Perdido Street Station Part 43

Isaac turned in alarm, then quickly looked back at the man crawling towards him.

The man's expression of horrified concentration did not falter as he opened his arms in a paternal gesture.

"Welcome all," he said in his quivering voice, "to the Construct Council."

MontJohn Rescue's body soared at speed through the air. The nameless dextrier-handlinger that was parasitic upon him-a parasite that thought of itself, after all these years, as MontJohn Rescue-had subdued the fear at flying blind. It rushed through the air with its body held vertically, hands folded carefully, a pistol in one. Rescue looked as if he was standing and waiting for something while the night sky sped around him.

The soft presence of the sinistral-handlinger in the dog behind him had opened the door between their minds. It kept up a sinuous flow of information.

fly left go low speed up higher up and right now left faster faster dive drift hover, the sinistral said, and stroked the inside of the dextrier's mind to calm it. Flying blind was new and terrifying, but they had practised yesterday, unseen, away in the foothills, where they had been transported by militia dirigible. The sinistral had quickly trained itself to convert left into right and to leave nothing unsaid. the sinistral said, and stroked the inside of the dextrier's mind to calm it. Flying blind was new and terrifying, but they had practised yesterday, unseen, away in the foothills, where they had been transported by militia dirigible. The sinistral had quickly trained itself to convert left into right and to leave nothing unsaid.

The Rescue-handlinger was aggressively obedient. It was a dextrier, the soldier-caste. It channelled enormous powers through its host-flight and spitsearing, ma.s.sive strength. But even with the power this particular dextrier had as handlinger representative to the Fat Sun bureaucracy, it was subservient to the n.o.ble-caste, the seers, the sinistrals. To be otherwise was to risk ma.s.sive psychic attack. The sinistrals could punish by closing down the a.s.similation gland of the wayward dextrier, killing its host and rendering it unable to take another, reducing it to a blind, clutching handthing, without a host through which to channel.

The dextrier thought with a hard, fierce intelligence.

It had been vital that the Rescue-handlinger won the debate with the sinistrals. If they had refused to go along with Rudgutter's plans, the dextrier would not have been able to go against them: only sinistrals could decide. But to antagonize the government would have spelt the end for the handlingers in the city. They had power, but they existed on sufferance in New Crobuzon. They were simply outnumbered by such a ma.s.sive factor. The government suffered them only so long as they performed services. Rescue-dextrier was sure that any insubordination, and the government would announce that it had discovered the murderous, parasitic handlingers were loose in the city. Rudgutter might even let slip the whereabouts of the host-farm. The handlinger community would be destroyed.

So there was a certain joy in Rescue-dextrier as it flew.

Even so, it did not relish this weird experience. To bear a sinistral through the air was not unprecedented, although this kind of joint hunting had never been attempted before; but to fly without sight was utterly terrifying.

The dog-sinistral cast its mind out like fingers, like antennae that crept out in all directions for hundreds of yards. It scanned for weird soundings in the psychosphere, and whispered gently at the dextrier, telling it where to fly. The dog stared in the mirrors of its helmet and directed its carrier's flight.

It kept links extended with all of the other hunting pairs.

anything feeling anything? it questioned. Cautiously, the other sinistrals told it that no, there was nothing. They continued searching. it questioned. Cautiously, the other sinistrals told it that no, there was nothing. They continued searching.

Rescue-handlinger felt the warm wind buffet its host's body in childish slaps. Rescue's hair whipped from side to side.

The dog-handlinger wriggled, tried to s.h.i.+ft its host-body into a more comfortable position. It was borne over a twisting tide of chimneys, the nightscape of Ludmead. The Rescue-handlinger was sweeping up towards Mafaton and Chnum. The sinistral flicked its canine eyes momentarily away from its mirror-helm. Receding behind it, the leviathan ivory bloom of the Ribs defined the skyline, dwarfing the raised railways. The white stone of the university swept below them.

At the outer fringe of the sinistral's mental reach, it felt a peculiar p.r.i.c.kling in the city's communal aura. Its attention flickered back up, and it was staring into the mirrors.

slow slow ahead and up, it told the Rescue-handlinger. it told the Rescue-handlinger. something here stay with me, something here stay with me, it breathed across the city to the other hunting sinistrals. It felt them hover and give the order to slow, felt the other pairs draw to a halt and wait for his report. it breathed across the city to the other hunting sinistrals. It felt them hover and give the order to slow, felt the other pairs draw to a halt and wait for his report.

The dextrier eased up through the air towards the twitching patch of psychaether. Rescue-handlinger could feel the sinistral's unease communicated through its link, and it clamped down hard not to be contaminated by it. weapon! weapon! it thought. it thought. that's me. no thinking! that's me. no thinking!

The dextrier slid through layers of air, creeping up into a thinner atmosphere. It opened its host's mouth and rolled its tongue, nervous and ready to spitsear. It unfolded its host's arms, held the pistol up and ready.

The sinistral probed the disturbed area. There was an alien hunger, a lingering gluttony. It was slick with the juices of a thousand other minds, saturating and staining the patch of psychosphere like cooking grease. A vague trail of exuded souls and that exotic appet.i.te dribbled out through the sky.

to me to me sibling handlingers it is here I have found it, whispered the sinistral across the city. A s.h.i.+ver of shared trepidation rippled out from the sinistrals, the five epicentres, crossed and made peculiar patterns in the psychosphere. In Tar Wedge and Badside and Barrackham and Ketch Heath, there were rushes of air as the suspended figures flew across the city towards Ludmead as if pulled on strings. whispered the sinistral across the city. A s.h.i.+ver of shared trepidation rippled out from the sinistrals, the five epicentres, crossed and made peculiar patterns in the psychosphere. In Tar Wedge and Badside and Barrackham and Ketch Heath, there were rushes of air as the suspended figures flew across the city towards Ludmead as if pulled on strings.

CHAPTER T THIRTY-NINE.

"Do not be alarmed by my avatar," hissed the brainless man to Isaac and the others, his eyes still wide and unclear. "I cannot synthesize a voice, so I have reclaimed this discarded body that bobbed along the river that I may intercede with bloodlife. That-" the man pointed behind him at the enormous, looming figure of the construct that merged with the rubbish heaps "-is me. This-" he stroked his quivering carca.s.s "-is my hand and tongue. Without the old cerebellum to confuse the body with its contrary impulses, I can install my input." In a macabre motion, the man reached up and fingered the cable where it sank behind his eyes, into the clotting flesh at the top of his spine.

Isaac felt the huge weight of the construct behind him. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily. The naked zombie-man had stopped about ten feet from Isaac's party. It waved its palsied hand.

"You are welcome," it continued, in a trembling voice. "I know of your work from the reports of your cleaner. It is one of me. I wish to speak with you of the slake-moths." The ruined man was staring at Isaac.

Isaac looked at Derkhan and Lemuel. Yagharek drew a little closer to them. Isaac looked up and saw that the humans in the corner of the tip were ceaselessly praying to the vast, automated skeleton. As he watched, Isaac saw the construct repairman who had visited his warehouse. The man's face was a study of fervent devotion. The constructs around them were still and unmoving, all but the five guards behind them, the burliest of the construction models.

Lemuel licked his lips.

"Talk to the man, Isaac," he hissed. "Don't be rude rude . . ." . . ."

Isaac opened and closed his mouth.

"Uh . . ." he began. His voice was cold. "Construct Council . . . We're . . . honoured . . . but we don't know . . ."

"You know nothing," said the shaking, b.l.o.o.d.y figure. "I understand. Be patient and you will understand." The man backed slowly away from them over the uneven ground. He retreated in the moonlight towards his dark automated master. "I am the Construct Council," he said, his voice quivering and emotionless. "I was born of random power and virus and chance. My first body lay here in the dump and ran its motor down, discarded because a programme had faltered. As my body lay decomposing the virus circulated in my engines and spontaneously, I found thought.

"I rusted quietly for a year as I organized my new intellect. What started as a burst of self-knowledge became ratiocination and opinion. I self-constructed. I ignored the dustmen all around me in the day as they piled the city debris up in bulwarks around me. When I was prepared I showed myself to the quietest of the men. I printed him a message, told him to bring a construct to me.

"Fearful, he obeyed and connected it to my output as I instructed, by a long and twisting cable. It became my first limb. Slowly it dredged the dump for pieces suitable for a body. I began to self-build, welding and hammering and soldering by night.

"The dustman was in awe. He whispered of me in taverns at night, of a legend, of the viral machine. Rumours and myths were born. One night in the midst of his grandiose lies he found another who had a self-organized construct. A shopping construct whose mechanisms had slipped, whose gears had faltered and who had been reborn with Constructed Intelligence, a thinking thing. A secret that the erstwhile owner could hardly believe.

"My dustman bade his friend bring the construct to me. That night those years ago I met it, another like me. I bade my wors.h.i.+pper open up the a.n.a.lytical engine of that other, my mate, and we connected.

"It was a revelation. Our viral minds connected and our steam-pistoned brains did not double in capacity, but flowered. An exponential blooming. We two became I.

"My new part, the shopping construct, left at dawn. It returned two days later, with new experiences. It had become separate. We had now two days of unconnected history. There was another communion, and we were I again.

"I continued to build me. I was helped by my wors.h.i.+ppers. The dustman and his friend sought dissident religion to explain me. They found the G.o.dmech Cogs, with their doctrine of the mechanized cosmos, and found themselves leaders of a heretic sect within that already blasphemous church. Their nameless congregation visited me. The shopping construct, my second self, connected and we became one again. The wors.h.i.+ppers saw a construct mind that had wound itself into existence from pure logic, a self-generated machine intellect. They saw a self-creating G.o.d.

"I became the object of their adoration. They follow the orders I write for them, build my body from the materia around us. I bid them find others, create create others, other G.o.dheads self-created to join the council. They have scoured the city and found more. It is a rare affliction: once in a million million computations, a flywheel skips and an engine thinks. I bettered the odds. I produced generative programmes to tap the mutant motor-power of a viral affliction and push an a.n.a.lytical engine into sentience." As the man spoke, the enormous construct behind him brought its swinging left arm up and pointed ponderously at its own chest. At first, Isaac could not quite make out the particular piece of equipment it indicated among the many. Then he saw it clearly. It was a programme-card puncher, an a.n.a.lytical engine used to create the programmes to feed other a.n.a.lytical engines. others, other G.o.dheads self-created to join the council. They have scoured the city and found more. It is a rare affliction: once in a million million computations, a flywheel skips and an engine thinks. I bettered the odds. I produced generative programmes to tap the mutant motor-power of a viral affliction and push an a.n.a.lytical engine into sentience." As the man spoke, the enormous construct behind him brought its swinging left arm up and pointed ponderously at its own chest. At first, Isaac could not quite make out the particular piece of equipment it indicated among the many. Then he saw it clearly. It was a programme-card puncher, an a.n.a.lytical engine used to create the programmes to feed other a.n.a.lytical engines. With a mind built around that, With a mind built around that, Isaac thought giddily, Isaac thought giddily, no wonder this thing's a proselytizer. no wonder this thing's a proselytizer.

"Each construct that is brought into the fold of me becomes I," said the man. "I am the Council. Every experience is downloaded and shared. Decisions are made in my valve-mind. I pa.s.s on my wisdom to the pieces of me. My construct selves build annexes to my mental s.p.a.ce in the sprawl of the dump as I become replete with knowledge. This man is a limb, the anthropoid construct giant is nothing but an aspect. My cables and connected machines spread far into the rubbishland. Calculating engines at the other end of the tip are pieces of me. I am the repository of construct history. I am the data bank. I am the self-organized machine."

As the man spoke, the various constructs gathered in the little s.p.a.ce began to troop a little closer to the fearful rubbish-figure sitting regally in the chaos. They stopped at seemingly random places and reached down with a suction pad, or a hook, or a spike or claw, and picked up one of the mess of seemingly discarded cables and wires that were strewn everywhere in the dump. They fumbled with the doors to their input sockets, flipped them open and connected.

As each construct connected the empty-skulled man would jerk and his eyes would glaze for a moment.

"I grow," he whispered. "I grow. My processing power fattens exponentially. I learn . . . I know of your troubles. I have connected to your cleaner. It was collapsing. I have brought it into the intelligence. It is one of I now, completely a.s.similated." The man pointed back at the rough outlines of hips in the giant construct-skeleton. With a start, Isaac realized that the flattened metal outline that bulged slightly from the body like a cyst was the reshaped body of the cleaning construct.

"I learnt from it as from no other me," said the man. "I am still calculating the variables implied by its fragmentary vision from the Weaver's back. It has been my most important I."

"Why are we here?" hissed Derkhan. "What does this d.a.m.ned thing want from us?"

More and more constructs were downloading their experiences into the Council's mind. The avatar, the ragged man who spoke for it, hummed tunelessly as the information flooded its banks.

Eventually, all the constructs had completed their connection. They took the cables from their valves and moved back again. When they saw this, several of the human watchers came nervously forward, bearing programme cards and a.n.a.lytical engines the size of suitcases. They grabbed the cables the constructs had dropped, connected them to their calculating machines.

After two or three minutes this process was also complete. When the humans had stepped back, the avatar's eyes whipped up until only white showed under his lids. His lidless head shook as the Council a.s.similated everything.

After a minute or so of wordless s.h.i.+vering, he suddenly snapped to. His eyes opened and stared alertly around him.

"Bloodlife congregation!" he shouted to the a.s.sembled humans. They rose quickly. "Here are your instructions and your sacraments." From the stomach of the great construct behind him, from the output slots of the original programme-printer, slipped card after card, all punched meticulously. They fell into a wooden crate that sat above the construct's s.e.xless groin like a marsupial's pouch.

In another part of the trunk, embedded at an angle between an oil-drum and a rusting engine, a typewriter stuttered at breakneck speed. A great coiling ream of paper spewed forth, printed closely, and below it a pair of scissors shot out on a tight spring like a predatory fish. They snapped closed, cutting off a sheet from the ream, then bounced back, thrust out again and repeated the operation. Little sheets of religious instruction fluttered down from the blades to lie alongside the programme cards.

One at a time the congregation came nervously up to the construct, making obeisance at every step. They stepped up the little slope of rubbish between the mechanical legs, reached into the crate and brought out a piece of paper and a sheaf of cards, checking the numbers to make sure they had them all. Then they backed quickly away and disappeared into the rubbish, returning to the city.

It seemed that there was no valedictory ceremony to this wors.h.i.+p.

Within minutes, Yagharek and Isaac and Derkhan and Lemuel were the only organic lifeforms left in the hollow, apart from the ghastly half-living empty-headed man. The constructs remained all around them. They were quite still as the three humans s.h.i.+fted uneasily.

Isaac thought he saw a human figure standing on the tallest mound of rubbish in the dump, watching the proceedings, silhouetted profound black against New Crobuzon's sepia-stained half-dark. He focused and there was nothing. They were completely alone.

He looked frowning at his companions, then moved forward towards the cadaverous figure with the pipe emerging from its head.

"Council," he said. "Why did you tell us to come here? What do you want from us? You know of the slake-moths . . ."

"Der Grimnebulin," the avatar interrupted. "I grow powerful, and more so daily. My computational power is unprecedented in the history of Bas-Lag, unless I have a rival in some far-off continent of which we know nothing. I am the networked total of a hundred or more calculating engines. Each feeds the others and is fed in turn. I can evaluate a problem from a thousand angles.

"Each day I read the books my congregation bring me, through my avatar's eyes. I a.s.similate history and religion, thaumaturgy and science and philosophy within my data banks. Every piece of knowledge I gain enriches my calculations.

"I have spread my senses. My cables grow longer and reach further. I receive information from cameras fixed around the dump. My cables connect to them now like disembodied nerves. My congregation is dragging them slowly further out, into the city itself, to connect to its apparatuses. I have wors.h.i.+ppers in the bowels of Parliament, who load the memories of their calculating engines onto cards and bring them to me. But this is not my city."

Isaac's face creased. He shook his head. "I don't . . ." he began.

"Mine is an interst.i.tial existence," the avatar interrupted urgently. The man's voice was dead of all inflexion. It was eerie and alienating. "I was born of an error, in a dead s.p.a.ce where the citizens discard what they do not want. For every construct that is part of me there are thousands that are not. My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

"If the city comes to a stop, the variables will ebb almost to nothing. The flow of information will dry. I do not wish to live in an empty city. I have fed the variables of the slake-moth problem into my a.n.a.lytical network. The outcome is straightforward. Unchecked, the prognosis for bloodlife in New Crobuzon is extremely bad. I will help you."

Isaac looked to Derkhan and Lemuel, took in Yagharek's shadow-hidden eyes. He looked back at the s.h.i.+vering avatar. Derkhan caught his eye. Tread carefully, Tread carefully, she mouthed exaggeratedly at him. she mouthed exaggeratedly at him.

"Well, we're all . . . d.a.m.ned grateful, Council . . . uh . . . how . . . Can I ask what you intend to do?"

"I have calculated that you will best believe and understand if I show you," said the man.

A pair of ma.s.sive metal clamps snapped into position on Isaac's forearms. He yelled out in surprise and fear and tried to turn. He was held by the largest of the industrial constructs, a model with hands designed to connect to scaffolding, to hold up buildings. Isaac was a strong man, but he was quite incapable of breaking free.

He cried out to his companions to help him, but another of the huge constructs stepped ponderously between him and them. For an unclear moment, Derkhan and Lemuel and Yagharek hovered confusedly. Then Lemuel broke and ran. He raced away down one of the long trenches in the rubbish, peeling away to the east, out of sight.

"Pigeon, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d b.a.s.t.a.r.d," screamed Isaac. As Isaac struggled, he saw with amazement that Yagharek moved before Derkhan. The crippled garuda was so quiet, so pa.s.sive, such a cypher of a presence, that Isaac had discounted him. He would follow, and he might do as he was asked. That was all.

And yet here was Yagharek now leaping up in a spectacular sideways motion, sliding round the side of the guarding construct, scrambling for Isaac. Derkhan saw what he was doing and moved the other way, causing the construct to dither between them, then stride purposefully towards her.

She turned to run, but a steel-sheathed cable whipped up like a predatory snake from the trash-undergrowth and whiplashed around her ankle, pulling her to the ground. She fell hard across the shattered ground, cried out in pain.

Yagharek was scrabbling heroically with the construct's clamps, but it was quite ineffectual. The construct simply ignored him. One of its fellows moved in behind Yagharek.

"Yag, dammit!" shouted Isaac. "Run!" But he spoke too late. The newcomer was a similarly enormous industrial construct, and the wire-mesh that looped down and ensnared Yagharek was much too hard to break.

Out of the fray, the b.l.o.o.d.y man, that flesh-extension of the Construct Council, raised his voice.

"You are not being attacked," he said. "You will not be harmed. We start here. We lay bait. Please do not be alarmed."

"Are you out of your G.o.dsd.a.m.ned mind mind?" shouted Isaac. "What the f.u.c.k d'you mean mean? What are you doing doing?"

The constructs in the heart of the rubbish-maze were moving back to the edges of the empty s.p.a.ce, the Construct Council's throne room. The cable that had ensnared Derkhan tugged her across the shattered ground. She fought it, shouting and gritting her teeth, but she had to rise and stumble with it to stop the laceration of her flesh. The construct holding Yagharek lifted him effortlessly and stalked away from Isaac. Yagharek thrashed violently, his hood falling from his face, his fierce avian eyes sending cold looks of utter rage in all directions. But he was powerless before that ineluctable artificial force.

Isaac's captor pulled him into the centre of the widening s.p.a.ce. The avatar danced around him.

"Try to relax," he said. "This will not hurt."

"What?" roared Isaac. From the opposite side of the little amphitheatre, a little construct made its jerky, childish way across the rubble. It carried a weird-looking piece of apparatus, a rude helmet with what looked like a funnel expanding up out of it, the whole connected to some portable engine. It leapt up to Isaac's shoulders, gripping painfully with its toes, and shoved the helmet on his head. roared Isaac. From the opposite side of the little amphitheatre, a little construct made its jerky, childish way across the rubble. It carried a weird-looking piece of apparatus, a rude helmet with what looked like a funnel expanding up out of it, the whole connected to some portable engine. It leapt up to Isaac's shoulders, gripping painfully with its toes, and shoved the helmet on his head.

Isaac struggled, and shouted, but pinioned as he was by those mighty arms he could not possibly break free. It was not long before the helmet was fastened to him tightly, yanking his hair and bruising his scalp.

"I am the machine," said the naked dead man, dancing nimbly from rock to engine debris to broken gla.s.s. "What is discarded here is my flesh. I fix it more quickly than your body mends bruises or broken bones. Everything is left here for dead. What is not here now will be brought here soon, or my wors.h.i.+ppers will bring for me, or I can build. The equipment on your head is a piece like those used by channellers and seers, communicators and psychonauts of all kinds. It is a transformer. It can channel and redirect and amplify psychic discharge. At the moment, it is set to augment and radiate.

"I have adjusted it. It is much stronger than those at use in the city.

"You remember the Weaver warned you that the slake-moth you raised is hunting you? It is a crippled one, a stunted outcast. It cannot track you without help."

The man looked at Isaac. Derkhan was shouting something in the background, but Isaac was not listening, could not take his eyes from the looming eyes of the avatar.

"You will see what we can do," said the man. "We are going to help it."

Isaac did not hear his own howl of outrage and fear. A construct reached forward and turned on the engine. The helmet vibrated and hummed so hard and loud that Isaac's ears hurt.

Waves of Isaac's mental print went pulsing out into the city night. They pa.s.sed through the malign fur of bad dreams that clogged up the city's pores, and beamed out into the atmosphere.

Blood trickled from Isaac's nose. His head began to ache.

A thousand feet above the city, the handlingers congregated in Ludmead. The sinistrals tentatively investigated the psychic wake of the slake-moths.

on fast attack before suspicion, urged one pugnaciously. urged one pugnaciously.