Perdido Street Station Part 67

"A week . . . or two, maybe," he admitted. "Maybe more."

Derkhan shook her head. She said nothing.

"I owe owe him, Dee!" Isaac said, his voice tense. "I've promised him this for ages, and he . . ." him, Dee!" Isaac said, his voice tense. "I've promised him this for ages, and he . . ."

He got the slake-moth off Lin, he had been about to say, but something in him had preempted him, asked if that was such a good thing after all, and appalled, Isaac faltered into silence.

It's the most powerful science for hundreds of years, he thought in a sudden rage, he thought in a sudden rage, and I can't come out of hiding. I have to . . . to spirit it away. and I can't come out of hiding. I have to . . . to spirit it away.

He stroked Lin's carapace and she began to sign to him, mentioning fish and cold and sugar.

"I know, 'Zaac," said Derkhan without anger. "I know. He's . . . he deserves it. But we can't wait that long. We have to go."

I'll do what I can, promised Isaac, I have to help him, I'll be quick.

Derkhan accepted it. She had no choice. She would not leave him, or Lin. She did not blame him. She wanted him to honour his agreement, to give Yagharek what he wanted.

The stink and sadness of the damp little room overwhelmed her. She muttered something about scouting out the river and she left. Isaac smiled without warmth at her half-hearted excuse.

"Be careful," he said unnecessarily as she left.

He lay cuddling Lin with his back to the foetid wall.

After a while he felt Lin relax into sleep. He slipped out from behind her and walked over to the window, looked out over the bustle below.

Isaac did not know the name of the street. It was wide, lined with young trees all pliant and hopeful. At the far end, a cart had been parked sideways, deliberately creating a cul-de-sac. A man and a vodyanoi were arguing ferociously beside it, while the two cowed donkeys drawing it hung their heads, trying not to be noticed. A group of children materialized in front of the motionless wheels, kicking a ball of tied rags. They scampered, their clothes flapping like flightless wings.

An argument broke out, four little boys prodding one of the two vodyanoi children in the group. The fat little vodyanoi backed away on all fours, crying. One of the boys threw a stone. The argument was forgotten quickly. The vodyanoi sulked a brief moment, then hopped back into the game, stealing the ball.

Further along the road, a few doors down from Isaac's building, a young woman was chalking some symbol onto the wall. It was an unfamiliar, angular device, some witch's talisman. Two old men sat together on a stoop, tossing dice and laughing uproariously at the results. The buildings were bird-limed and grotty, the tarred pavement punctuated with water-filled potholes. Rooks and pigeons threaded through smoke from thousands of chimneys.

Cuttings from conversations reached Isaac's ears.

". . . so he says a stiver for that a stiver for that? . . ."

". . . damaged the engine, but then he was always a c.u.n.t . . ."

". . . don't say nothing about it . . ."

". . . it's on Dockday next, and she copped a total crystal . . ."

". . . savage, absof.u.c.kinglutely savage . . ."

". . . remembrance? For who?"

For Andrej, thought Isaac suddenly, without warning or reason. He listened again. thought Isaac suddenly, without warning or reason. He listened again.

There was much more. There were languages he did not speak. He recognized Perrickish and Fellid, the intricate cadences of Low Cymek. And others.

He did not want to leave.

Isaac sighed and turned back into the room. Lin squirmed on the floor in sleep.

He looked at her, saw her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng at her torn s.h.i.+rt. Her skirt rode up her thighs. He looked away.

Since recovering Lin, twice he had woken with the warmth and pressure of her against him, his p.r.i.c.k erect and eager. He had rubbed his hand over the swell of her hips and down into her parted legs. Sleep had rolled off him like fog as his arousal grew and he had opened his eyes to see her, moving her beneath him as she woke, forgetting that Derkhan and Yagharek were sleeping nearby. He had breathed at her and spoken lovingly and explicitly of what he wanted to do, and then he had jerked backwards in horror as she began to sign babble at him and he remembered what had happened to her.

She had rubbed against him and stopped, rubbed him again (like some capricious dog, he had thought, appalled), her erratic arousal and confusion absolutely clear. Some l.u.s.tful part of him had wanted to continue, but the weight of sorrow had shrivelled his p.e.n.i.s almost instantly. he had thought, appalled), her erratic arousal and confusion absolutely clear. Some l.u.s.tful part of him had wanted to continue, but the weight of sorrow had shrivelled his p.e.n.i.s almost instantly.

Lin had seemed disappointed and hurt, then she hugged him, happily and suddenly. Then she curled up in despair. Isaac had tasted her emissions in the air around them. He had known she was crying herself to sleep.

Isaac glanced out at the day again. He thought of Rudgutter and his cronies; of the macabre Mr. Motley; he imagined the cold a.n.a.lysis of the Construct Council, cheated of the engine it coveted. He imagined the rages, the arguments, the orders given and received that week that cursed him.

Isaac walked over to the crisis engine, took brief stock of it. He sat down, folded paper in his lap, and began to write calculations.

He was not worried that the Construct Council might mimic his engine itself. It could not design one. It could not calculate its parameters. The blueprint had come to him in an intuitive leap so natural that he had not recognized it for hours. The Construct Council could not be inspired. Isaac's fundamental model, the conceptual basis of the engine, he had never even had to write down. His notes would be quite opaque to any reader.

Isaac positioned himself so that he worked in a shaft of sunlight.

The grey dirigibles patrolled the air, as they did every day. They seemed uneasy.

It was a perfect day. The wind from the sea seemed constantly to renew the sky.

Yagharek and Derkhan, in separate quarters of the city, enjoyed their furtive times in the sun, and tried not to court danger. They walked away from arguments and stuck to the crowded streets.

The sky was riotous with birds and wyrmen. They flocked to b.u.t.tresses and minarets, crowding the gently sloped roofs of militia towers and struts, coating them in white s.h.i.+t. They stormed in s.h.i.+fting spirals around the Ketch Heath towers and the skeletal edifices in Spatters.

They scudded over The Crow, wove intricately through the complex pattern of air that rose above Perdido Street Station. Rowdy jackdaws squabbled over the layers of clay. They flitted over the lower hulks of slate and tar at the station's shabby rear, descending towards a peculiar plateau of concrete above a little brow of windowed roofs. Their droppings fouled its recently scrubbed surface, little pellets of white splattering against the dark stains where some noxious fluid had spilled copiously.

The Spike and the Parliament building swarmed with little avian bodies.

The Ribs bleached and split, their flaws worsening slowly in the sun. Birds alit briefly on the enormous shafts of bone, launching themselves free again quickly, seeking refuge elsewhere in Bonetown, skimming over the roof of a smoke-damaged black terrace, in the heart of which Mr. Motley ranted against the incomplete sculpture which mocked him with unending spite.

Gulls and gannets followed rubbish barges and fis.h.i.+ng boats up along the Gross Tar and the Tar, swooping down to s.n.a.t.c.h organic morsels from the detritus. They wheeled away to other pickings, to the offal-piles in Badside, the fish market in Pelorus Fields. They landed briefly on the split, algaed cable that crawled out of the river by Spit Hearth. They explored the rubbish heaps in Stonesh.e.l.l, and picked at half-dead prey crawling through the Griss Twist wasteland. The ground purred beneath them, as hidden cables hummed inches below the ragged topsoil.

A larger body than the birds rose up from the slums of St. Jabber's Mound and soared into the air. It sailed at a ma.s.sive height over the western city. The streets below became a mottled stain of khaki and grey like some exotic mould. It pa.s.sed easily above the aerostats in the gusting breeze, warmed by the noon sun. It maintained a steady pace eastwards, crossing the city's nucleus where the five rail lines burst out like petals.

In the air over Sheck, gangs of wyrmen looped the loop in vulgar aerobatics. The drifting figure pa.s.sed over them serene and unnoticed.

It moved slowly, with langorous strokes that suggested it could increase its speed tenfold suddenly and with ease. It crossed the Canker and began a long descent, pa.s.sing in and out of the air over the Dexter Line trains, riding their hot exhaust briefly, then gliding earthwards with unseen majesty, descending towards the canopy of roofs, weaving easily through the maze of the thermals gusting up from ma.s.sive smokestacks and little hovels' flues.

It banked towards the huge gas cylinders in Echomire, spiralled back easily, slipped under a layer of disturbed air and flew steeply down towards Mog Station, pa.s.sing under the skyrails too fast to be seen, disappearing into the Pincod roofscape.

Isaac was not lost in his numbers.

He looked up every few minutes at Lin, who slept and moved her arms and wriggled like a helpless grub. His eyes looked as if they had never been lit up.

In the early afternoon, when he had worked for an hour, an hour and a half, he heard something clatter in the yard below. Half a minute later there were footsteps on the stairs.

Isaac froze and waited for them to stop, to disappear into one of the junkies' rooms. They did not. They moved with a deliberate tread up the final two flights, making their careful way up the noisome steps and halting outside his door.

Isaac was still. His heart beat quickly in alarm. He looked around wildly for his gun.

There was a knock at the door. Isaac said nothing.

After a moment, whoever was outside knocked again: not hard, but rhythmically and insistently, repeatedly. Isaac stalked closer, trying to be quiet. He saw Lin twisting uncomfortably at the sound.

There was a voice outside the door, a weird, harsh, familiar voice. It was all grating treble, and Isaac could not understand it, but he reached out for the door suddenly, unsettled and aggressive and ready for trouble. Rudgutter would send a whole d.a.m.n squadron, Rudgutter would send a whole d.a.m.n squadron, he thought as his hand closed on the handle, he thought as his hand closed on the handle, it's bound to be some junkie begging. it's bound to be some junkie begging. And although he did not believe that, he was rea.s.sured that it was not the militia, or Motley's men. And although he did not believe that, he was rea.s.sured that it was not the militia, or Motley's men.

He pulled the door open.

Standing before him on the unlit stairs, leaning slightly forward, sleek feathered head mottled like dry leaves, beak curved and glinting like an exotic weapon, was a garuda.

He saw instantly that it was not Yagharek.

Its wings rose up and swelled around it like a corona, vast and magnificent, feathered in ochre and smooth red-stained brown.

Isaac had forgotten what an uncrippled garuda looked like. He had forgotten the extraordinary scale and grandeur of those wings.

He understood what was happening almost immediately, in some inchoate and unstructured way. A wordless intimation hit him.

Following it by a fraction of a second came a ma.s.sive gust of doubt and alarm and curiosity and a slew of questions.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you?" he breathed, and: "What are you f.u.c.king doing here? How did you find me . . . What . . ." Half-answers came unbidden to him. He stepped back from the threshold quickly, trying to banish them.

"Grim . . . neb . . . lin . . ." The garuda struggled with his name. It sounded as if he was a daemon being invoked. Isaac jerked his arm quickly for the garuda to follow him into the little room. He closed the door and pushed the chair back up against it.

The garuda stalked into the centre of the room, into a sunlit patch. Isaac watched it warily. It wore a dusty loincloth and nothing more. Its skin was darker than Yagharek's, its feathered head more mottled. It moved with incredible economy, tiny snapping movements and great stillness, its head c.o.c.ked to take in the room.

It stared at Lin for a long time, until Isaac sighed and the garuda looked up at him.

"Who are you?" Isaac said. "How did you f.u.c.king find me?" What did he do? What did he do? Isaac thought, but did not say. Isaac thought, but did not say. Tell me. Tell me.

They stood, slim, tight-muscled garuda and fat, thickset human, at opposite ends of the room. The garuda's feathers were s.h.i.+ny with sun. Isaac stared at them, suddenly tired. Some sense of inevitability, of finality, had entered with the garuda. Isaac hated it for that.

"I am Kar'uchai," the garuda said. Its voice was harder even than Yagharek's with Cymek intonations. It was difficult to understand. "Kar'uchai Sukhtu-h'k Vaijhin-khi-khi. Concrete Individual Kar'uchai Very Very Respected."

Isaac waited.

"How did you find me find me?" he said eventually, bitterly.

"I have . . . come a long way, Grimneb . . . lin," Kar'uchai said. "I am yahj'hur yahj'hur . . . hunter. I have hunted for days. Here I hunt with . . . gold and paper-money . . . My quarry leaves a trail of rumour . . . and memory." . . . hunter. I have hunted for days. Here I hunt with . . . gold and paper-money . . . My quarry leaves a trail of rumour . . . and memory."

What did he do?

"I come from Cymek. I have hunted . . . since Cymek."

"I can't believe you found us," said Isaac suddenly, nervously. He talked quickly, hating the pervasive sense of ending and ignoring it aggressively, blotting it. "If you did the d.a.m.n militia can for sure and if they they can . . ." He strode quickly back and forth. He knelt down by Lin, stroked her gently, drew breath to say more. can . . ." He strode quickly back and forth. He knelt down by Lin, stroked her gently, drew breath to say more.

"I am come for justice," said Kar'uchai, and Isaac could not speak. He felt suffocated.

"Shankell," said Kar'uchai. "Meagre Sea. Myrshock." I've heard about the journey, I've heard about the journey, thought Isaac in anger, thought Isaac in anger, you don't have to tell me. you don't have to tell me. Kar'uchai continued. "I have . . . hunted across a thousand miles. Seek justice." Kar'uchai continued. "I have . . . hunted across a thousand miles. Seek justice."

Isaac spoke slowly, in rage and sadness.

"Yagharek is my friend," he said.

Kar'uchai continued as if he had said nothing. "When we found that he was gone, after . . . judgement . . . I was chosen to come . . ."

"What do you want?" said Isaac. "What are you going to do to him? You want to take him back with you? You want to . . . what, cut off . . . more of him?"

"I have not come for Yagharek," said Kar'uchai. "I have come for you."

Isaac stared in miserable confusion.

"It is up to you . . . to let justice be . . ."

Kar'uchai was relentless. Isaac could say nothing.

What did he do?

"I heard your name first in Myrshock," said Kar'uchai. "It was on a list. Then here, in this city, it came back again and again until . . . all others melted away. I hunted. Yagharek and you . . . were linked. People whispered . . . of your researches. Flying monsters and thaumaturgic machines. I knew that Yagharek had found what he sought. What he came a thousand miles for. You would deny justice, Grimneb'lin. I am here to ask you . . . not to do that.

"It was finished. He was judged and punished. And it was over. We did not think . . . we did not know that he might . . . find a way . . . that justice could be retracted retracted.

"I am here to ask you not to help him fly."

"Yagharek is my friend," said Isaac steadily. "He came to me and employed me. He was generous. When things . . . went wrong . . . got complicated and dangerous . . . well, he was brave and he helped me-us. He's been part of . . . of something extraordinary. And I owe him . . . a life." He glanced at Lin and then away again. "I owe him . . . for the times . . . He was ready to die, you know? He could have died, but he stayed and without him . . . I don't think I could have come through."