Perdido Street Station Part 61

Just less than one second since the power had coursed through the wires and mechanisms, the impossible, paradoxical flow of cobbled-together consciousness, the combined flow of Weaver and Council, welled up and burst ma.s.sively out of Andrej's conducting helmet.

His own rerouted emanations wobbled in a loop of referential feedback, constantly being checked and compared to the y y+z flow by the a.n.a.logue and the crisis engines. Without outlet, it began to leak out, snapping in peculiar little arcs of thaumaturgic plasma. It dribbled invisibly over Andrej's contorting face, mixing with the gobbing overflow from the Weaver/Council emission. flow by the a.n.a.logue and the crisis engines. Without outlet, it began to leak out, snapping in peculiar little arcs of thaumaturgic plasma. It dribbled invisibly over Andrej's contorting face, mixing with the gobbing overflow from the Weaver/Council emission.

The main aggregate of that enormous and unstable created consciousness burst in huge gouts from the helmet's f.l.a.n.g.es. A growing column of mental waves and particles burst out over the station, towering into the air. It was invisible, but Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek could feel it, a p.r.i.c.kling of the skin, sixth and seventh senses ringing dully like psychic tinnitus.

Andrej twitched and convulsed with the power of the processes rocking him. His mouth worked. Derkhan looked away in guilty disgust.

The Weaver danced back and forth on its stiletto feet, yammering quietly and tapping its helmet.

"Bait . . ." called Yagharek harshly and stepped back from the flow of energy.

"It's hardly started," yelled Isaac over the thudding of rain.

The crisis engine was humming and heating up, tapping enormous and growing resources. It sent waves of transforming current through thickly insulated cables, towards Andrej, who rolled and jack-knifed in spastic terror and pain.

The engine took the energy siphoned from the unstable situation and channelled it, obeying its instructions, pouring it in transformative form towards the Weaver/Council flow. Boosting it. Increasing its pitch and range and power. And increasing it again.

A feedback loop began. The artificial flow was made stronger; and like an enormous fortified tower on crumbling foundations, the increase of its ma.s.s made it more precarious. Its paradoxical ontology grew more unstable as the flow became stronger. Its crisis grew more acute. The engine's transformative power grew exponentially; it bolstered the mental flow more; the crisis deepened again . . .

The p.r.i.c.kling of Isaac's skin grew worse. A note seemed to sound in his skull, a whine that increased in pitch as if something nearby spun faster and faster, out of control.

He winced.

. . . GOOD GRIEF AND GRACE THE SPILLING SLOSH GROWS MINDFUL BUT MIND IT IS NO MIND GOOD GRIEF AND GRACE THE SPILLING SLOSH GROWS MINDFUL BUT MIND IT IS NO MIND . . . the Weaver continued to murmur . . . . . . the Weaver continued to murmur . . . ONE AND ONE INTO ONE WON ONE AND ONE INTO ONE WON'T GO BUT IT IS ONE AND TWO AT ONCE WILL WE WON HOW WIN HOW WONDERFUL . . . . . .

As Andrej rolled like a victim of torture under the dark rain, the power that poured through his head and into the sky grew more and more intense, increasing at a frightening, geometric rate. It was invisible but sensible: Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek backed away from the squirming figure as far as the little s.p.a.ce would allow. Their pores opened and closed, their hair or feathers crawled violently across their skin.

Still the crisis loop continued and the emanation increased, until it could almost be seen, a s.h.i.+mmering pillar of disturbed aether two hundred feet high, the light from stars and aerostats bending uncertainly around and through it as it towered like an unseen inferno over the city.

Isaac felt as if his gums were rotting, as if his teeth were trying to escape his jaw.

The Weaver danced on in delight.

An enormous beacon was scorched into the aether. A huge and rapidly growing column of energy, a pretend consciousness, the map of a counterfeit mind that swelled and fattened in a fearful curve of growth, impossible and vastly there, the portent of a nonexistent G.o.d.

Across New Crobuzon, more than nine hundred of the city's best communicators and thaumaturges paused and looked suddenly in the direction of The Crow, their faces twisted with confusion and nebulous alarm. The most sensitive held their heads and moaned with inexplicable pain.

Two hundred and seven began to jabber in nonsense combinations of numerological code and lush poetry. One hundred and fifty-five suffered ma.s.sive nosebleeds, two of them ultimately unstaunchable and fatal.

Eleven, who worked for the government, scrabbled from their workshop at the top of the Spike and ran, with handkerchiefs and tissues ineffectually stopping the b.l.o.o.d.y slick from their noses and ears, towards Eliza Stem-Fulcher's office.

"Perdido Street Station!" was all they could say. They gabbled it like idiots for some minutes, to the home secretary and the mayor who was with her, shaking them with frustration, their lips twitching for other sounds, blood spattering their bosses' immaculate tailoring.

"Perdido Street Station!"

Way out above the wide empty streets of Chnum; swooping slowly past the curve of temple towers in Tar Wedge; skirting the river above Howl Barrow and soaring widespread over the pauper slum of Stonesh.e.l.l, intricate bodies moved.

With sluggish strokes and drooling tongues, the slake-moths sought prey.

They were hungry, eager to gorge themselves and ready their bodies and breed again. They must hunt.

But in four sudden, identical and simultaneous movements-separated by miles, in different quadrants of the city-the four slake-moths snapped their heads up as they flew.

They beat their complex wings and slowed, until they were almost still in the air. Four s...o...b..ring tongues lolled and lapped at the air.

In the distance, over the skyline that glimmered with grots of filthy light, on the outskirts of the central ma.s.s of building, a column was rising from the earth. Even as they licked and tastesmelled it, it grew and grew, and their wings beat back frantically as the wafts of flavour came over them, and the incredible succulent stench of the thing boiled and eddied in the aether.

The other smells and tastes of the city dissipated into nothing. With an amazing speed, the extraordinary flavour-trail doubled its intensity, suffusing the slake-moths, making them mad.

One by one they emitted a chittering of astounded, delighted greed, a single-minded hunger.

From all the way across the city, from the four compa.s.s points, they converged in a frenzy of flapping, four starving exultant powerful bodies, descending to feed.

There was a tiny putter of lights on a little console. Isaac edged closer, keeping his body low, as if he could duck under the beacon of energy pouring from Andrej's skull. The old man lolled and twitched on the ground.

Isaac was careful not to look at Andrej's sprawling form. He peered at the console, making sense of the little play of diodes.

"I think it's the Construct Council," he said over the drab rainfall sound. "It's sending instructions to get round the firewall, but I don't think it'll be able to. This is too simple for it," he said, and patted the circuit-valve. "There's nothing for it to get control of." Isaac visualized a struggle in the femtoscopic byways of wiring.

He looked up.

The Weaver was ignoring him and them all, drumming its little fingers against the slick concrete in complicated rhythms. Its low voice was impenetrable.

Derkhan was staring in exhausted disgust at Andrej. Her head jerked gently back and forward as if she was rocked by waves. Her mouth moved. She spoke in silent tongues. Don't die, Don't die, thought Isaac fervently, staring at the ruined old man, seeing his face contort as bizarre feedback rocked him, thought Isaac fervently, staring at the ruined old man, seeing his face contort as bizarre feedback rocked him, you can't die yet, you have to hold on. you can't die yet, you have to hold on.

Yagharek was standing. He pointed up, suddenly, into a far quadrant of the sky.

"They have changed course," he said harshly. Isaac looked up and saw what Yagharek was indicating.

Far away, halfway to the edge of the city, three of the drifting dirigibles had turned purposefully. They were hardly visible to human eyes, darker blots against the night sky, picked out with navigation lights. But it was clear that their fitful, random motion had changed; that they were powering ponderously towards Perdido Street Station, converging.

"They're on to us," said Isaac. He did not feel fearful, only tense and weirdly sad. "They're coming. G.o.dspit and s.h.i.+t! We've got about ten, fifteen minutes before they get here. We just have to hope the moths are quicker."

"No. No." Yagharek was shaking his head with quick violence. His head was c.o.c.ked. His arms moved quickly, motioning them all to silence. Isaac and Derkhan froze. The Weaver continued its insane monologue, but it was subdued and hushed. Isaac prayed that it would not become bored and disappear. The apparatus, the constructed mind, the crisis would all collapse.

The air around them all was welting, splitting like troubled skin, as the force of that unthinkable and burgeoning blast of power continued to grow.

Yagharek was listening intently through the rain.

"People are approaching," he said urgently, "across the roof." With practised movements, he plucked his whip from his belt. His long knife seemed to dance into his left hand and pose, glinting in the refracted sodium lights. He had become a warrior and a hunter again.

Isaac stood and drew his flintlock. He checked hurriedly that it was clean and he filled the pan with powder, trying to s.h.i.+eld it from the rain. He felt for his little pouch of bullets and his powder horn. His heart, he realized, was beating only very slightly faster.

He saw Derkhan readying herself. She drew her two pistols and checked them, her eyes cold.

On the roof's plateau, forty feet below, a little troop of dark-uniformed figures had appeared. They ran nervously between the outcroppings of architecture, their pikes and rifles rattling. There were perhaps twelve of them, their faces invisible behind their sheer reflective helmets, their segmented armour flapping against them, subtle insignia displaying rank. They spread out, came at the gradient of roofs from different angles.

"Oh dear Jabber," swallowed Isaac. "We're f.u.c.ked."

Five minutes, he thought in despair. he thought in despair. That's all we need. The f.u.c.king moths won't resist this, they're coming here already, couldn't you have taken a little longer? That's all we need. The f.u.c.king moths won't resist this, they're coming here already, couldn't you have taken a little longer?

The dirigibles still prowled closer and closer, sluggish and ineluctable.

The militia had reached the outer edges of the tumbling slate hill. They began to climb, keeping low, ducking behind chimney stacks and dormer windows. Isaac stepped back from the edge, keeping them out of sight.

The Weaver was tracing its index finger through the water on the roof, leaving a trail of scorched dry stone, drawing patterns and pictures of flowers, whispering to itself. Andrej's body spasmed as the current rocked him. His eyes wavered unnervingly.

"f.u.c.k!" shouted Isaac, in despair and rage. shouted Isaac, in despair and rage.

"Shut up and fight," hissed Derkhan. She lay down and peered carefully over the edge of the roof. The highly trained militia were frighteningly close. She aimed and fired with her left hand.

There was a snapping explosion that seemed m.u.f.fled by the rain. The closest officer, who had scaled nearly halfway up the slope, staggered back as the ball struck his armoured breast and ricocheted into the darkness. He teetered momentarily on the edge of his little roof-step, managed to right himself. As he relaxed and stepped forward, Derkhan fired her other gun.

The officer's faceplate shattered in an explosion of b.l.o.o.d.y mirror. A cloud of flesh burst from the back of his skull. His face was momentarily visible, a shocked gaze embedded with slivers of reflecting gla.s.s, blooming with blood from a hole below his right eye. He seemed to leap out backwards like a champion diver, sailing elegantly twenty feet to crack loudly against the base of the roof.

Derkhan bellowed with triumph, her cry becoming words. "Die, "Die, you you swine swine!" she screamed. She ducked back out of sight as a rapid battery of shots smacked into the brick and stone above and below her. she screamed. She ducked back out of sight as a rapid battery of shots smacked into the brick and stone above and below her.

Isaac dropped onto all fours beside her, staring at her. It was impossible to say, in the rain, but he thought she was sobbing angrily. She rolled back from the edge of the roof and began to reload her pistols. She caught Isaac's eye.

"Do something!" she screamed at him. she screamed at him.

Yagharek was standing, hanging back from the edge, grabbing glimpses every few seconds, waiting until the men were in reach of his whip. Isaac rolled forward, peered over the rim of the little platform. The men were drawing nearer, moving more carefully now, hiding at each level, staying out of sight, but still moving terribly fast.

Isaac aimed and fired. His bullet burst dramatically against slate, showering the lead militiaman with particles.

"G.o.dsd.a.m.nit!" he hissed and ducked back to refill his gun.

A cold certainty of defeat was settling within him. There were too many men, coming too quickly. As soon as the militia reached the top, Isaac would have no defence. If the Weaver came to their aid they would lose their bait, and the slake-moths would escape. They might take one, two or three of the officers with them, but they could not escape.

Andrej was jerking up and down, arcing his back and straining against his bonds. The nerves between Isaac's eyes were singing as the blast of energy continued to scald the aether. The airs.h.i.+ps were pulling near. Isaac screwed up his face, looked back over the edge of the plateau. On the broken plain of the roof below, drunkards and vagrants were rousing themselves and scurrying away like terrified animals.

Yagharek screeched like a crow and pointed with his knife.

Behind the militia, on the flattened roofscape they had left behind, a cloaked figure slipped out of some shadow, appearing like an eidolon, manifesting as if from nothing.

There was a flurry of bottle-green from its coiling cloak.

Something spat intense fire and noise from the figure's outstretched hand, three, four, five times. Halfway up the slope, Isaac saw a militiaman bow away from the roof, collapsing in an ugly organic cascade down the length of the clay. As he fell, two more of the men staggered and collapsed. One was dead, blood pooling below his sprawled body and diluting in the rain. The other slid a little way and emitted a horrendous shriek from behind his mask, clutching at his bleeding ribs.

Isaac gazed in shock.

"Who the f.u.c.k is that?" he shouted. "What the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k is going on?" Below him, their shadowed benefactor had ducked into a puddle of darkness. He seemed to be fumbling with his gun. is going on?" Below him, their shadowed benefactor had ducked into a puddle of darkness. He seemed to be fumbling with his gun.

Below them, the militia had frozen. Orders were shouted in impenetrable shorthand. It was clear that they were confused and afraid.

Derkhan was staring into the darkness with a look of astonished hope.

"G.o.ds bless bless you," she screamed down the slate, into the night. She fired again with her left hand, but the bullet pa.s.sed loudly and harmlessly into brick. you," she screamed down the slate, into the night. She fired again with her left hand, but the bullet pa.s.sed loudly and harmlessly into brick.

Thirty feet below them, the injured man still screamed. He fumbled ineffectually to undo his mask.

The unit split. One man ducked beneath outcroppings of brick and raised his rifle, aiming into the darkness where the newcomer hid. Several of the remaining men began to descend towards their new attacker. The others began to climb again, at redoubled speed.

As the two little groups moved up and down across the slippery roofscape, the dark figure stepped out again and fired with extraordinary rapidity. He's got some kind of repeating pistol, He's got some kind of repeating pistol, thought Isaac with astonishment, and then started as two more officers reared up from the roof a little way below him and fell, twisting and screaming, to bounce brutally down the incline. thought Isaac with astonishment, and then started as two more officers reared up from the roof a little way below him and fell, twisting and screaming, to bounce brutally down the incline.

Isaac realized that the man below them was not firing at the militia who had turned and were approaching him, but was concentrating on protecting the little platform, picking off the closest officers with superb marksmans.h.i.+p. He had left himself vulnerable to a ma.s.sed attack.

All across the roof the militia froze at the volley of bullets. But as Isaac looked down he saw that the second group of officers had descended to the base of the roof and were running in clumsily furtive formation at the shady a.s.sa.s.sin.

Ten feet below Isaac, the militia were closing in. He fired again, knocking the wind from one man, but failing to penetrate his armour. Derkhan shot, and below them, the poised marksman screeched an oath and dropped his rifle, which slid noisily away.

Isaac filled his gun with desperate haste. He glanced over at his machinery, saw that Andrej was curled under the wall. He was shuddering, with spittle fouling his face. Isaac's head throbbed in time to some weird beat from the growing blaze of mental waves. He looked up at the sky. Come Come on, he thought, on, he thought, come on, come on. come on, come on. He looked down again as he reloaded, trying to find the mysterious newcomer. He looked down again as he reloaded, trying to find the mysterious newcomer.

He almost cried out in fear for their half-hidden protector, as four burly and heavily armed militia jogged towards the pitch-shade where he had hidden.

Something emerged from the darkness at speed, leaping from shadow to shadow, drawing the militia's fire with extraordinary ease. A pathetic spatter of shots sounded, and the four men's rifles were empty. As they dropped to one knee and began to reload, the cloaked figure emerged from the sheltering gloom and stood a few paces before them.

Isaac saw him from slightly behind, illuminated in the sudden cold light from some phlogistic lamp. His face was turned away, towards the militia. His cloak was patched and shabby. Isaac could just see a stubby little gun in his left hand. As the impa.s.sive gla.s.s masks glimmered in the light and the four officers seemed to falter into momentary stillness, something extended from the man's right hand. Isaac could not see it well, squinted carefully until the man moved slightly and raised his arm, uncovering the toothed thing as the sleeve of the cloth fell away.

A ma.s.sive serrated blade, slowly opening and shutting like wicked scissors. Gnarled chitin jutting ungainly from the man's elbow, recurved razor tip gleaming at the end of the trapping jaw.

The man's right arm had been replaced, Remade, with a vast mantis claw.

At the same instant, Isaac and Derkhan gasped and shouted his name: "Jack Half-a-Prayer!" "Jack Half-a-Prayer!"