Perdido Street Station Part 66

At that I come alive with longing. A final freedom. I want it badly. Flight.

He reads the pilfered papers over my shoulder.

In the climate of crisis, the militia are to be given extraordinary powers, we read. They may revert to open, uniformed patrols. Civilian rights may be curtailed. Martial law is mooted.

But throughout that bl.u.s.tery day, the s.h.i.+t, the filthy discharge, the dream-poison of the slake-moths is sinking slowly through the aether and on into the earth. I fancy I can feel it as I lie under these dilapidated planks; it subsides gently around me, denatured by the daylight. It drifts like polluted snow through the planes that entangle the city, on through layers of materia, leeching out of our dimension and away.

And when the night comes, the nightmares have gone.

It is as if some gentle sob, some ma.s.s exhalation of relief and languor sweeps the city. A wave of calm gusts in from the nightside, from the west, from Gallmarch and Smog Bend to Gross Coil, to Sheck and Brock Marsh, Ludmead and Mog Hill and Abrogate Green.

The city is cleansed in a tide of sleep. On piles of p.i.s.s-damp straw in Creekside and the slums, on bloated featherbeds in Chnum, huddled together and alone, the citizens of New Crobuzon sleep soundly.

The city moves without pause, of course, and there is no let-up for the nightcrews in the docks, or the battering of metal as late s.h.i.+fts enter mills and foundries. Brazen sounds puncture the night, sounds like war. Watchmen still guard the forecourts of factories. Wh.o.r.es seek business wherever they can find it. There are still crimes. Violence does not dissipate.

But the sleepers and the waking are not taunted by phantoms. Their terrors are their own.

Like some unthinkable torpid giant, New Crobuzon s.h.i.+fts easily in its dreams.

I had forgotten the pleasure of such a night.

When I wake to the sun, my head is clear. I do not ache.

We have been freed.

This time the stories are all of the end of the "Midsummer Nightmare," or the "Sleeping Sickness," or the "Dream Curse," or whatever other name the particular newspaper had coined.

We read them and laugh, Derkhan and Isaac and I. Delight is palpable everywhere. The city is returned. Transformed.

We wait for Lin to wake, to come to her senses.

But she does not.

That first day, she slept. Her body began to reknit itself. She clutched Isaac tight and refused to wake. Free, and free to sleep without fear.

But now she has woken and sat up sluggishly. Her headlegs judder a little. Her mandibles work: she is hungry, and we find fruit in our stolen h.o.a.rd, give her breakfast.

She looks unsteadily from me to Derkhan to Isaac as she eats. He grips her thighs, whispers to her, too low for me to hear. She jerks her head away like a baby. She moves with a spastic, palsied quivering.

She raises her hands and signs for him.

He watches her eagerly, his face creasing in incredulous despair at her fumbling, ugly manipulations.

Derkhan's eyes widen as she reads the words.

Isaac shakes his head, can hardly speak.

Morning . . . food . . . warming, he falters, insect . . . journey . . . happy. insect . . . journey . . . happy.

She cannot feed herself. Her outer jaws spasm and split the fruit in two, or relax suddenly and let it fall. She shakes with frustration, rocks her head, releases a cloud of spray that Isaac says are khepri tears.

He comforts her, holds the apple before her, helping her to bite, wiping her when she drips juice and residue across herself. Afraid Afraid, she signs, as Isaac hesitantly translates. Mind tiring spilling loose, art Motley! Mind tiring spilling loose, art Motley! She shakes suddenly, peering around her in terror. Isaac shushes her, comforts her. Derkhan watches in misery. Alone, Lin signs desperately, and spews out a chymical message that is opaque to us all. She shakes suddenly, peering around her in terror. Isaac shushes her, comforts her. Derkhan watches in misery. Alone, Lin signs desperately, and spews out a chymical message that is opaque to us all. Monster warm Remade . . . Monster warm Remade . . . She looks around. She looks around. Apple Apple, she signs. Apple. Apple.

Isaac lifts it to her mouth and lets her feed. She jigs like a toddler.

When the evening comes and she falls asleep once more, quickly and deeply, Isaac and Derkhan confer, and Isaac begins to rage and shout, and to cry.

She'll recover, he shouts, as Lin s.h.i.+fts in her sleep, she's half-dead with f.u.c.king tiredness, she's had the s.h.i.+t beaten out of her, it's no wonder, no wonder she's confused . . . she's half-dead with f.u.c.king tiredness, she's had the s.h.i.+t beaten out of her, it's no wonder, no wonder she's confused . . .

But she does not recover, as he knows she will not.

We ripped her from the moth half drunk. Half her mind, half her dreams had been sucked into the gullet of the vampir beast. It is gone, burnt up by stomach juices and then by Motley's men.

Lin wakes happy, talks animated gibberish with her hands, flails to stand and cannot, falls and weeps or laughs chymically, chatters with her mandibles, fouls herself like a baby.

Lin toddles across our roof with her half-mind. Helpless. Ruined. A weird patchwork of childish laughter and adult dreams, her speech extraordinary and incomprehensible, complex and violent and infantile.

Isaac is broken.

We move roofs, made uneasy by noises from below. Lin has a tantrum on our journey, made mad by our inability to understand her bizarre stream of words. She drums her heels on the pavement, slaps Isaac with weak strokes. She signs vile insults, tries to kick us away.

We control her, hold her tight, bundle her away.

We move by night. We are fearful of the militia and of Motley's men. We watch out for constructs which might report to the Council. We watch carefully for sudden movements and suspicious glances. We cannot trust our neighbours. We must live in a hinterland of half darkness, isolated and solipsistic. We steal what we need, or buy from tiny late-night grocers miles from where we are settled. Every askance look, every gaze, every shout, sudden flurry of hooves or boots, every bang or hiss of a construct's pistons is a moment of fear.

We are the most wanted in New Crobuzon. An honour, a dubious honour.

Lin wants colourberries.

Isaac interprets her motions thus. The faltering charade of chewing, the pulsing of her gland (an unsettling s.e.xual sight).

Derkhan agrees to go. She loves Lin, too.

They spend hours on Derkhan's disguise, with water and b.u.t.ter and soot, ragged clothes from all over, foodstuffs and the remnants of dyes. She emerges with sleek black hair that s.h.i.+nes like coal-crystals and a puckered scar across her forehead. She holds herself hunched and scowls.

When she leaves, Isaac and I spend the hours waiting fearfully. We are almost totally silent.

Lin continues her idiot monologue, and Isaac tries to answer with his own hands, caressing her and signing slowly as if she were a child. But she is not: she is half an adult, and his manner enrages her. She tries to stalk away and falls, her limbs disobedient. She is terrified of her own body. Isaac helps her, sits her up and feeds her, ma.s.sages her tense, bruised shoulders.

Derkhan returns to our muttered relief with slabs of paste and a large handful of variegated berries. Their tones are lush and vivid.

I thought the d.a.m.n Council had us, she says. I thought some construct was after me. I had to wind through Kinken to get away. I thought some construct was after me. I had to wind through Kinken to get away.

None of us know if she was really being tracked.

Lin is excited. Her antennae and her headlegs quiver. She tries to chew a finger of the white paste, but she trembles and spills it and cannot control herself. Isaac is gentle with her. He pushes the paste slowly into her mouth, un.o.btrusive, as if she ate for herself.

It takes some minutes for the headscarab to digest the paste and direct it towards the khepri's gland. As we wait, Isaac shakes a few colourberries at Lin, waiting until her twitches decide him that she wants a particular bunch, which he feeds to her gently and carefully.

We are silent. Lin swallows and chews carefully. We watch her.

Minutes pa.s.s and then her gland distends. We rock forward, eager to see what she will make.

She opens her gland-lips and pushes out a pellet of moist khepri-spit. She moves her arms in excitement as it oozes shapeless and sopping from her, dropping heavy to the floor like a white t.u.r.d.

A thin drool of coloured spittle from the berries streams out after it, spattering and staining the mess.

Derkhan looks away. Isaac cries as I have never seen a human do.

Outside our foul shanty the city squats fatly in its freedom, brazen again and fearless. It ignores us. It is an ingrate. The days are cooler this week, a brief ebbing of the relentless summer. Gusts blow in from the coast, from the Gross Tar estuary and Iron Bay. Clutches of s.h.i.+ps arrive every day. They queue in the river to the east, waiting to load and unload. Merchant s.h.i.+ps from Kohnid and Tesh; explorers from the Firewater Straits; floating factories from Myrshock; privateers from Figh Vadiso, respectable and law-abiding so far from the open sea. Clouds scurry like bees before the sun. The city is raucous. It has forgotten. It has some vague notion that once its sleep was troubled: nothing more.

I can see the sky. There are slats of light between the rough boards that surround us. I would like very much to be away from this now. I can imagine the sensation of wind, the sudden heaviness of air below me. I would like to look down on this building and this street. I wish that there was nothing to hold me here, that gravity was a suggestion I could ignore.

Lin signs. Sticky fearful, Sticky fearful, whispers Isaac snottily, watching her hands. whispers Isaac snottily, watching her hands. p.i.s.s and mother, food wings happy. Afraid. Afraid. p.i.s.s and mother, food wings happy. Afraid. Afraid.

PART EIGHT.

Judgement

CHAPTER F FIFTY-TWO.

"We have to leave."

Derkhan spoke quickly. Isaac looked up at her dully. He was feeding Lin, who squirmed uncomfortably, unsure of what she wanted to do. She signed at him, her hands tracing words and then simply moving, tracing shapes that had no meaning. He flicked fruit detritus from her s.h.i.+rt.

He nodded and looked down. Derkhan continued as if he had disagreed with her, as if she were convincing him.

"Every time we move, we're afraid." She spoke quickly. Her face was hard. Terror, guilt, exhilaration and misery had scoured her. She was exhausted. "Every time any kind of automaton goes past, we think the Construct Council's found us. Every man or woman or xenian makes us freeze up. Is it the militia? Is it one of Motley's thugs?" She kneeled down. "I can't live like this, 'Zaac," she said. She looked down at Lin, smiled very slowly and closed her eyes. "We'll take her away," she whispered. "We can look after her. We're finished here. It can't be long before one of them finds us. I'm not waiting around for that."

Isaac nodded again.

"I . . ." He thought carefully. He tried to organize his mind. "I've got . . . a commitment," he said quietly.

He rubbed the flab below his chin. It itched as his stubble regrew, pus.h.i.+ng through his uneven skin. Wind blew through the windows. The house in Pincod was tall and mouldering and full of junkies. Isaac and Derkhan and Yagharek had claimed the top two floors. There was one window on each side, overlooking the street and the wretched little yard. Weeds had burst out through the stained concrete below like subcutaneous growths.

Isaac and the others barricaded the doors whenever they were in: slipped out carefully, disguised, mostly at night. Sometimes they would venture out in the daylight, as Yagharek had now. There was always some reason given, some urgency that meant the vague trip could not wait. It was just claustrophobia. They had freed the city: it was untenable that they should not walk under the sun.

"I know know about the commitment," Derkhan said. She looked over at the loosely connected components of the crisis engine. Isaac had cleaned them up the previous night, slotted them into place. about the commitment," Derkhan said. She looked over at the loosely connected components of the crisis engine. Isaac had cleaned them up the previous night, slotted them into place.

"Yagharek," he said. "I owe him. I promised."

Derkhan looked down and swallowed, then turned her head to him again. She nodded.

"How long?" she said. Isaac glanced up at her, broke her gaze and looked away. He shrugged briefly.

"Some of the wires are burnt out," he said vaguely, and s.h.i.+fted Lin into a more comfortable position on his chest. "There was a s.h.i.+tload of feedback, melted right through some of the circuits. Um . . . I'm going to have to go out tonight and rummage around for a couple of adapters . . . and a dynamo. I can fix the rest of it myself," he said, "but I'll have to get the tools. Trouble is, every time we nick something we put ourselves even more at risk." He shrugged slowly. There was nothing he could do. They had no money. "Then I have to get a cell-battery or something. But the hardest thing is going to be the maths. Fixing all this up is mostly just . . . mechanics. But even if I can get the engines to work, getting the sums right to . . . you know, formulating this in equations equations . . . that's d.a.m.n hard. That's what I got the Council to do last time." He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall. . . . that's d.a.m.n hard. That's what I got the Council to do last time." He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall.

"I have to formulate the commands," he said quietly. "Fly. That's what I've got to tell it. Put Yag in the sky and he's in crisis, he's about to fall. Tap that and channel it, keep him in the air, keep him flying, keep him in crisis, so tap the energy and so on. It's a perfect loop," he said. "I think it'll work. It's just the That's what I've got to tell it. Put Yag in the sky and he's in crisis, he's about to fall. Tap that and channel it, keep him in the air, keep him flying, keep him in crisis, so tap the energy and so on. It's a perfect loop," he said. "I think it'll work. It's just the maths maths . . ." . . ."

"How long?" Derkhan repeated quietly. Isaac frowned.