division.

The echoes trembled like flies in a funnelweb. They slid into a dark dimension at the room's heart.

A gust of cold sent gooseflesh dancing across the backs of those congregated.

The echoes of the scissors came back.

As they returned and crept up from below the threshold of hearing, they metamorphosed, becoming words, a voice, melodious and melancholy, that first whispered and then grew more bold, spinning itself into existence out of the scissor-echoes. It was not quite describable, heartbreaking and frightening, it tugged the listener close; and it sounded not in the ears but deeper inside, in the blood and bone, in the nerve-cl.u.s.ters.

. . . FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING INTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING INTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM I I WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED . . . . . .

In the fearful silence, Rudgutter gesticulated at Stem-Fulcher and Rescue, until they understood, and they raised their scissors as he had done, opened and sharply shut them, slicing the air with an almost tactile sound. He joined in, the three of them opening and closing their blades in macabre applause.

At the sound of that snapping susurration, the unearthly voice resonated into the room again. It moaned with an obscene pleasure. Each time it spoke, it was as if what faded into audibility was only a s.n.a.t.c.h of an unceasing monologue.

. . . AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN DO NOT WITHHOLD THIS BLADED SUMMONS THIS EDGED HYMN AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN DO NOT WITHHOLD THIS BLADED SUMMONS THIS EDGED HYMN I I ACCEPT ACCEPT I I AGREE YOU SLICE SO NICE AND NICELY YOU LITTLE ENDOSKELETAL FIGURINES YOU SNIP AND SHAVE AND SLIVER THE CORDS OF THE WOVEN WEB AND SHAPE IT WITH AN UNCOUTH GRACE AGREE YOU SLICE SO NICE AND NICELY YOU LITTLE ENDOSKELETAL FIGURINES YOU SNIP AND SHAVE AND SLIVER THE CORDS OF THE WOVEN WEB AND SHAPE IT WITH AN UNCOUTH GRACE . . . . . .

From out of shadows cast by some unseen shapes, shadows that seemed stretched-out and taut, tethered from corner to corner of the square room, something stalked into view.

Into existence. It bulked suddenly where there had been nothing. It stepped out from behind some fold in s.p.a.ce.

It picked its way forward, delicate on pointed feet, vast body bobbing, lifting multiple legs high. It looked down at Rudgutter and his fellows from a head that loomed colossally above them.

A spider.

Rudgutter had trained himself rigorously. He was an unimaginative man, a cold man who ruled himself with industrial discipline. He could no longer feel terror.

But, gazing at the Weaver, he came close.

It was worse, more frightening by far than the amba.s.sador. The h.e.l.lkin were appalling and awesome, monstrous powers for which Rudgutter had the most profound respect. And yet, and yet . . . he understood them. They were tortured and torturing, calculating and capricious. Shrewd. Comprehensible. They were political.

The Weaver was utterly alien. There could be no bargaining and no games. It had been tried.

Rudgutter conquered himself, angry, judging himself harshly, studying the thing before him in an attempt to itemize and metabolize the sight.

The Weaver's bulk was mostly its huge teardrop abdomen that welled up and hung downwards behind it from its neck-waist, a tight, bulbous fruit seven feet long and five wide. It was absolutely taut and smooth, its chitin a s.h.i.+mmering black iridescence.

The creature's head was the size of a man's chest. It was suspended from the front of the abdomen a third of the way from the top. The fat curve of its body loomed above it like skulking black-clad shoulders.

The head swivelled slowly to take in its visitors.

The top as smooth and spare as a human skull in black: multiple eyes a single, deep blood-red. Two main orbs as large as newborns' heads sat in sunken sockets at either side; between them a much smaller third; above it two more; above them three more still. An intricate, precise constellation of glints on dark crimson. An unblinking array.

The Weaver's complicated mouthparts unhinged, its inner jaw flexing, something between a mandible and a black ivory trap. Its wet gullet flexed and vibrated deep within.

Its legs, thin and bony as human ankles, sprouted from the thin band of segmented flesh that linked its headpiece and abdomen. The Weaver walked on its hindmost four legs. They shot up and out at a forty-five-degree angle, hinging in knees a foot or more above the Weaver's hunkered head, higher than the top of its abdomen. The legs rebounded from the joints almost straight down ten feet, culminating in a point as featureless and sharp as a stiletto.

Like a tarantula, the Weaver picked one leg up at a time, lifting it very high and placing it down with the delicacy of a surgeon or an artist. A slow, sinister and inhuman movement.

From the same intricate fold as that great quadrupedal frame emerged two sets of shorter legs. One pair, six feet long, rested pointing upwards at the elbows. Each thin, hard shaft of chitin ended in an eighteen-inch talon, a cruel, polished shard of russet sh.e.l.l edged like a scalpel. At the base of each weapon sprouted a curl of arachnid-bone, a sharpened hook to snag and slice and hold prey.

Those organic kukris jutted up like wide horns, like lances. An ostentatious display of murderous potential.

And in front of them, the final, shorter pair of limbs hung down. At their tips, held midway between the Weaver's head and the ground, a pair of thin and tiny hands. Five-fingered and slender, only smooth fingertips without nails and skin the alien, nacreous black of pure pitch distinguished them from the hands of human children.

The Weaver bent its elbows up a little and held these hands together, clasping and rubbing them together slowly and incessantly. It was a furtive, disturbingly human motion, like that of an untrustworthy, simpering priest.

The spearpoint feet crept closer. The red-black claws swivelled a little and glinted in the non-light. The hands stroked each other.

The Weaver's body rocked back and alarmingly forward again.

. . . WHAT OFFERING WHAT BOON THE HINGED SPLITTERS YOU BRING ME WHAT OFFERING WHAT BOON THE HINGED SPLITTERS YOU BRING ME . . . it said, and suddenly held out its right hand. The militia officers tensed at the quick movement. . . . it said, and suddenly held out its right hand. The militia officers tensed at the quick movement.

Without hesitation Rudgutter stepped forward and placed his scissors into its palm, taking a little care not to touch its skin. Stem-Fulcher and Rescue did the same. The Weaver stepped back with unsettling speed. It looked at the scissors it held, threaded its fingers through the handles and worked each pair rapidly open and shut. Then it moved to the back wall and, moving quickly, it pressed each pair of scissors into a position on the cold stone.

Somehow, the lifeless metal stayed where it was put, clinging to the damp-patterned stone. The Weaver adjusted its design minutely.

"We're here to ask you about something, Weaver." Rudgutter's voice was steady.

The Weaver turned ponderously back to face him.

. . . THE WEFT OF THREADS SURROUND ABOUND ABOUT YOUR TOTTERING t.i.tTERING CARCa.s.sES YOU TUG AND SHRUG UNRAVEL AND REKNIT YOU TRIUMVIRATE OF POWER ENCASED IN THE BLUE THE WEFT OF THREADS SURROUND ABOUND ABOUT YOUR TOTTERING t.i.tTERING CARCa.s.sES YOU TUG AND SHRUG UNRAVEL AND REKNIT YOU TRIUMVIRATE OF POWER ENCASED IN THE BLUE-CLAD BRISTLING WITH SPARKING FLINT BLACK POWDER IRON YOU STILL-POINT THREE HAVE CAUGHT HANGNAIL-SOULS ON THE FABRIC SNAGS THE FIVE WINGED RIPPERS RENDING UNWIND SYNAPSE AFTER GANGLIOL SPIRIT SUCK ON MINDFIBRES . . . . . .

Rudgutter looked sharply over at Rescue and Stem-Fulcher. All three of them were straining to follow the dream-poetics that was the Weaver tongue. One thing had come across clear.

"Five?" whispered Rescue, looking over at Rudgutter and Stem-Fulcher. "Motley bought only four four moths . . ." moths . . ."

. . . FIVE DIGITS OF A HAND TO INTERFERE TO STRIP WORLDFABRIC FROM THE BOBBINS OF THE CITY FIVE DIGITS OF A HAND TO INTERFERE TO STRIP WORLDFABRIC FROM THE BOBBINS OF THE CITY-KIND FIVE AIR-TEARING INSECTS FOUR FINELY FORMED n.o.bLE BERINGED WITH s.h.i.+MMERING DECORATION ONE SQUAT THUMB THE RUNT THE RUINED EMPOWERING ITS IMPERIOUS SIBLING FINGERS FIVE A HAND . . . . . .

The militia guard tensed as the Weaver stalked its slow ballet over to Rescue. It spread out the fingers of one hand, held it up in front of Rescue's face, pushed it closer and closer to him. The air around the humans thickened at the Weaver's approach. Rudgutter fought down an impulse to wipe his face, to clean it of that unseen clinging silk. Rescue set his jaw. The militia murmured with dithering impotence. Their uselessness was brought home.

Rudgutter watched the little drama uneasily. The last but one time he had spoken to the Weaver, it had ill.u.s.trated a point it was making, a figure of speech of some kind, by reaching out to the militia captain flanking Rudgutter, lifting him into the air and filleting him slowly, drawing one of its talons through his armour up the side of his abdomen and around under the chin, drawing out bone after steaming bone. The man had screamed and flopped and screamed as the Weaver eviscerated him, its mournful voice resonating in Rudgutter's head as it explained itself in its oneiric riddles.

Rudgutter knew that the Weaver would do anything that it considered improved the worldweave. It might pretend to be dead or reshape the stone of the floor into a statue of a lion. It might pluck out Eliza's eyes. Whatever it took to shape the pattern in the fabric of the aether that only it could see, whatever it took to Weave the tapestry into shape.

The memory of Kapnellior discussing Textorology-the science of Weavers-flitted in and out of Rudgutter's mind. Weavers were fabulously rare, and only intermittent inhabitants of conventional reality. Only two Weaver corpses had been procured by New Crobuzon's scientists since the city's birth. Kapnellior's was hardly an exact science.

No one knew why this Weaver chose to stay. It had announced in its elliptical way to Mayor Dagman Beyn, more than two hundred years ago, that it would live below the city. Over the decades, one or two administrations had left it alone. Most had been unable to resist the pull of its power. Its occasional interactions-sometimes ba.n.a.l, sometimes fatal-with mayors and scientists were the main source of information for Kapnellior's studies.