Perdido Street Station Part 2

"Kingpin."

Isaac flipped a deuce into Sil's hand. Sil brought down a bottle from one of the shelves behind him. Isaac sipped the cheap beer and slid onto a stool, grimacing as he sat in some dubious liquid.

Sil sat back in his tub. Without looking at Isaac, he began a monosyllabic, idiot conversation about the weather, about the beer. He went through the motions. Isaac said just enough to keep the discourse alive.

On the counter were several crude figures, rendered in water that seeped into the grain of the old wood before his eyes. Two were rapidly dissolving, losing their integrity and becoming puddles as Isaac watched. Sil idly scooped up another handful from his tub and kneaded it. The water responded like clay, holding the shape Sil gave it. Sc.r.a.ps of the dirt and discoloration of the tub eddied inside it. Sil pinched the figure's face and made a nose, squeezed the legs to the size of small sausages. He perched the little homunculus in front of Isaac.

"That what you're after?" he asked.

Isaac swallowed the rest of his beer.

"Cheers, Sil. Appreciate it."

Very carefully, he blew on the little figure until it fell backwards into his cupped hands. It splashed a little, but he could feel its surface tension hold. Sil watched with a cynical smile as Isaac scurried to get the figurine out of the pub and to his laboratory.

Outside the wind had picked up a little. Isaac sheltered his prize and walked quickly up the little alley that adjoined The Dying Child with Paddler Way and his workshop-home. He pushed open the green doors with his b.u.m and backed into the building. Isaac's laboratory had been a factory and a warehouse years ago, and its huge, dusty floors.p.a.ce swamped the little benches and retorts and blackboards that perched in its corners.

From the two corners of the floor came yelled greetings. David Serachin and Lublamai Dadscatt-rogue-scientists like Isaac, with whom he shared the rent and the s.p.a.ce. David and Lublamai used the ground floor, each filling a corner with their tools, separated by forty feet of empty wooden boards. A refitted waterpump jutted from the floor between their ends of the room. The construct they shared was rolling across the floor, loudly and inefficiently sweeping up dust. They keep the useless thing out of sentimentality, They keep the useless thing out of sentimentality, thought Isaac. thought Isaac.

Isaac's workshop, his kitchen and his bed, were on the huge walkway that jutted out from the walls halfway up the old factory. It was about twenty feet wide, circ.u.mnavigating the hall, with a ramshackle wooden railing miraculously still holding from when Lublamai had first hammered it in.

The door slammed heavily shut behind Isaac, and the long mirror that hung beside it shuddered. I can't believe that thing doesn't break, I can't believe that thing doesn't break, thought Isaac. thought Isaac. We must move it. We must move it. As always, the thought was gone as soon as it had come. As always, the thought was gone as soon as it had come.

As Isaac took the stairs three at a time, David saw how he held his hands and laughed.

"More of Silchristchek's high art, Isaac?" he yelled.

Isaac grinned back.

"Never let it be said I don't collect the best!"

Isaac, who had found the warehouse all those years ago, had had first pick of the working s.p.a.ce, and it showed. His bed and stove and chamberpot were in one corner of the raised platform, and at the other end of the same side were the bulky protuberances of his lab. Gla.s.s and clay containers full of weird compounds and dangerous chymicals filled the shelves. Heliotypes of Isaac with his friends in various poses around the city and in Rudewood dotted the walls. The warehouse backed onto the Umber Promenade: his windows looked out over the Canker and the Bonetown sh.o.r.e, gave him a splendid view of the Ribs and the Kelltree train.

Isaac ran past those huge arched windows to an esoteric machine of burnished bra.s.s. It was a dense knot of pipes and lenses, with dials and gauges shoved roughly wherever they would fit. Ostentatiously stamped on every component of the whole was a sign: PROPERTY OF NC UNIVERSITY PHYSICS DEPT PROPERTY OF NC UNIVERSITY PHYSICS DEPT. DO NOT REMOVE DO NOT REMOVE.

Isaac checked and was relieved to see that the little boiler at the machine's heart had not gone out. He shoved in a handful of coal and bolted the boiler closed. He placed Sil's little statue on a viewing platform under a gla.s.s bell, and heaved at some bellows just beneath it, siphoning out the air and replacing it with gas from a slender leather tube.

He relaxed. The integrity of the vodyanoi waterpiece would hold a little longer, now. Outside vodyanoi hands, untouched, such works would last perhaps an hour before slowly collapsing back into their elemental form. Interfered with, they dissolved much more quickly: in a n.o.ble gas more slowly. He had perhaps two hours to investigate.

Isaac had become interested in vodyanoi watercraeft in a roundabout way, as a result of his research in unified energy theory. He had wondered whether what allowed vodyanoi to mould water was a force related to the binding force that he sought, that held matter together in certain circ.u.mstances, dispersed it violently in others. What had happened was a common pattern of Isaac's research: a byway of his work had taken on a momentum of its own, and had become a deep, almost certainly short-lived, obsession.

Isaac bent some lens-tubes into position and lit a gasjet to illuminate the waterpiece. Isaac was still piqued by the ignorance surrounding watercraeft. It brought home to him, again, how much mainstream science was bunk, how much "a.n.a.lysis" was just description-often bad description-hiding behind obfuscatory rubbish. His favourite example of the genre came from Benchamburg's Hydrophysiconometricia Hydrophysiconometricia, a hugely respected textbook. He had howled when he read it, copied it out carefully and pinned it to his wall.

The vodyanoi, by means of what is called their The vodyanoi, by means of what is called their watercraeft watercraeft, are able to manipulate the plasticity and sustain the surface tension of water such that a quant.i.ty will hold any shape the manipulator might give it for a short time. This is achieved by the vodyanois' application of an hydrocohesive/aquamorphic energy field of minor diachronic extension hydrocohesive/aquamorphic energy field of minor diachronic extension.

In other words, Benchamburg had no more idea how the vodyanoi shaped water than did Isaac, or a street urchin, or old Silchristchek himself.

Isaac pulled a set of levers, shifting a series of gla.s.s slides and sending different coloured lights through the statuette, which he could already see beginning to sag at the edges. Peering through a high-magnification eyepiece, he could see tiny animalculae squirm mindlessly. Internally the water's structure changed not at all: it merely wanted to occupy a different s.p.a.ce from its usual.

He collected it as it seeped through a crack in the stand. He would examine it later, though he knew from past experience he would find nothing of any interest in it.

Isaac scribbled notes on a pad beside him. He subjected the waterpiece to various experiments as the minutes went by, piercing it with a syringe and sucking some of its substance away, taking heliotypic prints of it from various angles, blowing tiny air-bubbles into it, which rose and burst out of its top. Eventually he boiled it and let it dissipate in steam.

At one point Sincerity, David's badger, ambled up the stairs and sniffed at his dangling fingers. He stroked her absently and when she licked his hand, he yelled to David that she was hungry. He was surprised by the silence. David and Lublamai had left, presumably for a late lunch: several hours had pa.s.sed since he had arrived.

He stretched and paced over to his pantry, throwing Sincerity a twist of dried meat, which she began to gnaw happily. Isaac was growing conscious of the world again, hearing boats through the walls behind him.

The door swung open and shut again below.

He trotted to the top of the stairs, expecting to see his colleagues returning.

Instead, a stranger stood in the centre of the great empty s.p.a.ce. Air currents adjusted to his presence, investigated him like tentacles, sending a whirligig of dust spinning around him. Spots of light littered the floor from open windows and broken bricks, but none fell directly on him. The wooden walkway creaked as Isaac rocked, very slightly. The figure below jerked its head back and threw off a hood, hands clasped to its chest, very still, staring up.

Isaac gazed in astonishment.

It was a garuda.

He nearly stumbled down the stairs, fumbling with the rail, loath to take his eyes off the extraordinary visitor waiting for him. He touched earth.

The garuda stared down at him. Isaac's fascination defeated his manners, and he stared frankly back.

The great creature stood more than six feet tall, on cruel clawed feet that poked out from under a dirty cloak. The ragged cloth dangled down almost to the ground, draped loosely over every inch of flesh, obscuring the details of physiognomy and musculature, all but the garuda's head. And that great inscrutable bird face gazed down at Isaac with what looked like imperiosity. Its sharply curved beak was something between a kestrel's and an owl's. Sleek feathers faded subtly from ochre to dun to dappled brown. Deep black eyes stared at his own, the iris only a fine mottling at the very edge of the dark. Those eyes were set in orbits which gave the garuda face a permanent sneer, a proud furrow.

And looming over the garuda's head, covered in the rough sackcloth it clasped about itself, projected the unmistakable shapes of its huge furled wings, promontories of feather and skin and bone that extended two feet or more from its shoulders and curved elegantly towards each other. Isaac had never seen a garuda spread its wings at close quarters, but he had read descriptions of the dust-cloud they could raise, and the vast shadows they threw across the garuda's prey below.

What are you doing here, so far from home? thought Isaac with wonder. thought Isaac with wonder. Look at the colour of you: you're from the desert! You must have come miles and miles and miles, from the Cymek. What the spit are you doing here, you impressive f.u.c.ker? Look at the colour of you: you're from the desert! You must have come miles and miles and miles, from the Cymek. What the spit are you doing here, you impressive f.u.c.ker?

He almost shook his head with awe at the great predator before he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Can I help you?"

CHAPTER FOUR.

Lin, to her mortal horror, was running late.

It did not help that she was not an aficionado of Bonetown. The cross-bred architecture of that outlandish quarter confused her: a syncresis of industrialism and the gaudy domestic ostentation of the slightly rich, the peeling concrete of forgotten docklands and the stretched skins of shantytown tents. The different forms segued into each other seemingly at random in this low, flat zone, full of urban scrubland and wasteground where wild flowers and thick-stemmed plants pushed through plains of concrete and tar.

Lin had been given a street name, but the signs around her crumbled on their perches and drooped to point in impossible directions, or were obscured with rust, or contradicted each other. She concentrated to read them, looked instead at her scribbled map.

She could orient herself by the Ribs. She looked up and found them above her, shoving vastly into the sky. Only one side of the cage was visible, the bleached and blistered curves poised like a bone wave about to break over the buildings to the east. Lin made her way for them.

The streets opened out around her and she found herself before another abandoned-looking lot, but larger than the others by a huge factor. It did not look like a square but a ma.s.sive unfinished hole in the city. The buildings at its edge did not show their faces but their backs and their sides, as if they had been promised neighbours with elegant facades that had never arrived. The streets of Bonetown edged nervously into the scrubland with exploratory little fringes of brick that petered quickly out.

The dirty gra.s.s was dotted here and there with makeshift stalls, foldaway tables put down at random places and spread with cheap cakes or old prints or the rubbish from someone's attic. Street-jugglers chucked things around in lackl.u.s.tre displays. There were a few half-hearted shoppers, and people of all races sitting on scattered boulders, reading, eating, scratching at the dry dirt, and contemplating the bones above them.

The Ribs rose from the earth at the edges of the empty ground.

Leviathan shards of yellowing ivory thicker than the oldest trees exploded out of the ground, bursting away from each other, sweeping up in a curved ascent until, more than a hundred feet above the earth, looming now over the roofs of the surrounding houses, they curled sharply back towards each other. They climbed as high again till their points nearly touched, vast crooked fingers, a G.o.d-sized ivory mantrap.

There had been plans to fill the square, to build offices and houses in the ancient chest cavity, but they had come to nothing.

Tools used on the site broke easily and went missing. Cement would not set. Something baleful in the half-exhumed bones kept the gravesite free of permanent disturbance.

Fifty feet below Lin's feet, archaeologists had found vertebrae the size of houses; a backbone which had been quietly reburied after one too many accidents on-site. No limbs, no hips, no gargantuan skull had surfaced. No one could say what manner of creature had fallen here and died millennia ago. The grubby print-vendors who worked the Ribs specialized in various lurid depictions of Gigantes Crobuzon Gigantes Crobuzon, four-footed or bipedal, humanoid, toothed, tusked, winged, pugnacious or p.o.r.nographic.

Lin's map directed her to a nameless alley on the south side of the Ribs. She wound her way to a quiet street where she found the black-painted buildings she had been told to seek, a row of dark, deserted houses, all but one with bricked-up doorways and windows sealed and painted with tar.

There were no pa.s.sers-by in this street, no cabs, no traffic. Lin was quite alone.

Above the one remaining door in the row was chalked what looked like a gameboard, a square divided into nine smaller squares. There were no noughts or crosses, however, no other mark at all.

Lin hovered in the vicinity of the houses. She fidgeted with her skirt and blouse until, exasperated with herself, she walked up to the door and knocked quickly.

Bad enough that I'm late, she thought, she thought, without p.i.s.sing him off even more. without p.i.s.sing him off even more.

She heard hinges and levers slide somewhere above her, and detected a tiny glint of reflected light over her head: some system of lenses and mirrors was being deployed so those within could judge whether those without were worthy of attention.

The door opened.

Standing before Lin was a vast Remade. Her face was still the same mournful, pretty human woman's it had always been, with dark skin and long plaited hair, but it supplanted a seven-foot skeleton of black iron and pewter. She stood on a tripod of stiff telescoping metal. Her body had been altered for heavy labour, with pistons and pulleys giving her what looked like ineluctable strength. Her right arm was levelled at Lin's head, and from the centre of the bra.s.s hand extended a vicious harpoon.

Lin recoiled in astonished terror.

A large voice sounded from behind the sad-faced woman.

"Ms. Lin? The artist? You're late. Mr. Motley is expecting you. Please follow me."

The Remade stepped backwards, balancing on her central leg and swinging the others behind it, giving Lin room to step around her. The harpoon did not waver.

How far can you go? thought Lin to herself, and stepped into the dark. thought Lin to herself, and stepped into the dark.

At the far end of an entirely black corridor was a cactacae man. Lin could taste his sap in the air, but very faintly. He stood seven feet tall, thick-limbed and heavy. His head broke the curve of his shoulders like a crag, his silhouette uneven with nodules of hardy growth. His green skin was a ma.s.s of scars, three-inch spines and tiny red spring flowers.

He beckoned to her with gnarled fingertips.

"Mr. Motley can afford to be patient," he said as he turned and climbed the stairs behind him, "but I've never known him relish waiting." He looked back clumsily and raised an eyebrow at Lin pointedly.

f.u.c.k off, lackey, she thought impatiently. she thought impatiently. Take me to the big man. Take me to the big man.

He stomped off on shapeless feet like small tree-stumps.

Behind her, Lin could hear the explosive bursts of steam and thumps as the Remade took the stairs. Lin followed the cactus through a twisting, windowless tunnel.

This place is huge, Lin thought, as they moved on and on. She realized that it must be the whole row of houses, dividing walls destroyed and rebuilt, custom-made, renovated into one vast convoluted s.p.a.ce. They pa.s.sed doors from which suddenly emerged an unnerving sound, like the m.u.f.fled anguish of machines. Lin's antennae bristled. As they left it behind, a volley of thuds sounded, like a score of crossbow bolts fired into soft wood. Lin thought, as they moved on and on. She realized that it must be the whole row of houses, dividing walls destroyed and rebuilt, custom-made, renovated into one vast convoluted s.p.a.ce. They pa.s.sed doors from which suddenly emerged an unnerving sound, like the m.u.f.fled anguish of machines. Lin's antennae bristled. As they left it behind, a volley of thuds sounded, like a score of crossbow bolts fired into soft wood.

Oh Broodma, thought Lin querulously. thought Lin querulously. Gazid, what the f.u.c.k have I let you talk me into? Gazid, what the f.u.c.k have I let you talk me into?

It was Lucky Gazid, the failed impresario, who had started the process leading Lin to this terrifying place.

He had run off a set of heliotypes of her most recent batch of work, hawked them around the city. It was a regular process, as he attempted to establish a reputation among the artists and patrons of New Crobuzon. Gazid was a pathetic figure forever reminding anyone who would listen of the one successful show he had arranged for a now-dead aether sculptress thirteen years previously. Lin and most of her friends viewed him with pity and contempt. Everyone she knew let him take his heliotypes and slipped him a few shekels or a n.o.ble, "an advance on his agent's fee." Then he would disappear for a few weeks, to emerge again with puke on his trousers and blood on his shoes, buzzing on some new drug, and the process would begin again.

Only not this time.

Gazid had found Lin a buyer.

When he had sidled up to her in The Clock and c.o.c.kerel she had protested. It was someone else's turn, she had scribbled on her pad, she had "advanced" him a whole guinea only a week or so ago; but Gazid had interrupted her and insisted she retreat from the table with him. And as her friends, the artistic elite of Salacus Fields, laughed and cheered them on, Gazid had handed her a stiff white card stamped with a simple crest of a three-by-three chessboard. On it was a short printed note.

Ms. Lin, it said. it said. My employer was most impressed with the examples of your work your agent showed him. He wonders whether you might be interested in meeting him to discuss a possible commission. We look forward to hearing from you. My employer was most impressed with the examples of your work your agent showed him. He wonders whether you might be interested in meeting him to discuss a possible commission. We look forward to hearing from you. The signature was illegible. The signature was illegible.

Gazid was a wreck and an addict of most things going, who could not help going to any lengths to secure money for drugs; but this was not like any scam that Lin could imagine. There was no angle for him, unless there was indeed someone wealthy in New Crobuzon prepared to pay for her work, giving him a cut.

She had dragged him out of the bar, to catcalls and whoops and consternation, and had demanded to know what was going on. Gazid was circ.u.mspect at first, and seemed to rack his brains to think of what lies to spout. He realized quite quickly that he needed to tell her the truth.

"There's a guy I buy some stuff from occasionally . . ." he started shiftily. "Anyway, I had the prints of your statues lying around . . . uh . . . on the shelf when he came round, and he loved them and wanted to take a couple away, and . . . uh . . . I said 'yeah.' And then a while later he told me that he showed them to the guy who supplies him him with the stuff I sometimes buy, and with the stuff I sometimes buy, and that that guy liked them, and took them away, and showed them to guy liked them, and took them away, and showed them to his his boss, and then they got to the kind of top man, who's huge into art-bought some of Alexandrine's stuff last year-and he liked them and wants you to do a piece for him." boss, and then they got to the kind of top man, who's huge into art-bought some of Alexandrine's stuff last year-and he liked them and wants you to do a piece for him."

Lin translated the evasive language.

Your drug dealer's boss wants me to work for him??? she scrawled. she scrawled.

"Oh s.h.i.t, Lin, it's not like that . . . I mean, yeah, but . . ." Gazid paused. "Well, yeah," he finished lamely. There was a pause. "Only . . . only . . . he wants to meet you. If you're interested he has to actually meet you."

Lin pondered.

It was certainly an exciting prospect. Judging by the card, this was not some minor hustler: this was a big player. Lin was not stupid. She knew that this would be dangerous. She was excited, she could not help it. It would be such an event in her art-life. She could drop hints about it. She could have a criminal patron. She was intelligent enough to realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to care.

And while she was deciding that she didn't care, Gazid named the kinds of sums the mysterious buyer was quoting. Lin's headlegs flexed in astonishment.

I have to talk to Alexandrine, she wrote, and went back inside. she wrote, and went back inside.

Alex knew nothing. She milked the kudos of having sold canvases to a crime boss for what she could, but she had only ever met an at-best middle-ranking messenger, who had offered her enormous sums for two paintings that she had just finished. She had accepted, handed them over, and never heard anything again.

That was it. She had never even known the name of her buyer.

Lin decided that she could do better than that.

She had sent a message through Gazid, down the illicit conduit of communication that led f.u.c.k-knew-where, saying that yes, she was interested, and would be prepared to meet, but she really must have a name to write in her diary.

The New Crobuzon underworld digested her message, and made her wait a week, and then spat back an answer in the shape of another printed note, pushed under her door while she slept, giving her an address in Bonetown, a date, and a one-word name: Motley. Motley.