Perdido Street Station Part 7

"I've just been to my bank, depositing a few sparkly little nuggets. A lucrative contract," he shouted, "makes a happy scientist with very bad judgement. Drinks on me." There was a raucous and delighted crowing of surprise, followed by a group yell for the waiter.

"How's the show going, Cornfed?" said Isaac.

"Oh splendid, splendid!" shouted Cornfed, and then bizarrely added, very loud, "Lin came to see it on Fishday."

"Right," said Isaac, nonplussed. "Did you like it, Lin?"

She briefly signed that she had.

Cornfed was only interested in gazing at Alexandrine's cleavage through her unsubtle dress. Isaac switched his attention to Lin.

"You would not believe believe what's been happening . . ." Isaac began. what's been happening . . ." Isaac began.

Lin gripped his knee under the table. He returned the gesture.

Under his breath, Isaac told Lin and Derkhan, in truncated form, the story of Yagharek's visit. He implored them to silence, and glanced around regularly to make sure that no one else was listening in. Halfway through, the chicken he had ordered arrived, and he ate noisily while he described his meeting in The Moon's Daughters, and the cages and cages of experimental animals he expected to arrive at his laboratory any day soon.

When he was finished, he sat back and grinned at them both, before a look of contrition washed over his face, and he sheepishly asked Lin: "How's your work been going?"

She waved her hand dismissively.

There's nothing, dear heart, she thought, she thought, that I can tell you. Let's talk about your new project. that I can tell you. Let's talk about your new project.

Guilt pa.s.sed visibly over his face at his one-sided conversation, but Isaac could not help himself. He was utterly in the throes of a new project. Lin felt a familiar melancholy affection for him. Melancholy at his self-sufficiency in these moments of fascination; affection for his fervour and pa.s.sion.

"Look, look," Isaac gabbled suddenly, and tugged a piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it on the table before them.

It was an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a fair currently in Sobek Croix. The back was crisp with dry glue: Isaac had torn it from a wall.

Mr. Bombadrezil's unique Mr. Bombadrezil's unique and and wonderful fair wonderful fair, guaranteed to astound and enthral the most jaded palate jaded palate. The Palace of Love Palace of Love; The Hall of Terrors Hall of Terrors; The Vortex Vortex; and many other attractions for reasonable prices. Also come to see the extraordinary freakshow, the Circus of Weird Circus of Weird. Monsters Monsters and and marvels marvels from every corner of Bas-Lag! from every corner of Bas-Lag! Seers Seers from the from the Fractured Land Fractured Land; a genuine Weaver's claw Weaver's claw; the living skull living skull; the lascivious snake-woman snake-woman; Ursus Rex Ursus Rex, the man-king of the Bears; dwarf cactus-people dwarf cactus-people of tiny sizes; a of tiny sizes; a garuda garuda, bird-man chief of the wild desert; the stone men stone men of Bezhek; caged of Bezhek; caged daemons daemons; dancing fish dancing fish; treasures stolen from the Gengris the Gengris; and innumerable other prodigies prodigies and and wonders wonders. Some attractions not suitable for the easily shocked or those of a nervous disposition nervous disposition. Entrance 5 stivers. Sobek Croix gardens, 14th Chet to 14th Melluary, 6 to 11 o'clock every night.

"See that?" Isaac barked, and stabbed the poster with his thumb. "They've got a garuda! I've been sending requests all over the city for dubious bits and bobs, probably going to end up with loads of horrible disease-riddled jackdaws, and there's a f.u.c.king garuda garuda on the doorstep!" on the doorstep!"

Are you going to go down? signed Lin. signed Lin.

"d.a.m.n right!" snorted Isaac. "Straight after this! I thought we could all go. The others," he said, his voice dropping, "don't have to know what it is I'm doing there. I mean, a fair's always fun anyway. Right?"

Derkhan grinned and nodded.

"So are you going to spirit the garuda away, or what?" she whispered.

"Well, presumably I could arrange to take heliotypes of it, or even ask it to come for a couple of days to the lab . . . I don't know. We'll organize something! What do you say? Fancy a fair?"

Lin picked a cherry tomato from Isaac's garnish and wiped it carefully clean of chicken stock. She gripped it in her mandibles and began to chew.

Could be fun, she signed. she signed. Your treat? Your treat?

"Absolutely my treat!" boomed Isaac, and gazed at her. He stared at her very close for a minute. He glanced round to make sure that no one was watching, and then, clumsily, he signed in front of her.

Missed you.

Derkhan looked away for a moment, tactfully.

Lin broke off the moment, to make sure that she did it before Isaac. She clapped loudly, until everyone at the table was staring at her. She began to sign, indicating Derkhan to translate.

"Uh . . . Isaac is keen to prove that the talk of scientists being all work and no play is false. Intellectuals as well as dissolute aesthetes like us know how to have a good time, and thus he offers us this . . ." Lin waved the sheet, and threw it into the centre of the table where it was visible to all. "Rides, spectacles, marvels and coconut s.h.i.+es, all for a mere five stivers, which Isaac has kindly offered to underwrite . . ."

"Not for everyone everyone, you sow!" Isaac roared in mock-outrage, but he was drowned out by the drunken roar of grat.i.tude.

". . . offered to underwrite," continued Derkhan doggedly. "Accordingly, I move that we drink up and eat up and hightail to Sobek Croix."

There was loud, chaotic agreement. Those who had finished their food and drink gathered their bags. Others tucked with renewed gusto into their oysters or salad or fried plantain. Trying to organize a group of any size to do anything in synchronicity was an epic struggle, Lin reflected wryly. It would be some time before they set off.

Isaac and Derkhan were hissing to each other across the table in front of her. Her antennae twitched. She could pick up some of their murmurs. Isaac excitedly talking politics. He channelled his diffuse, undirected, pointed social discontent into his discussions with Derkhan. He was posing, she thought with amused pique, out of his depth, trying to impress the laconic journalist.

She could see Isaac pa.s.s a coin carefully across the table, and receive a plain envelope in return. Undoubtedly the latest issue of Runagate Rampant Runagate Rampant, the illegal, radical news-sheet for which Derkhan wrote.

Beyond a nebulous dislike of the militia and the government, Lin was not a political being. She sat back and looked up at the stars through the violet haze of the suspended lantern. She thought about the last time she had been to a fair: she remembered the mad palimpsest of smell, the catcalls and screeches, the rigged compet.i.tions and cheap prizes, the exotic animals and bright costumes, all packed together in a seedy, vibrant, exciting whole.

The fair was where normal rules were briefly forgotten, where bankers and thieves mingled to ooh ooh, scandalized and t.i.tillated. Even Lin's less outrageous sisters would come to the fair.

One of her early memories was of creeping past ranks of gaudy tents to stand next to some terrifying, dangerous, multicoloured ride, some giant wheel at the Gallmarch Fair twenty years ago. Someone-she never knew who, some khepri pa.s.ser-by, some indulgent stallholder-had handed her a toffee-apple, which she had eaten reverentially. One of her few pleasant memories of childhood, that sugared fruit.

Lin sat back and waited for her friends to finish their preparations. She sucked sweet tea from her sponge and thought of that candied apple. She waited patiently to go to the fair.

CHAPTER E EIGHT.

"Come try, come try, come try your luck!"

"Ladies, ladies, tell yer fellers to win you a bouquet!"

"Spin in the Whirligig! It'll spin your mind!"

"Your likeness affected in only four minutes! No faster portraiture in the world!"

"Experience the hypnagogic mesmerism of Sillion the Extraordinary!"

"Three rounds, three guineas! Stand for three rounds against 'Iron Man' Magus and take home three Gs! No cactus-people."

The night air was thick with noise. The challenges, the shouts, the invitations and temptations and dares sounded around the laughing party like bursting balloons. Gasjets, mixed with select chymicals, burnt red, green, blue and canary yellow. The gra.s.s and paths of Sobek Croix were sticky with spilt sugar and sauce. Vermin scampered from the skirts of stalls into the dark bushes of the park clutching choice morsels. Gonophs and cutpurses slipped predatory through the crowds like fish through weeds. Indignant roars and violent cries sounded in their wake.

The crowd was a moving stew of human and vodyanoi, cactus, khepri, and other, rarer breeds: hotchi and strider and stiltspear and races the names of which Isaac did not know.

A few yards out from the fair, the darkness of the gra.s.s and trees was absolute. The bushes and boughs were fringed with bunting of ragged paper, discarded and ensnared and slowly shredded by the wind. Paths criss-crossed the park, leading to lakes and flower beds and acres of untended growth, and the old monastic ruins at the centre of the huge common.

Lin and Cornfed, Isaac and Derkhan and all the others strolled past enormous contraptions of bolted steel, garishly painted iron and hissing lights. Delighted squeals sounded from little cars swinging on flimsy-looking chains above them. A hundred different manically cheerful tunes sounded from a hundred engines and organs, an unsettling cacophony that ebbed and flowed around them.

Alex munched honeyed nuts; Bellagin salted meat; Thighs Growing a watery mulch delicious to cactus-people. They threw food at each other, caught it in their mouths.

The park was thronging with punters, throwing hoops over poles, firing children's bows at targets, guessing under which cup the coin was hidden. Children screamed with pleasure and misery. Prost.i.tutes of all races, s.e.xes and descriptions sashayed exaggeratedly between the stalls or stood by the beerhalls, winking at pa.s.sers-by.

The party disintegrated slowly as they pa.s.sed into the heart of the fair. They hovered a minute while Cornfed showed off his archery. He ostentatiously offered his prizes, two dolls, to Alex and a young, beautiful wh.o.r.e who cheered his triumph. The three disappeared arm in arm through the crowd. Tarrick proved adept at a fis.h.i.+ng game, pulling three live crabs from a big swirling tub. Bellagin and Spint had their futures read in the cards, squealing in terror when the bored witch turned over The Snake and The Old Crone in succession. They demanded a second opinion from a wide-eyed scarabomancer. She gazed theatrically at the images skittering across the carapaces of her pattern beetles as they b.u.mbled through their sawdust.

Isaac and the others left Bellagin and Spint behind.

The remnants of the party turned a corner beside the Wheel of Destiny and a roughly fenced-off section of the park came into view. Inside a line of small tents curved away from view. Above the gateway was a crudely painted legend: The Circus of Weird The Circus of Weird.

"Now," said Isaac ponderously. "Reckon I might have a little look at this . . ."

"Plumbing the depths of human squalor, 'Zaac?" asked a young artist's model whose name Isaac could not remember. Besides Lin, Isaac and Derkhan, only a few others of the original group were left. They looked mildly surprised at Isaac's choice.

"Research," Isaac said grandly. "Research. Fancy joining me, Derkhan? Lin?"

The others took the hint with reactions ranging from careless waves to petulant flounces. Before they all disappeared, Lin signed rapidly to Isaac.

Not interested in this. Teratology more your thing. Meet you at the entrance in two hours?

Isaac nodded briefly and squeezed her hand. She signed goodbye to Derkhan and trotted off to catch up with a sound-artist whose name Isaac had never known.

Derkhan and Isaac stared at each other.

". . . and then there were two," sung Derkhan, a s.n.a.t.c.h of a children's counting song about a basket of kittens that died, one by one, grotesquely.

There was an additional charge to enter the Circus of Weird, which Isaac paid. Though hardly empty, the freakshow was less crowded than the main body of the fair. The more monied the punters inside looked, the more furtive their air.

The freakshow brought out the voyeur in the populace and the hypocrisy in the gentry.

There seemed to be some kind of tour starting, which promised to view each exhibit in the Circus in turn. The bawls of the showman bade the a.s.sembled stick close together and prepare themselves for sights such as mortal eyes were not meant to see.

Isaac and Derkhan hung back a little and followed the troupe. Isaac saw that Derkhan had a notebook out and a pen poised.

The bowler-hatted Master of Ceremonies approached the first tent.

"Ladies and gents," he whispered loudly and huskily, "in this tent lurks the most remarkable and terrifying creature ever seen by mortal man. Or vodyanoi, or cactus, or whatever," he added in a normal voice, nodding graciously to the few xenians in the crowd. He returned to his bombastic tones. "Originally described fifteen centuries ago in the travelogues of Libintos the Sage, of what was then just plain ol' Crobuzon. On his trips south to the burning wastes, Libintos saw many marvellous and monstrous things. But none more terrifying than the awesome . . . mafadet!"

Isaac had been sporting a sardonic smile. But even he joined the ma.s.s gasp.

Have they really got a mafadet? he thought as the MC drew back the curtain from the front of the little tent. He pushed forward to see. he thought as the MC drew back the curtain from the front of the little tent. He pushed forward to see.

There was another, louder gasp, and people at the front fought to move back. Others shoved to take their place.

Behind thick black bars, tethered by heavy chains, was an extraordinary beast. It lay on the ground, its huge dun body like a ma.s.sive lion's. Between its shoulders was a fringe of denser fur from which sprouted an enormous serpentine neck, thicker than a man's thigh. Its scales glistened an oily, ruddy tan. An intricate pattern wound up the top of that curling neck, expanding to a diamond shape where it curved and became an enormous snake's head.

The mafadet's head lolled on the ground. Its huge forked tongue flicked in and out. Its eyes glistened like jet.

Isaac grabbed Derkhan.

"It's a f.u.c.king mafadet mafadet," he hissed in amazement. Derkhan nodded, wide-eyed.

The crowd had drawn back from the front of the cage. The showman grabbed a barbed stick and poked it through the bars, goading the enormous desert creature. It gave forth a deep, rumbling hiss and batted pathetically at its tormentor with a ma.s.sive forepaw. Its neck coiled and twisted in desultory misery.

There were small screams from the crowd. People surged at the little barrier before the cage.

"Back, ladies and gents, back, I beg of you!" The showman's voice was pompous and histrionic. "You are all in mortal danger! Don't anger the beast!"

The mafadet hissed again under his continued torments. It wriggled backwards along the floor, crawling out of range of the vicious spike.

Isaac's awe was waning fast.

The exhausted animal squirmed in undignified agony as it sought the rear of the cage. Its threadbare tail lashed the stinking goat carca.s.s presumably provided for its nourishment. Dung and dust stained the mafadet's pelt, along with blood that oozed thickly from numerous sores and nicks. Its sprawled body twitched a little as that cold, blunt head rose on the powerful muscles of the snake-neck.

The mafadet hissed and, as the crowd hissed in turn, its wicked jaws unhinged. It tried to bare its teeth.

Isaac's face curled.

Broken stubs jutted from the creature's gums where cruel fangs a foot long should have glinted. They had been smashed out of its mouth, Isaac realized, for fear of its murderous, poisonous bite.

He gazed at the broken monster whipping the air with its black tongue. It laid its head back down.

"Jabber's a.r.s.e," Isaac whispered to Derkhan with pity and disgust. "Never thought I'd feel sorry for something like that."

"Makes you wonder what state the garuda's going to be in," Derkhan replied.

The barker was hurriedly drawing the curtain on the miserable creature. As he did so he told the crowd the story of Libintos's trial by poison at the hands of the Mafadet King.

Nursery tales, cant, lies and showmans.h.i.+p, thought Isaac contemptuously. He realized that the crowd had only been given a s.n.a.t.c.h of a view, a minute or less. thought Isaac contemptuously. He realized that the crowd had only been given a s.n.a.t.c.h of a view, a minute or less. Less chance anyone will notice how moribund the poor thing is, Less chance anyone will notice how moribund the poor thing is, he mused. he mused.

He could not help but imagine the mafadet in full health. The immense weight of that tawny body padding through the hot dry scrub, the lightning strike of the venomous bite.

Garuda circling above, blades flas.h.i.+ng.

The crowd were being shepherded towards the next enclosure. Isaac was not listening to the roar of the guide. He was watching Derkhan jot quick notes.

"This for RR RR?" whispered Isaac.

Derkhan looked around them quickly.