Perdido Street Station Part 70

I put Isaac's letter in my ragged clothes without reading his merciless, miserable farewell. I cannot say for sure that I despise him. I cannot say for sure I would do other than he has done.

I step out and down.

Some streets away in Saltbur, a fifteen-storey towerblock rises over the eastern city. The front door will not lock. It is easy to clamber over the gate that supposedly blocks access to the flat roof. I have climbed that edifice before.

It is a short walk. I feel as if I am sleeping. The citizens stare at me as I step past them. I am not wearing my hood. I cannot see that it matters.

No one stops me as I climb the huge building. On two levels, doors open very slightly as I walk past on the treacherous stairwell, and I am stared at by eyes too hidden in darkness for me to see. But I am not challenged, and within minutes I am on the roof.

One hundred and fifty feet or more. There are plenty of taller structures in New Crobuzon. But this is high enough that the block rears out of the streets and stone and brick like something enormous emerging from water.

I stalk past the rubble and the signs of bonfires, the detritus of intruders and squatters. I am alone in the skyline tonight.

The brick wall that contains the roofs.p.a.ce is five feet high. I lean on it and look out, to all sides.

I know what it is I see.

I can place myself exactly.

That is a glimpse of the Gla.s.shouse dome, a smudge of dirty light between two gas towers. The clenching Ribs are only a mile away, dwarfing the railways and the stubby houses. Dark clutches of trees pepper the city. The lights, the lights of all the different colours, all around me.

I vault easily onto the wall, and stand.

I am on top of New Crobuzon now.

It is such an enormous thing. Such a great wallow. There is everything within it, spread out under my feet.

I can see the rivers. The Canker is about six minutes' flying time away. I stretch out my arms.

The winds rush up to me and hammer me with joy. The air is boisterous and alive.

I close my eyes.

I can imagine it with absolute exact.i.tude. A flight. To kick out with the legs and feel my wings grab the air and throw it easily earthward, scooping great chunks away from me like paddles. The hard slog into a thermal where the feathers plump and prime, spread out, drifting, easing, gliding up around in a spiral over this enormity below me. It is another city from above. The hidden gardens become spectacles to delight me. The dark bricks are something to shake off like mud. Every building becomes an eyrie. The whole of the city can be treated with disrespect, landing and alighting on a whim, soiling the air in pa.s.sing.

From the air, in flight, from above, the government and militia are pompous termites, the squalor a dulled patch pa.s.sing quickly away, the degradations that take place in the shadow of the architecture are none of my concern.

I feel the wind force my fingers apart. I am buffeted invitingly. I feel the twitching as my ragged f.l.a.n.g.es of wingbone stretch.

I will not do this any more. I will not be this cripple, this earthbound bird, any longer.

This half-life ends now, with my hope.

I can so well picture a last flight, a swift, elegant curving sweep through the air that parts like a lost lover to welcome me.

Let the wind take me.

I lean forward on the wall, out over the tumbling city, into the air.

Time is quite still. I am poised. There is no sound. The city and the air are poised.

And I reach up slowly and run my fingers through my feathers. Pus.h.i.+ng them slowly aside as my skin bristles, rubbing them mercilessly the wrong way, against the grain. I open my eyes. My fingers close and clutch at the stiff shafts and oiled fibres on my cheeks and I snap my beak shut so I will not cry out, and I begin to pull.

And a long time later, hours later, in the deepest part of the night, I step back down through that pitch stairwell and emerge.

A single cab clatters quickly through the deserted street and then there is no sound. Across the cobbles, beige light drools down from a guttering gasjet.

A dark figure has been waiting for me. He steps into the little pool of light, and stands, his face shadowed. He waves slowly to me. There is a fractional moment when I think of all my enemies and wonder which this man is. Then I see the huge scissoring mantis limb with which he greets me.

I find that I am not surprised.

Jack Half-a-Prayer extends his Remade arm again and with a slow, portentous movement, he beckons me.

He invites me in. Into his city.

I step forward into what little light there is.

I do not see him start as I pa.s.s out of silhouette and he sees me.

I know how I must look.

My face a ma.s.s of raw and ragged flesh, bleeding copiously from a hundred little punctures where the feathers left my flesh. Tenacious fluffs of down that I have missed patch me like stubble. My eyes peer out from bald, pink, ruined skin, blistered and sickly. Trickles of blood draw paths along my skull.

My feet are constricted again by filthy strips of rag, their monstrous shape hidden. The fringes of feathers that segued into their scales are ripped clean. I walk gingerly, my groin as raw and newly plucked as my head.

I tried to break my beak, but I could not.

I stand before the building in my new flesh.

Half-a-Prayer pauses, but not for very long. With another languorous stroke, he repeats his invitation.

It is generous, but I must decline.

He offers me the half-world. He offers to share his b.a.s.t.a.r.d liminal life, his interst.i.tial city. His obscure crusades and anarchic vengeance. His scorn for doors.

Escaped Remade, fReemade. Nothing. He does not fit in. He has wrested New Crobuzon into a new city, and he strives to save it from itself.

He sees another broken-down half-thing, another exhausted relic that he might convert to fight his unthinkable fight, another for whom existence in any world is impossible, a paradox, a bird that cannot fly. And he offers me a way out, into his uncommunity, his margin, his mongrel city. The violent and honourable place from where he rages.

He is generous, but I decline. That is not my city. Not my fight.

I must leave his half-breed world alone, his demimonde of weird resistance. I live in a simpler place.

He is mistaken.

I am not the earthbound garuda any more. That one is dead. This is a new life. I am not a half-thing, a failed neither-nor.

I have torn the misleading quills from my skin and made it smooth, and below that avian affectation, I am the same as my citizen fellows. I can live foresquare in one world.

I indicate him thanks and farewell and turn away, stepping off into the dim lamplight to the east, towards the university campus and Ludmead Station, through my world of bricks and mortar and tar, bazaars and markets, sulphur-lit streets. It is night and I must hurry to my bed, to find my bed, to find a bed in this my city where I can live my foresquare life.

I turn away from him and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this profane steam-powered G.o.d. I turn and walk into the city my home, not bird or garuda, not miserable crossbreed.

I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man.

Also by China Mieville KING RAT.

THE SCAR.

"AMBITIOUS, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, ENORMOUSLY IMAGINATIVE, ENGROSSING . . .

A complex fable that blends several genres-fantasy, horror, gothic, science fiction, and social protest with believable, interesting, and utterly weird, fantastic creature-characters . . . I could feel my imagination stretched and tweaked by the haunting narrative-redolent of dreams, nightmares, intuitive whisperings, visions, and tastes of the unconscious. . . . With its inventive plot, fascinating characters, evocative language, and underlying themes of coexistence among very different beings, economics and politics, crime and punishment, computer consciousness, science and art, Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station is in the end both complex and satisfying. And China Mieville is an author to read both for fun and for quite serious amus.e.m.e.nt." is in the end both complex and satisfying. And China Mieville is an author to read both for fun and for quite serious amus.e.m.e.nt."

-The Philadelphia Inquirer "Revolutionary in the sheer bravura range of its invention . . . This is the point in the review where prefabricated accolades like 'this novel heralds a promising new voice on the fantasy horizon' are usually offered up. To h.e.l.l with that. Mieville isn't on the horizon, he's roared to the center of the map, kicked a.s.s, taken names, and jumped straight to the top of the heap."

-The New York Review of Science Fiction "With his new novel, the gargantuan, intricate, and thoroughly grounded Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station, China Mieville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century."

-NEIL G GAIMAN

"BRILLIANTLY ORIGINAL . . .

It's been a long time since I've lost myself in a book as I did in Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station. . . . High fantasy jammed up against gritty realism, a tender love story (albeit with an insect-woman) elbow-to-elbow at the bar with gothic horror, odd stews of medieval and modern technology, tremendous social scope and fascination with the individual; not quite science fiction, not quite fantasy, with fillips of horror, high adventure, intrigue. . . . [It] does not have something for everyone, it has lots lots for everyone. Reading it, I rediscovered my own fascination with stories." for everyone. Reading it, I rediscovered my own fascination with stories."

-Fantasy and Science Fiction "Precise and rich prose . . . In the tradition of Wyndham, Lewis, Alasdair Gray, and Mervyn Peake, Mieville pulls off the most impressive act of narrative 'subcreation' in ages. . . . How ultimately true and pertinent to all that we hold dear are the people and issues and living conditions that we encounter in this skewed mirror."

-The Was.h.i.+ngton Post Book World "Amazing . . . It is exhilarating, sometimes very moving, occasionally shocking, always humane and thought-provoking. Its exuberant and unflagging inventiveness, as well as the strong narrative, keep up interest throughout. . . . An astonis.h.i.+ng novel, guaranteed to . . . enthrall."

-Times Literary Supplement (London) (London) "It is the best steampunk novel since Gibson and Sterling's."

-JOHN CLUTE

"[A] PHANTASMAGORIC MASTERPIECE . . .

THE BOOK LEFT ME BREATHLESS WITH ADMIRATION."

-BRIAN S STABLEFORD "New Crobuzon combines equal parts d.i.c.kens and Kafka, d.i.c.k and Cronenberg to generate 700-odd pages of moving freak show, united into a single urban organism through the matter-of-fact deadpan of Mieville's a.s.sured narration. Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station combines audacious invention with surprising detail and grace, and gives a complex amalgam of grotesque and mundane without flinching or smirking." combines audacious invention with surprising detail and grace, and gives a complex amalgam of grotesque and mundane without flinching or smirking."

-City Paper (Philadelphia) (Philadelphia) "[This] darkly imaginative and complex story whirls along to its final resolution with the reader's own imagination locked in tow."

-The Anniston Star "An astonis.h.i.+ng fantasy tale that is a must reading . . . Creative, satirical, and witty . . . Fans of epic fantasy will reread this cla.s.sy tale many times over."

-Booksnbytes.com

"AUDACIOUSLY IMAGINED . . .

AN IMPRESSIVE AND ULTIMATELY PLEASING EPIC."

-Publishers Weekly "Wiggy, weird, and way cool . . . Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station is set in a world that is a cross between is set in a world that is a cross between Blade Runner Blade Runner and the London of Charles d.i.c.kens. And it's populated with characters borrowed from mythologies from all over the world that are given China's own unique twist. . . . Considering that and the London of Charles d.i.c.kens. And it's populated with characters borrowed from mythologies from all over the world that are given China's own unique twist. . . . Considering that Perdido Street Station Perdido Street Station is only his second book, he's a writer to keep our eyes on." is only his second book, he's a writer to keep our eyes on."

-WARREN J JAMES Hour 25 "The most exciting, enthralling novel I have read in a long time. It is about everything important-love, work, hope, worlds we knew were out there but needed a writer like Mieville to show them to us. His imagination is vast, his talent volcanic. Read this book. It just might be a masterpiece."

-JONATHON CARROLL "China Mieville's cool style has conjured up a triumphantly macabre technoslip metropolis with a unique atmosphere of horror and fascination."

-PETER F. H F. HAMILTON