Perdido Street Station Part 20

It had taken Lin until she was fifteen to challenge her broodma openly. She did so in terms that she now saw were naive and confused. Lin denounced her mother as a heretic, cursing her in the name of the mainstream pantheon. She fled the lunatic self-loathing of Insect Aspect worship, and the narrow streets of Creekside. She had run away to Kinken.

That was why, she reflected, for all her later disenchantment-her contempt, in fact, her hatred-there was a part of her that would always remember Kinken as a sanctuary. Now the smugness of the insular community nauseated her, but at the time of her escape she had been drunk on it. She had revelled in the arrogant denunciation of Creekside, had prayed to Awesome Broodma with a vehement delight. She had baptized herself with a khepri name and-which was vital in New Crobuzon-a human one. She had discovered that in Kinken, unlike Creekside, the hive and moiety system made for complex and useful nets of social connectivity. Her mother had never mentioned her birth or upbringing, so Lin had copied the allegiance of her first friend in Kinken, and told anyone who asked that she was Redwing Hive, Catskull Moiety.

Her friend introduced her to pleasures.e.x, taught her to delight in the sensuous body below her neck. This was the most difficult, the most extraordinary transition. Her body had been a source of shame and disgust; to engage in activities with no purpose at all except to revel in their sheer physicality had first nauseated, then terrified, and finally liberated her. Until then she had been subjected only to heads.e.x at her mother's behest, sitting still and uncomfortable while a male scrabbled and coupled excitedly with her headscarab, in mercifully unsuccessful attempts at procreation.

With time, Lin's hatred of her broodma slowly cooled, becoming first contempt, then pity. Her disgust at the squalor of Creekside was joined with some kind of understanding. Then, her five-year love-affair with Kinken drew to an end. It started when she stood in the Plaza of Statues, and realized that they were mawkish and badly executed, embodying a culture that was blind to itself. She began to see Kinken as implicated in the subjugation of Creekside and the never-mentioned Kinken poor, saw a "community" at best callous and uncaring, at worst deliberately keeping Creekside down to maintain its superiority.

With its priestesses and its orgies and its cottage industries, its secret reliance on the wider economy of New Crobuzon-the vastness of which was usually depicted airily as a kind of adjunct to Kinken-Lin realized that she was living in an unsustainable realm. It combined sanctimony, decadence, insecurity and sn.o.bbery in a weird, neurotic brew. It was parasitic.

Lin realized, to her revolted anger, that Kinken was more dishonest than Creekside. But this realization brought with it no nostalgia for her miserable childhood. She would not return to Creekside. And if, now, she was turning her back on Kinken as once she had turned it on Insect Aspect, there was nowhere to go but out.

So Lin taught herself signing, and left.

Lin was never so foolish as to think she could stop being defined by being khepri, as far as the city was concerned. Nor did she want to. But for herself, she stopped trying to be khepri, as she had once stopped trying to be insect. That was why she was bewildered by her feelings about Ma Francine. It was not only that Ma Francine was opposing to Mr. Motley, Lin realized. There was something about a khepri doing that, effortlessly stealing territory from this vile man, that stirred Lin.

Lin could not, even to herself, pretend to understand. She would sit, for a long time, in the shadow of banyans or oaks or pear trees, in the Kinken she had despised for years, surrounded by sisters to whom she was an outsider. She did not want to return to the "khepri way" any more than to the Insect Aspect. She did not understand the strength she drew from Kinken.

CHAPTER N NINETEEN.

The construct that had swept David's and Lublamai's floor for years seemed finally to be giving up the ghost. It wheezed and spun as it scrubbed. It became fixated with arbitrary patches of floor, polished them as if they were jewels. Some mornings it took nearly an hour to warm up. It was becoming caught in programme loops, causing it to endlessly repeat tiny pieces of behaviour.

Isaac learnt to ignore its repet.i.tive, neurotic whines. He worked with both hands at once. With his left, he scribbled down his notions in diagrammatic form. With his right he fed equations into the innards of his little calculating engine through its stiff keys, slotted punctured cards into its programme slot, fumbling them in and out at speed. He solved the same problems with different programmes, comparing answers, typing out the sheets of numbers.

The innumerable books on flight that had filled Isaac's bookshelves had been replaced, with Teafortwo's help, by an equally large number of tomes on unified field theory, and on the arcane sub-field of crisis mathematics.

After only two weeks of research, something extraordinary happened in Isaac's mind. The reconceptualization came to him so simply that he did not at first realize the scale of his insight. It seemed a thoughtful moment like many others, in the course of a whole internal scientific dialogue. A sense of genius did not descend on Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin in a cold shock of brilliant light. Instead, as he gnawed the top of a pencil one day, there was a moment of vaguely verbalized thought along the lines of or wait a minute maybe you could do it like this or wait a minute maybe you could do it like this . . . . . .

It took an hour and a half for Isaac to realize that what he had thought might be a useful mental model was vastly more exciting. He set out in a systematic attempt to prove himself wrong. He constructed scenario after mathematical scenario with which he tried to rubbish his tentatively scrawled sets of equations. His attempts at destruction failed. His equations held firm.

It took Isaac two days before he began to believe that he had solved a fundamental problem of crisis theory. He enjoyed moments of euphoria, many more of cautious nervousness. He pored over his textbooks at a crushingly slow pace, searching to make sure he had not ignored some obvious error, had not replicated some long-disproved theorem.

Still, his equations held. In terror of hubris, Isaac sought any alternative than to believe what was looking more and more like the truth: that he had solved the problem of mathematic representation, quantification, of crisis energy.

He knew that he should immediately converse with colleagues, publish his findings as "work in progress" in The Review of Philosophical Physics and Thaumaturgy The Review of Philosophical Physics and Thaumaturgy, or the Unified Field Unified Field. But he was so intimidated by what he had discovered that he avoided that route. He wanted to be sure, he told himself. He had to take a few more days, a few more weeks, maybe a month or two . . . then he would publish. He did not tell Lublamai or David, or Lin, which was more extraordinary. Isaac was a garrulous man, p.r.o.ne to spouting any old tosh, scientific, social or obscene, which came to his mind. His secretiveness was profoundly out of character. He knew himself well enough to recognize this, and to realize what it meant: he was deeply disturbed, and deeply, deeply excited by what he had found.

Isaac thought back on the process of discovery, of formulation. He realized that his advances, his incredible leaps of theory in the last month, which eclipsed his previous five years' work, were all in response to immediate, practical concerns. He had reached an impa.s.se in his studies of crisis theory until Yagharek had commissioned him. Isaac did not know why it was so, but he realized that it was with applications in mind that his most abstract theories were advancing. Accordingly, he decided not to immerse himself totally in abstruse theory. He would continue to focus on the problem of Yagharek's flight.

He would not let himself think about the ramifications of his research, not at this stage. Everything he uncovered, every advance, every idea he had, he would quietly plough back into his applied studies. He tried to see everything as a means to get Yagharek back in the air. It was difficult-perverse, even-constantly trying to contain and circ.u.mscribe his work. He saw the situation as one of working behind his own back, or more exactly, as trying to do research out of the corner of his eye. Yet, incredible as it seemed, with the discipline that was forced on him, Isaac progressed theoretically at a rate he could never have dreamed of six months before.

It was an extraordinary, circuitous route to scientific revolution, he thought sometimes, chiding himself quickly for his direct gaze at the theory. Get back to work, Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne. There's a garuda to get airborne. But he could not stop his heart from thumping with excitement, the occasional almost hysterical grin from racing across his face. Some days he sought Lin out and, if she was not working at her secret piece in her secret location, he would try to seduce her in her flat with a tender, excited fervour that delighted her, for all that she was obviously tired. At other times he spent days in only his own company, immersing himself in science. But he could not stop his heart from thumping with excitement, the occasional almost hysterical grin from racing across his face. Some days he sought Lin out and, if she was not working at her secret piece in her secret location, he would try to seduce her in her flat with a tender, excited fervour that delighted her, for all that she was obviously tired. At other times he spent days in only his own company, immersing himself in science.

Isaac applied his extraordinary insights and began tentatively to design a machine to solve Yagharek's problem. The same drawing began to appear more and more in his work. At first it was a doodle, a few loosely connecting lines covered in arrows and question marks. Within days it was appearing more solid. Its lines were drawn in ruled ink. Its curves were measured and careful. It was on its way to becoming a blueprint.

Yagharek sometimes came back to Isaac's laboratory, always when the two of them were alone. Isaac would hear the door creak open at night, turn to see the impa.s.sive, dignified garuda still steeped in visible misery.

Isaac found that trying to explain his work to Yagharek helped him. Not the big theoretical stuff, of course, but the applied science which furthered the half-hidden theory. Isaac spent days with a thousand ideas and potential projects swilling violently in his head, and to pare that down, to explain in non-technical language the various techniques he thought might enable him to tap crisis energy forced him to evaluate his trajectories, discard some, focus on others.

He began to rely on Yagharek's interest. If too many days pa.s.sed without the garuda appearing, Isaac became distracted. He spent those hours watching the enormous caterpillar.

The creature had gorged itself on dreams.h.i.t for nearly a fortnight, growing and growing. When it had reached three feet in length, Isaac had nervously stopped feeding it. Its cage was getting much too small. That would have to be the full extent of its size. It had spent the next day or two wandering around hopefully in its little s.p.a.ce, waving its nose in the air. Since then it seemed to have resigned itself to the fact that it would get no more food. Its original desperate hunger had subsided.

It was not moving very much, just shifting around now and then, undulating once or twice the width of the cage, stretching as if yawning. For the most part it just sat and pulsed slightly in and out, with breath or heartbeat or what, Isaac did not know. It looked healthy enough. It looked as if it was waiting.

Sometimes, as he had dropped the gobs of dreams.h.i.t into the caterpillar's eager mandibles, Isaac had found himself reflecting on his own experience with the drug with a faint, querulous longing. This was not the delusion of nostalgia. Isaac vividly remembered the sense of being awash in filth; of being sullied at the most profound level; the nauseating, disorientating sickness; the panicked confusion of losing himself in a welter of emotion, and losing the confusion, and mistaking it for another mind's invading fears . . . And yet, despite the vehemence of those recollections, he found himself eyeing his caterpillar's breakfasts with a speculative air-perhaps even a hungry one.

Isaac was very disturbed by these feelings. He had always been unashamedly cowardly when it came to drugs. As a student, there had been plenty of loose, smelly fogweed cigarillos, of course, and the inane giggles that went with that. But Isaac had never had the stomach for anything stronger. These inchoate rumblings of a new appet.i.te did nothing to allay his fears. He did not know how addictive dreams.h.i.t was, if at all, but he sternly refused to give in to those faint stirrings of curiosity.

The dreams.h.i.t was for his caterpillar, and for it alone.

Isaac channelled his curiosity from sensual into intellectual currents. He knew only two chymists personally, both unutterable prudes with whom he would no more raise the question of illegal drugs than he would dance naked down the middle of Tervisadd Way. Instead, he raised the subject of dreams.h.i.t in the louche taverns of Salacus Fields. Several of his acquaintances turned out to have sampled the drug, and a few were regular users.

Dreams.h.i.t did not seem to differ in effect between the races. No one knew where the drug came from, but all who admitted to taking it sang paeans of praise to its extraordinary effects. The only thing they all agreed on was that dreams.h.i.t was expensive, and getting more so. Not that this put them off their habits. The artists in particular spoke in quasi-mystical terms of communing with other minds. Isaac scoffed at this, claiming (without acknowledging his own limited experience) that the drug was no more than a powerful oneirogen, that stimulated the dream-centres of the brain as very-tea stimulated the visual and olfactory cortexes.

He did not believe it himself. He was not surprised at the vehement opposition to his theory.

"I don't know how, 'Zaac," Thighs Growing had hissed at him reverentially, "but it lets you share dreams share dreams . . ." At this, the other users crammed into a little booth in The Clock and c.o.c.kerel had nodded in time, comically. Isaac affected a sceptical face, to maintain his role of killjoy. Actually, of course, he agreed. He intended to find out more about the extraordinary substance-Lemuel Pigeon would be the person to ask, or Lucky Gazid, if he ever reappeared-but the pace of his work in crisis theory overtook him. His att.i.tude to the dreams.h.i.t he had shoved into the grub's cage remained one of curiosity, nervousness and ignorance. . . ." At this, the other users crammed into a little booth in The Clock and c.o.c.kerel had nodded in time, comically. Isaac affected a sceptical face, to maintain his role of killjoy. Actually, of course, he agreed. He intended to find out more about the extraordinary substance-Lemuel Pigeon would be the person to ask, or Lucky Gazid, if he ever reappeared-but the pace of his work in crisis theory overtook him. His att.i.tude to the dreams.h.i.t he had shoved into the grub's cage remained one of curiosity, nervousness and ignorance.

Isaac was staring uneasily at the vast creature one warm day in late Melluary. It was, he decided, more than prodigious. It was more than a very big caterpillar. It was definitely a monster. He resented it for being so d.a.m.n interesting. Otherwise he could have just forgotten about it.

The door below him was pushed open, and Yagharek appeared in the shafts of early sun. It was rare, very rare for the garuda to come before nightfall. Isaac started and leapt to his feet, beckoning his client up the stairs.

"Yag, old son! Long time no see! I was drifting. I need you to tether me. Get on up here."

Yagharek mounted the stairs wordlessly.

"How do you know when Lub and David are going to be out, eh?" asked Isaac. "You keep watch, or something creepy, right? d.a.m.n, Yag, you've got to stop skulking around like a f.u.c.king mugger."

"I would talk to you, Grimnebulin." Yagharek's voice was oddly tentative.

"Fire away, old son." Isaac sat and watched him. He knew by now that Yagharek would not sit.

Yagharek took off his cloak and wing-frame and turned to Isaac with folded arms. Isaac understood this to be as close as Yagharek would ever get to expressing trust, standing with his deformity in full view, making no effort to cover himself. Isaac supposed he should feel flattered.

Yagharek was eyeing him sideways.

"There are people in the night-city where I live, Grimnebulin, from many kinds of lives. It is not all flotsam that hide themselves."

"I never presumed it was . . ." Isaac began, but Yagharek twitched his head impatiently, and Isaac was silent.

"Many nights I spend in silence and alone, but there are other times I talk to those with minds still sharp under a patina of alcohol and loneliness and drugs." Isaac wanted to say, "I've said we could work out a place for you to stay," but he stopped himself. Isaac wanted to see where this was heading. "There is a man, an educated, drunken man. I am not sure he believes me real. He may think me a recurring hallucination." Yagharek breathed deeply. "I spoke to him about your theories, your crisis, and I was excited. And the man said to me . . . the man said to me 'Why not go all the way? Why not use the Torque?' "

There was a very long silence. Isaac shook his head in exasperation and disgust.

"I am here to put the question to you, Grimnebulin," Yagharek continued. "Why do we not use the Torque? You are trying to create a science from scratch, Grimnebulin, but Torquic energy exists, techniques to tap it are known . . . I ask as an ignorant, Grimnebulin. Why do you not use the Torque?"

Isaac sighed very deeply and kneaded his face. Part of him was angry, but mostly he was just anxious, desperate to put a stop to this talk immediately. He turned to the garuda, and held up his hand.

"Yagharek . . ." he began, and at that moment, there was a bang on the door.

"h.e.l.lo?" a cheerful voice yelled. Yagharek stiffened. Isaac leapt to his feet. The timing was extraordinary.

"Who is it?" yelled Isaac, bounding down the stairs.

A man poked his face round the door. He looked amiable, almost absurdly so.

"Hullo there, squire. I've come about the construct."

Isaac shook his head. He had no idea what the man was talking about. He glanced up behind him, but Yagharek was invisible. He had stepped out of sight away from the edge of the platform. The man in the doorway handed Isaac a card.

NATHANIEL O ORRIABEN'S C CONSTRUCT R REPAIRS AND R REPLACEMENTS it said. Q it said. QUALITY & C & CARE AT R REASONABLE R RATES.

"Gent came in yesterday. Name of . . . Serachin?" suggested the man, reading from a sheet. "Told us his cleaning model . . . um . . . EKB EKB4C was playing up. Thought it might have a virus and whatnot. I was due tomorrow, but I've just come back from another job local and I thought I'd chance that someone was in." The man smiled brightly. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his oily coveralls. was playing up. Thought it might have a virus and whatnot. I was due tomorrow, but I've just come back from another job local and I thought I'd chance that someone was in." The man smiled brightly. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his oily coveralls.

"Right," said Isaac. "Um . . . Look. Not the best time . . ."

"Righto! Your decision, obviously. Only . . ." The man looked around him before he went on, as if he was about to share a secret. Rea.s.sured that no one would hear him who should not, he went on, confidentially. "Thing is, squire, I may not be able to do the appointment tomorrow as originally planned . . ." The face he offered was cod-apology of the most exaggerated kind. "I can happily do my thing over in the corner, won't make a sound. Take me about an hour if I can do it here, otherwise it's a job for the repair shop. I'll know which in five minutes. Otherwise I shan't be able to do it for a week, I think."

"Oh, a.r.s.e. Right . . . Look, I'm in a meeting upstairs, and it's absolutely vital vital that you don't interrupt us. Seriously. Is that going to be all right?" that you don't interrupt us. Seriously. Is that going to be all right?"

"Oh, absolutely. I'm just going to take the screwdriver to the old cleaner and then give you a little yell when I know what the score is, all right?"

"Right. So I can just leave you to it?"

"Perfecto." The man was already heading towards the cleaning construct, carrying a toolcase. Lublamai had turned the cleaner on that morning, and punched in instructions for it to wash his study area, but it had been a forlorn hope. The construct had puttered in circles for twenty minutes, then stopped, leaning against the wall. It was still there, three hours later, emitting unhappy little clicks, its three attachment-limbs spasming.

The repairman strode over to the thing, muttering and clucking like a concerned parent. He felt the construct's limbs, flipped a fob-watch out of his pocket and timed the twitching. He scribbled something in a little notebook. He swivelled the cleaning construct to face him, and gazed into one of its gla.s.s irises. He moved his pencil slowly from one side to another, watching the tracking of the sensory engine.

Isaac was half watching the repairman, but his attention kept flickering back upstairs to where Yagharek waited. This business with the Torque, This business with the Torque, Isaac thought nervously. Isaac thought nervously. It can't wait. It can't wait.

"So you all right there?" Isaac shouted nervously at the repairman.

The man was opening his case and taking out a large screwdriver. He looked up at Isaac.

"No problem, guv," he said, and waved his screwdriver cheerfully. He looked back at the construct and shut it off at the switch behind the neck. Its anguished creaks died in a grateful whisper. He began to unscrew the panel behind the thing's "head," a roughcast chunk of grey metal at the top of its cylindrical body.

"Right then," said Isaac, and jogged back up the stairs.

Yagharek was standing by Isaac's desk, well out of sight of the floor below. He looked up as Isaac returned.

"It's nothing," said Isaac quietly. "Someone to fix our construct, which has gone belly-up. I'm just wondering if we're going to be heard . . ."

Yagharek opened his mouth to reply, and a thin, discordant whistling sounded up from the floor below. Yagharek's mouth hung open for a moment, stupidly.

"Looks like we needn't have worried," Isaac said, and grinned. He's doing that deliberately! He's doing that deliberately! he thought. he thought. So's to let me know he's not listening. Polite of him. So's to let me know he's not listening. Polite of him. Isaac inclined his head in unseen thanks to the repairman. Isaac inclined his head in unseen thanks to the repairman.

Then his mind returned to the business in hand, to Yagharek's tentative suggestion, and his smile vanished. He sat heavily on his bed, ran his hands through his thick hair and stared up at Yagharek.

"You never sit, Yag, do you?" he said quietly. "Now why's that?"

He drummed his fingers against the side of his head and thought. Eventually he spoke.

"Yag, old son . . . You've already impressed me as to your . . . amazing library, right? I want to throw two names out there, see what they mean to you. What do you know about Suroch, or the Cacotopic Stain?"

There was a long silence. Yagharek was looking slightly up, through the window.

"The Cacotopic Stain I know, of course. That is always what one hears when the Torque is discussed. Perhaps it is a bogeyman." Isaac could not distinguish moods in Yagharek's voice, but his words were defensive. "Perhaps we should overcome our fear. And Suroch . . . I have read your histories, Grimnebulin. War is always . . . a vile time . . ."

As Yagharek spoke, Isaac stood and walked to his chaotic bookshelves, flicking through the stacked volumes. He returned with a slim, hardbacked folio book. He opened it in front of Yagharek.

"This," he said heavily, "is a collection of heliotypes taken nearly a hundred years ago. It was these helios, in large part, that put a stop to Torque experiments in New Crobuzon."

Yagharek reached out slowly and turned the pages. He did not speak.

"This was supposed to be a secret research mission, to see the effects of the war a hundred years on," continued Isaac. "Little group of militia, couple of scientists and a heliotypist went upcoast in a spy-dirigible, took some prints from the air. Then some of them were lowered into the remains of Suroch to take some up-close shots.

"Sacramundi, the heliotypist, was so . . . appalled . . . he printed five hundred copies of his report at his own expense. Distributed it to bookshops gratis. Bypa.s.sed the mayor and Parliament, laid it out in front of the people . . . Mayor Turgisadi was screaming mad, but there was nothing he could do.

"There was demonstrations, then the Sacramundi Riots of '89. Pretty much forgotten now, but it d.a.m.n-near brought the government down. A couple of the big concerns putting money into the Torque programme-Penton's, that still owns the Arrowhead Mines, that was the biggest-anyway, they got scared and pulled out, and the thing collapsed.

"This, Yag my son," Isaac indicated the book, "is why we ain't using Torque."

Yagharek slowly turned the pages. Sepia images of ruin pa.s.sed before them.

"Ah . . ." Isaac brought his finger down on a drab panorama of what looked like crushed gla.s.s and charcoal. The heliotype was taken from very low in the air. A few of the larger shards that littered the enormous, perfectly circular plain were visible, suggesting that the desiccated debris was the remains of once-extraordinary twisted objects.

"Now this is what's left of the heart of the city. That's where they dropped the colourbomb in 1545. That's what they said put an end to the Pirate Wars, but to be honest with you, Yag, they'd been over for a year before that, since New Crobuzon bombarded Suroch with Torque bombs. See, they dropped the colourbombs twelve months later to try to hide what they'd done hide what they'd done . . . only one went into the sea and two didn't work, so with only one left, they only cleared the central square mile or so of Suroch. These bits you can see . . ." He indicated low rubble at the edge of the circular plain. "From thereon out the ruins are still standing. That's where you can see the Torque." . . . only one went into the sea and two didn't work, so with only one left, they only cleared the central square mile or so of Suroch. These bits you can see . . ." He indicated low rubble at the edge of the circular plain. "From thereon out the ruins are still standing. That's where you can see the Torque."

He indicated that Yagharek should turn the page. Yagharek did so, and something clucked deep in his throat. Isaac supposed it was the garuda equivalent of a sudden intake of breath. Isaac looked briefly at the picture, then looked up, not too quickly, at Yagharek's face.

"Those things in the background like melting statues used to be houses," he said levelly. "The thing you're looking at, as far as they could work out, is descended from the domestic goat. Apparently they used to keep them as pets in Suroch. This could be second, tenth, twentieth generation post-Torque, obviously. We don't know how long they live."

Yagharek stared at the dead thing in the heliotype.

"They had to shoot it, he explains in the text," Isaac went on. "It killed two of the militia. They had a go at an autopsy, but those horns in its stomach weren't dead, even though the rest of it was. They fought back, nearly killed the biologist. Do you see the carapace? Weird splicing going on there." Yagharek nodded slowly.

"Turn the page, Yag. This next one, no one has the slightest idea what it used to be. Might have been spontaneously generated in the Torque explosion. But I think those gears there are descended from train engines." He tapped the pages gently. "The . . . uh . . . best best is yet to come. You haven't seen the c.o.c.kroach-tree, or the herds of what may once have been human." is yet to come. You haven't seen the c.o.c.kroach-tree, or the herds of what may once have been human."