Perdido Street Station Part 22

"Anyone up there?" yelled David.

Isaac leaned over the railings and greeted him.

"Some chap came and dealt with the construct, David. Said you just had to stoke it up a bit and switch it on, said it should work."

"Good stuff. I'm sick of the rubbish. We get all yours, as well. Would that be deliberate?" David grinned.

"Why no," replied Isaac, ostentatiously shovelling dust and crumbs through the gaps in the railings with his foot. David laughed and wandered out of his sight. Isaac heard a metallic thud as David gave the construct an affectionate clout.

"I am also to tell you that your cleaner is a 'lovely old thing,' " said Isaac formally. They both laughed. Isaac came and sat halfway down the stairs. He saw David shovelling some pellets of concentrated c.o.ke into the construct's little boiler, an efficient triple-exchange model. David slammed shut and bolted the hatch. He reached up to the top of the construct's head and pulled the little lever into an on on position. position.

There was a hiss and a little whine as steam was pushed through thin pipes, slowly powering up the construct's a.n.a.lytical engine. The cleaner jerked spastically and settled back against the wall.

"That should warm up in a little while," said David with satisfaction, shoving his hands in his pockets. "What have you been up to, 'Zaac?"

"Come up here," answered Isaac. "I want to show you something."

When David saw the suspended coc.o.o.n he laughed briefly, and put his hands on his hips.

"Jabber!" he said. "It's enormous! When that thing hatches I'm running for cover . . ."

"Yeah, well, that's partly why I'm showing you. Just to say keep your eyes out for it opening. You can help me pin it inside a case." The two men grinned.

From below came a series of bangs, like water fighting its way through obstreperous plumbing. There was a faint hiss of pistons. Isaac and David stared at each other, nonplussed for a moment.

"Sounds like the cleaner's gearing up to some serious action," said David.

In the short, stubby byways of copper and bra.s.s that were the construct's brain, a welter of new data and instructions clattered violently. Transmitted by pistons and screws and innumerable valves, the grots and gobs of intelligence bottlenecked in the limited s.p.a.ce.

Infinitesimal jolts of energy burst through tiny, finely engineered steamhammers. In the centre of the brain was a box crammed with rank upon rank of minuscule on-off switches that puttered up and down at great and increasing speed. Each switch was a steam-powered synapse, pushing b.u.t.tons and pulling levers in intensely complicated combinations.

The construct jerked.

Deep in the construct's intelligence engine circulated the peculiar solipsistic loop of data that const.i.tuted the virus, born where a minute flywheel had skittered momentarily. As the steam coursed through the brainpan with increasing speed and power, the virus's useless set of queries went round and round in an autistic circuit, opening and shutting the same valves, switching the same switches in the same order.

But this time the virus was nurtured. Fed. The programmes that the repairman had loaded into the construct's a.n.a.lytical engine sent extraordinary instructions coursing throughout the crafted tubework cerebellum. The valves flapped and the switches buzzed in staccato tremors, all seemingly too fast to be anything but random motion. And yet in those abrupt sequences of numerical code, the rude little virus was mutated and evolved.

Encoded information welled up within those limited hissing neurones, fed into the recursive idiocy of the virus and spun out from it skeins of new data. The virus flowered. The moronic motor of its basic, mute circuit sped up, flung blossoms of newborn viral code spiralling away from it with a kind of binary centrifugal force, into every part of the processor.

Each of these subsidiary viral circuits repeated the process until instructions and data and self-generated programmes were flooding every pathway of that limited calculating engine.

The construct stood in the corner, shaking and whirring very slightly.

In what had been an insignificant corner of its valved mind, the original virus, the original combination of rogue data and meaningless reference that had affected the construct's ability to sweep floors, still revolved. It was the same, but transformed. No longer a destructive end, it had become a means, a generator, a motive power.

Soon, very soon, the central processing engine of the construct's brain was whirring and clicking at full capacity. Ingenious mechanisms kicked in at the behest of the new programmes buzzing through the a.n.a.logue valves. Sections of a.n.a.lytical capacity normally given over to movement and backup and support functions were folded in on themselves, doubling their capacity as the same binary function was invested with double meanings. The flood of alien data was diverted, but not slowed. Astounding articles of programme design increased the efficiency and processing power of the very valves and switches that were conducting them.

David and Isaac talked upstairs and grimaced or grinned at the sounds the hapless construct could not help but make.

The flow of data continued, transferred first from the repairman's voluminous set of programme cards and stored in the gently humming, clicking memory box, now converted into instructions in an active processor. On and on came the flow, a relentless wash of abstract instructions, nothing more than combinations of yes/no yes/no or or on/off on/off, but in such quant.i.ty, such complexity, that they approximated concepts.

And eventually, at a certain point, the quant.i.ty became quality. Something changed in the construct's brain.

One moment it was a calculating machine, attempting dispa.s.sionately to keep up with the gouts of data. And then awash in those gouts, something metal twitched and a patter of valves sounded that had not been instructed by those numbers. A loop of data was self-generated by the a.n.a.lytical engine. The processor reflected on its creation in a hiss of high-pressure steam.

One moment it was a calculating machine.

The next, it thought.

With a strange, calculating alien consciousness, the construct reflected on its own reflection.

It felt no surprise. No joy. No anger, no existential horror.

Only curiosity.

Bundles of data that had waited, circulating unexamined in the box of valves, became suddenly relevant, interacting with this extraordinary new mode of calculation, this autotelic processing. What had been incomprehensible to a cleaning construct made sudden sense. The data was advice. Promises. The data was a welcome. The data was a warning.

The construct was still for a long time, emitting little murmurs of steam.

Isaac leaned far over the railing, until it creaked unnervingly. He pushed over until his head was upside-down and he could see the construct beneath his and David's feet. Isaac watched its uncertain juddering starts and frowned.

As he opened his mouth to say something, the construct pushed itself up into an active posture. It extended its suction tube and began, tentatively at first, to clear the floor of dust. As Isaac watched, the construct extended a rotating brush behind it and began to scrub the boards. Isaac watched it for any signs of faltering, but its pace increased with almost palpable confidence. Isaac's face lightened as he watched the construct perform its first successful cleaning job for weeks.

"That's better!" Isaac announced over his shoulder to David. "d.a.m.n thing can clean again. Back to normal!"

CHAPTER T TWENTY-ONE.

In the huge, crisp coc.o.o.n, extraordinary processes began.

The caterpillar's swathed flesh began to break down. Legs and eyes and bristles and body-segments lost their integrity. The tubular body became fluid.

The thing drew on the stored energy it had drawn from the dreams.h.i.t and powered its transformation. It self-organized. Its mutating form bubbled and welled up into strange dimensional rifts, oozing like oily sludge over the brim of the world into other planes and back again. It folded in on itself, shaping itself out of the protean sludge of its own base matter.

It was unstable.

It was alive, and then there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead, but saturated with power.

And then it was alive again. But different.

Spirals of biochymical slop snapped into sudden shapes. Nerves that had unwound and dissolved suddenly spun back into skeins of sensory tissue. Features dissolved and reknitted in strange new constellations.

The thing flexed in inchoate agony and a rudimentary, but growing, hunger.

Nothing was visible from the outside. The violent process of destruction and creation was a metaphysical drama played out without an audience. It was hidden behind an opaque curtain of brittle silk, a husk that hid the changing with a brute, instinctual modesty.

After the slow, chaotic collapse of form, there was a brief moment when the thing in the coc.o.o.n was poised in a liminal state. And then, in response to unthinkable tides of flesh, it began to construct itself anew. Faster and faster.

Isaac spent many hours watching the chrysalis, but he could only imagine the struggle of autopoiesis within. What he saw was a solid thing, a strange fruit hanging by an insubstantial thread in the musty darkness of a large hutch. He was perturbed by the coc.o.o.n, imagining all manner of gigantic moths or b.u.t.terflies emerging. The coc.o.o.n did not change. Once or twice he prodded it gingerly, and set it rocking gently and heavily for a few seconds. That was all.

Isaac watched and wondered about the coc.o.o.n when he was not working on his engine. It was that that took most of his time.

Piles of copper and gla.s.s began to take shape on Isaac's desk and floor. He spent his days soldering and hammering, attaching steam-pistons and thaumaturgic engines to the nascent engine. His evenings he spent in pubs, in discussion with Gedrecsechet, the Palgolak Librarian, or David or Lublamai, or ex-colleagues from the university. He spoke carefully, not giving away too much, but with pa.s.sion and fascination, drawing out discussions on maths and energy and crisis and engineering.

He did not stray from Brock Marsh. He had warned his friends in Salacus Fields that he would be out of touch, and those relationships were fluid anyway, relaxed, superficial. The only person he missed was Lin. Her work was keeping her at least as busy as him, and as the momentum of his research picked up, it was increasingly difficult to find times when they could meet.

Instead, Isaac sat up in bed and wrote her letters. He asked her about her sculpture, and he told her that he missed her. Every other morning or so he would stamp and post these letters in the box at the end of his street.

She wrote back to him. Isaac used her letters to tease himself. He would not let himself read them until he had finished his day's work. Then he would sit and drink tea or chocolate in his window, sending his shadow out over the Canker and the darkening city, and read her letters. He was surprised at the sentimental warmth these moments made him feel. There was a degree of maudlin relish in the moods, but just as much affection, a real connection, a lack he felt when Lin was not there.

Within a week he had built a prototype of the crisis engine, a banging, spitting circuit of pipes and wire that did nothing more than produce noise in great gobbets and barks. He took it apart and rebuilt it. A little over three weeks later another untidy conglomerate of mechanical parts sprawled before the window, where the cages of winged things had gained their freedom. It was uncontained, a vague grouping of separate motors and dynamos and converters spread across the floor, connected by rough-and-ready engineering.

Isaac wanted to wait for Yagharek, but the garuda could not be contacted, living as he was like a vagrant. Isaac believed it to be Yagharek's weird, inverted clutching at dignity. Living on the street he was beholden to none. The pilgrimage he had made across the continent would not end with him gratefully relinquishing his responsibility, his self-control. Yagharek was a deracinated outsider in New Crobuzon. He would not rely on, or be thankful to, others.

Isaac imagined him moving from place to place, sleeping on bare floors in deserted buildings, or curled up on roofs, huddled by steam-vents for heat. It might be an hour before he came to visit, or it might be weeks. It only took half a day of waiting before Isaac decided to test his creation in Yagharek's absence.

In the belljar where the wires and tubes and flexing cables converged, Isaac had placed a piece of cheese. It sat there, drying slowly, while he hammered at the keys of his calculator. He was trying to mathematize the forces and vectors involved. He stopped often to take notes.

Below him, he heard the sniffling of Sincerity the badger, and Lublamai's clucking response, the humming progress of the cleaning construct. Isaac was able to ignore them all, zone them out, focus on the numbers.

He felt a little uncomfortable, unwilling to pursue his work with Lublamai in the room. Isaac was still pursuing his unusual policy of silence. Perhaps I'm just developing a taste for the theatrical, Perhaps I'm just developing a taste for the theatrical, he thought, and grinned. When he had solved his equations as best he could, he dawdled, willing Lublamai to leave. Isaac peered under the walkway at where Lublamai scrawled diagrams on graph paper. He did not look as if he were about to go. Isaac grew tired of waiting. he thought, and grinned. When he had solved his equations as best he could, he dawdled, willing Lublamai to leave. Isaac peered under the walkway at where Lublamai scrawled diagrams on graph paper. He did not look as if he were about to go. Isaac grew tired of waiting.

He picked his way through the miasma of metal and gla.s.s that littered his floor and squatted gently with the information-input of the crisis engine on his left. The circuit of machinery and tubes described a meandering circle around the room, culminating in the cheese-filled belljar by his right hand.

Isaac held a flexing metal tube in one hand, its end connected to his laboratory boiler by the far wall. He was nervous, and excited. As quietly as he could, he connected the tube to the power-input valve on the crisis engine. He released the catch and felt the steam begin to fill the motor. There was a hissing hum and a clattering. Isaac knelt over and copied his mathematical formulae on the input keys. He slotted four programme cards quickly into the unit, felt the little wheels slide and bite, saw the dust rise as the engine's vibrations increased.

He murmured to himself and watched intently.

Isaac felt as if he could sense the power and data pa.s.sing through the synapses to the various nodes of the dismembered crisis engine. He felt as if the steam was pushing through his own veins, turning his heart into a hammering piston. He flicked three large switches on the unit, heard the whole construction warming up.

The air hummed.

For sluggish seconds, nothing happened. Then, in the dirty belljar, the clump of cheese began to shudder.

Isaac watched it and wanted to shout with triumph. He twisted a dial one hundred and eighty degrees and the thing moved a little more.

Let's bring on a crisis, Isaac thought, and pulled the lever that made the circuit complete, that brought the gla.s.s jar under the attention of the sensory machines. Isaac thought, and pulled the lever that made the circuit complete, that brought the gla.s.s jar under the attention of the sensory machines.

Isaac had adapted the belljar, cutting away its top and replacing it with a plunger. He reached for this now and began to press it, so that its abrasive bottom moved slowly towards the cheese. The cheese was under threat. If the plunger completed its motion the cheese would be completely crushed.

As Isaac pressed with his right hand, with his left he adjusted k.n.o.bs and dials in response to juddering pressure gauges. He watched their needles plunge and leap and adjusted the thaumaturgic current in response.

"Come on, you little f.u.c.ker," he whispered. "Look out, eh? Can't you feel it? Crisis coming for you . . ."

The plunger edged s.a.d.i.s.tically closer and closer to the cheese. The pressure in the pipes was growing dangerously high. Isaac hissed in frustration. He slowed the pace with which he threatened the cheese, moving the plunger inexorably down. If the crisis engine failed and the cheese did not show the effects he had tried to programme, Isaac would still crush it. The crisis was all about potentiality. If he had no genuine intention to crush the cheese, it would not be in crisis. You could not trick trick an ontological field. an ontological field.

Then, as the whine from steam and singing pistons became uncomfortable, and the edges of the plunger's shadow sharpened as it bore down on the base of the belljar, the cheese exploded. There was a loud semi-liquid smack, as the nugget of cheese blew up with speed and violence, spattering the inside of the belljar with crumbs and oil.

Lublamai yelled up, asking what in Jabber's name was that, but Isaac was not listening. He sat gawping at the destroyed cheese like a fool, his mouth slack. Then he laughed with incredulity and joy.

"Isaac? What the f.u.c.k you up to?" yelled Lublamai.

"Nothing, nothing! Sorry to bother you . . . Just some work . . . Going pretty well, actually . . ." Isaac's reply was interrupted as he broke off to smile.

He turned off the crisis engine quickly and lifted the belljar. He ran his fingers over the smeared, half-melted mess inside. Incredible! Incredible! he thought. he thought.

He had attempted to programme the cheese to hover an inch or two above the floor. So from that point of view, he supposed this was a failure. But he had not expected anything anything to happen! Certainly, he had got the maths wrong, misprogramming the cards. It was obvious that specifying the effects he was aiming for would be extremely hard. Probably the tapping process itself was appallingly crude, leaving all sorts of room for errors and imperfections in the process. And he hadn't even to happen! Certainly, he had got the maths wrong, misprogramming the cards. It was obvious that specifying the effects he was aiming for would be extremely hard. Probably the tapping process itself was appallingly crude, leaving all sorts of room for errors and imperfections in the process. And he hadn't even tried tried to create the kind of permanent feedback loop that he was eventually aiming for. to create the kind of permanent feedback loop that he was eventually aiming for.

But, but . . . he had tapped crisis energy. he had tapped crisis energy.

This was totally unprecedented. For the first time, Isaac truly believed that his ideas would work. From now on, the job was one of refinement. A lot of problems, of course, but problems of a different and much lesser order. The basic conundrum, the central problem of all of crisis theory, had been solved solved.

Isaac gathered his notes, leafed through them reverentially. He could not believe what he had done. Immediately, more plans came to him. Next time, Next time, he thought, he thought, I'll use a piece of vodyanoi watercraeft. Something already held together by crisis energy. That should make life a whole lot more interesting, maybe we can start getting that loop going . . . I'll use a piece of vodyanoi watercraeft. Something already held together by crisis energy. That should make life a whole lot more interesting, maybe we can start getting that loop going . . . Isaac was giddy. He slapped his forehead and grinned. Isaac was giddy. He slapped his forehead and grinned.

I'm going out, Isaac thought suddenly. Isaac thought suddenly. I'm going to . . . to get drunk. I'm going to find Lin. I'm going to have a night off. I've just solved one of the intractable d.a.m.n problems in one of the most controversial paradigms of science and I'm going to . . . to get drunk. I'm going to find Lin. I'm going to have a night off. I've just solved one of the intractable d.a.m.n problems in one of the most controversial paradigms of science and I deserve a drink . . . He smiled at his mental outburst, then grew serious. He realized that he had decided to tell Lin about the crisis engine. I deserve a drink . . . He smiled at his mental outburst, then grew serious. He realized that he had decided to tell Lin about the crisis engine. I can't think about it on my own any more, I can't think about it on my own any more, he thought. he thought.

He checked that he had his keys and his wallet in his pockets. He stretched and shook himself, then descended to the ground floor. Lublamai turned at the sound of his feet.

"I'm off, Lub," said Isaac.

"You calling it a day, Isaac? It's only three."