Perdido Street Station Part 60

"Isaac," said Derkhan, her voice cracking, "you have to hurry. It's starting."

A swarm of nightmare feelings pattered down among them with the rain.

"They're up and out," said Derkhan with terror. "They're hunting. They're abroad. Hurry, you have to hurry . . ."

Isaac nodded without speaking and continued with what he was doing, shaking his head as if that might disperse the cloying fear that had settled on him. Where's the f.u.c.king Weaver? Where's the f.u.c.king Weaver? he thought. he thought.

"Someone watches us from below," said Yagharek suddenly, "some tramp who did not run. He does not move."

Isaac glanced up again, then returned his attention to his work.

"Take my gun there," he hissed. "If he comes up towards us, warn him off with a shot. Hopefully he'll keep his distance." Still his hands rushed to twist, to connect, to programme. He punched numbered keypads and wrestled roughcut cards into slots. "Nearly there," he murmured, "nearly there."

The sense of nocturnal pressure, of drifting in sour dreams, increased.

"Isaac . . ." hissed Derkhan. Andrej had fallen into a kind of terrified, exhausted half-sleep, and he began to moan and thrash, his eyes opening and shutting with bleary vagueness.

"Done!" spat Isaac, and stepped back.

There was a silent moment. Isaac's triumph dissipated quickly.

"We need the Weaver!" he said. "It's supposed to . . . it said it would be here! We can't do anything without it . . ."

They could do nothing except wait.

The stench of twisted dream-imagery grew and grew, and brief screams sounded from random points across the city, as sleeping sufferers called out their fear or defiance. The rain fell thicker, until the concrete underfoot was slick. Isaac laid the greasy sack ineffectually across various sections of the crisis circuit, moving it in agitation, trying to protect his machine from the water.

Yagharek watched the glistening roofscape. When his head became too full of fearful dreams and he grew afraid of what he might see, he turned on his heel and watched through the mirrors on his helmet. He kept watch on the dim, immobile figure below.

Isaac and Derkhan dragged Andrej a little closer to the circuit (again with that ghastly gentleness, as if concerned for his wellbeing). (again with that ghastly gentleness, as if concerned for his wellbeing). Under Derkhan's gun, Isaac retied the old man's hands and legs, and fastened one of the communicator helmets tight to his head. He did not look at Andrej's face. Under Derkhan's gun, Isaac retied the old man's hands and legs, and fastened one of the communicator helmets tight to his head. He did not look at Andrej's face.

The helmet had been adjusted. As well as its flared output on the top, it had three input jacks. One connected it to the second helmet. Another was connected by several skeins of wires to the calculating brains and generators of the crisis engine.

Isaac wiped the third connection briefly free of filthy rainwater, and plugged into it the thick wire extending from the black circuit-breaker, attached to which was the ma.s.sive cable extending all the way to the Construct Council, south of the river. Current could flow from the Council's a.n.a.lytical brain, through the one-way switch, into Andrej's helmet.

"That's it, that's it," said Isaac tensely. "Now we just need the f.u.c.king Weaver Weaver . . ." . . ."

It was another half an hour of rain and burgeoning nightmares before the dimensions of the roofs.p.a.ce rippled and shucked wildly, and the Weaver's crooning monologue could be heard.

. . . AS THEE AND ME CONCURRED THE FAT FUNNELs.p.a.cE THE CLOT AT CITYWEB CENTRE SEES US CONFLAB AS THEE AND ME CONCURRED THE FAT FUNNELs.p.a.cE THE CLOT AT CITYWEB CENTRE SEES US CONFLAB . . . came the unearthly voice in all of their skulls, and the great spider stepped out lightly from the kink in the air and danced towards them, its s.h.i.+ning body dwarfing them. . . . came the unearthly voice in all of their skulls, and the great spider stepped out lightly from the kink in the air and danced towards them, its s.h.i.+ning body dwarfing them.

Isaac gave a barking breath, a sharp moan of relief. His mind juddered with the awe and terror the Weaver induced.

"Weaver!" he shouted. "Help us now!" He held out the other communicating helmet to the extraordinary presence.

Andrej had looked up and was shying away in a paroxysm of terror. His eyes bulged with the pressure of his blood and he began to retch behind his mask. He wriggled as fast as he could towards the edge of the roof, a terrible inhuman fear jack-knifing his body away.

Derkhan caught him and held him fast. He ignored her gun, his eyes empty of everything but the vast spider that loomed over him, peering down with slow portentous movements. Derkhan could hold him easily. His decaying muscles flexed and twisted ineffectually. She dragged him back and held him.

Isaac did not look at them. He held out the helmet to the Weaver beseechingly.

"We need you to put this on," he said. "Put this on now! We can take them all. You said you'd help us . . . to repair the web . . . please."

The rain sputtered against the Weaver's hard sh.e.l.l. Every second or so, one or two random drops would sizzle violently and evaporate as they struck it. The Weaver kept talking, as it always did, an inaudible murmur that Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek could not understand.

It reached out with its smooth, human hands, and placed the helmet on its segmented head.

Isaac closed his eyes in brief exhausted relief, then opened them again.

"Keep it on!" he hissed. "Fasten it!"

With fingers that moved as elegantly as a master tailor's, the spider did so.

. . . WILL YOU TICKLE AND TRICK WILL YOU TICKLE AND TRICK . . . it gibbered . . . . . . it gibbered . . . AS THINKLINGS TRICKLE THROUGH SLOs.h.i.+NG METAL AND MIX IN MIRE MY IRE MY MIRROR MYRIAD BURSTING BUBBLES OF BRAINWAVEFORMS AND WEAVING PLANS ON ON AND ONWARD MY MASTER CRAFTY CRAFTSMAN AS THINKLINGS TRICKLE THROUGH SLOs.h.i.+NG METAL AND MIX IN MIRE MY IRE MY MIRROR MYRIAD BURSTING BUBBLES OF BRAINWAVEFORMS AND WEAVING PLANS ON ON AND ONWARD MY MASTER CRAFTY CRAFTSMAN . . . and as the Weaver continued to croon with incomprehensible and dreamlike proclamations, Isaac saw the last fastening snap tight under its terrifying jaw, and he snapped on the switches that opened the circuit-valves on Andrej's helmet, and he pulled the succession of levers that geared up the full processing power of the a.n.a.lytical calculators and the crisis engine, and he stepped back. . . . and as the Weaver continued to croon with incomprehensible and dreamlike proclamations, Isaac saw the last fastening snap tight under its terrifying jaw, and he snapped on the switches that opened the circuit-valves on Andrej's helmet, and he pulled the succession of levers that geared up the full processing power of the a.n.a.lytical calculators and the crisis engine, and he stepped back.

Extraordinary currents surged through the machinery a.s.sembled before them.

There was a very still moment, when even the rain seemed to pause.

Sparks of various and extraordinary colours sputtered from connections.

A ma.s.sive arc of power suddenly snapped Andrej's body absolutely rigid. An unstable corona briefly surrounded him. His face was glazed with astonishment and pain.

Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek watched him, paralysed.

As the batteries sent great gobs of charged particles racing through the intricate circuit, flows of power and processed orders interacted in complex feedback loops, an infinitely fast drama unravelling on a femtoscopic scale.

The communicator helmet began its task, sucking up the exudations of Andrej's mind and amplifying them in a stream of thaumaturgons and waveforms. They raced at the speed of light through the circuitry and headed towards the inverted funnel that would blare them silently into the aether.

But they were diverted.

They were processed, read, mathematized by the ordered drumming of tiny valves and switches.

An infinitely small moment later, two more streams of energy burst into the circuitry. First came the emissions from the Weaver, streaming through the helmet it wore. A tiny fraction of a second later, the current from the Construct Council came sparking through the rough cable from the Griss Twist dump, slamming up and down through the streets, through the circuit-valves in a great slew of power and into the circuitry through Andrej's helmet.

Isaac had seen how the slake-moths slavered and rolled their tongues indiscriminately across the Weaver's body. He had seen how they had been giddy, but not sated.

The Weaver's whole body emanated mental waves, he had realized, but they were not like those of other sentient races. The slake-moths lapped eagerly, and drew taste . . . but no sustenance.

The Weaver thought in a continuous, incomprehensible, rolling stream of awareness. There were no layers to the Weaver's mind, there was no ego to control the lower functions, no animal cortex to keep the mind grounded. For the Weaver, there were no dreams at night, no hidden messages from the secret corners of the mind, no mental clearout of accrued garbage bespeaking an orderly consciousness. For the Weaver, dreams and consciousness were one. The Weaver dreamed of being conscious and its consciousness was its dream, in an endless unfathomable stew of image and desire and cognition and emotion.

For the slake-moths, it was like the froth on effervescent liquor. It was intoxicating and delightful, but without organizing principle, without substratum. Without substance. These were not dreams that could sustain them.

The extraordinary squall and gust of the Weaver's consciousness blew down the wires into the sophisticated engines.

Just behind it came the particle torrent from the Construct Council's brain.

In extreme contrast to the anarchic viral flurry that had sp.a.w.ned it, the Construct Council thought with chill exact.i.tude. Concepts were reduced to a multiplicity of on-off switches, a soulless solipsism that processed information without the complication of arcane desires or pa.s.sion. A will to existence and aggrandizement, shorn of all psychology, a mind contemplative and infinitely, incidentally cruel.

To the slake-moths it was invisible, thought without subconscious. It was meat stripped of all taste or smell, empty thought-calories inconceivable as nutrition. Like ashes.

The Council's mind poured into the machine-and there was a moment of fraught activity as commands were sent down the copper connections from the dump, as the Council sought to suck back information and control of the engine. But the circuit-breaker was solid. The flow of particles was one way.

It was a.s.similated, pa.s.sing through the a.n.a.lytical engine.

A set of parameters was reached. Complex instructions pattered through the valves.

Within a seventh of a second, a rapid sequence of processing activity had begun.

The machine examined the form of the first input x x, Andrej's mental signature.

Two subsidiary orders rattled down pipes and wiring simultaneously. Model form of input y Model form of input y one said, and the engines mapped the extraordinary mental current from the Weaver; one said, and the engines mapped the extraordinary mental current from the Weaver; Model form of input z, Model form of input z, and they did the same job on the Construct Council's vast and powerful brainwaves. The a.n.a.lytical engines factored out the scale of the output and concentrated on the paradigms, the shapes. and they did the same job on the Construct Council's vast and powerful brainwaves. The a.n.a.lytical engines factored out the scale of the output and concentrated on the paradigms, the shapes.

The two lines of programming coalesced again into a tertiary order: Duplicate waveform of input x with inputs y and z. Duplicate waveform of input x with inputs y and z.

The commands were extraordinarily complex. They relied on the advanced calculating machines the Construct Council had provided, and the intricacy of its programme cards.

The mathematico-a.n.a.lytical maps of mentality-even simplified and imperfect, flawed as they inevitably were-became templates. The three were compared.

Andrej's mind, like any sane human's, any sane vodyanoi's or khepri's or cactacae's or other sentient being's, was a constantly convulsing dialectical unity of consciousness and subconsciousness, the battening down and channelling of dreams and desires, the recurring re-creation of the subliminal by the contradictory, the rational-capricious ego. And vice versa. The interaction of levels of consciousness into an unstable and permanently self-renewing whole.

Andrej's mind was not like the cold ratiocination of the Council, nor the poetic dream-consciousness of the Weaver.

x, recorded the engines, was unlike recorded the engines, was unlike y y and unlike and unlike z z.

But with underlying structure and and subconscious flow, with calculating rationality and impulsive fancy, self-maximizing a.n.a.lysis and emotional charge, subconscious flow, with calculating rationality and impulsive fancy, self-maximizing a.n.a.lysis and emotional charge, x, x, the a.n.a.lytical engines calculated, was equal to the a.n.a.lytical engines calculated, was equal to y plus z y plus z.

The thaumaturgo-psychic motors followed orders. They combined y y and and z z. They created a duplicate waveform to that of x x and routed it through the output on Andrej's helmet. and routed it through the output on Andrej's helmet.

The flows of charged particles pouring into the helmet from the Council and the Weaver were added together into a single vast slew. The Weaver's dreams, the Council's calculations, were blended to mimic subconscious and conscious, the working human mind. The new ingredients were more powerful than Andrej's feeble emanations by a factor of enormous magnitude. The vastness of this power was unabated as the new, huge current surged towards the flared trumpet pointing up into the sky.

A little more than one-third of a second had pa.s.sed since the circuit had snapped into life. As the enormous combined flow of y y+z dashed towards the outflow, a new set of conditions was fulfilled. The crisis engine itself chattered into life. dashed towards the outflow, a new set of conditions was fulfilled. The crisis engine itself chattered into life.

It used the unstable categories of crisis maths, as much a persuasive vision as objective categorization. Its deductive method was holistic, totalizing and inconstant.

As the exudations of the Council and the Weaver took the place of Andrej's outflow, the crisis engine was fed the same information as the original processors. It rapidly evaluated the calculations that had been performed and examined the new flow. In its astonis.h.i.+ngly complex tubular intelligence, a ma.s.sive anomaly became evident. Something the strictly arithmetic functions of the other engines could never have uncovered.

The form of the dataflows under a.n.a.lysis was not just the sum of their const.i.tuent parts.

y and and z z were unified, bounded wholes. And most crucially, so was were unified, bounded wholes. And most crucially, so was x x, Andrej's mind, the reference point for the whole model. It was integral to the form of each that they were totalities. It was integral to the form of each that they were totalities.

The layers of consciousness within x x were dependent on each other, interlocking gears of a motor of self-sustaining consciousness. What was arithmetically discernible as rationalism were dependent on each other, interlocking gears of a motor of self-sustaining consciousness. What was arithmetically discernible as rationalism plus plus dreams was really a dreams was really a whole whole, whose const.i.tuent parts could not be disentangled.

y and and z z were not half-complete models of were not half-complete models of x x. They were qualitatively different.

The engine applied rigorous crisis logic to the original operation. A mathematical command had created a perfect arithmetic a.n.a.logue of a source code from disparate material, and that a.n.a.logue was simultaneously identical to and radically divergent radically divergent from the original it mimicked. from the original it mimicked.

Three-fifths of a second after the circuit had snapped into life, the crisis engine arrived at two simultaneous conclusions: x x=y+z; and and x=/y+z x=/y+z.

The operation that had been carried out was profoundly unstable. It was paradoxical, unsustainable, the application of logic tearing itself apart.

The process was, from absolute first principles of a.n.a.lysis, modelling and conversion, utterly riddled with crisis.

A ma.s.sive wellspring of crisis energy was instantly uncovered. The realization of crisis freed it up to be tapped: metaphasic pistons squeezed and convulsed, sending controlled spurts of the volatile energy shooting through amplifiers and transformers. Subsidiary circuits rocked and juddered. The crisis motor began to whirl like a dynamo, crackling with power and sending out complex charges of quasivoltage.

The final command rang in binary form through the crisis engine's innards. Channel energy, Channel energy, it said, it said, and amplify output. and amplify output.