Perdido Street Station Part 50

Even through the yajhu-saak yajhu-saak, Yagharek's heart reeled. He watched the thing progress in his mirrors. It fascinated him in an unholy way. He tracked its dark-winged silhouette, like some deranged angel, all studded with dangerous flesh and dripping bizarrely. Its wings were folded, though the slake-moth gently opened and closed them, now and then, as if to dry them in the warm air.

It crawled with a horrible sluggish torpor towards the invigorating city night.

Yagharek had not pinpointed its nest, and that was critical. His eyes batted inconstantly between the insidious creature itself and the patch of domed darkness from where he had first seen it rise.

And as he watched intently through his mounted mirrors, he won his prize.

He kept his eyes on a tangle of old architecture at the southwestern edge of the Gla.s.shouse. The buildings, amended and tinkered with after centuries of cactus occupation, had once been a clot of smart houses. There was almost nothing to distinguish them from their surroundings. They were a little taller than the neighbouring edifices, and their tops had been sliced off by the descending curve of the dome. But rather than demolish them outright, the buildings had been selectively cut, their upper floors taken off where they impeded the gla.s.s and the rest left intact. The further out from the centre the houses were, the lower the dome over them and the more of their raised floors had been destroyed.

It was originally the wedge of building at the fork where a street had split. The vertex of the terrace was almost intact, with only the roof removed. Behind it was a dwindling tail of brick storeys, shrinking under the ma.s.s of the dome, and evaporating at the edge of the cactus town.

From the uppermost window of this old structure emerged the unmistakable thrusting maw of a slake-moth.

Again, Yagharek's heart moved, and it was a stern effort that restored its regular beat. He experienced all his emotions at a remove, through a foggy filter of the hunting trance. And this time he was diffusely aware of excitement, as well as fear.

He knew where the slake-moths roosted.

Now that he had discovered what he had sought, Yagharek wanted to shin as fast as he could down the innards of the dome, to remove himself from the slake-moth's world, to get out of the heights of the air and hide on the ground under the looming eaves. But to move quickly, he realized, was to risk the slake-moth's attention. He had to wait, swinging very slightly, sweating, silent and immobile, while the monstrous creatures crawled out into the deeper darkness.

The second moth leapt without the slightest sound into the air, gliding on spread wings for a second and alighting on the metal bones of the Gla.s.shouse. It slid with a vile motion up towards its fellow.

Yagharek waited, without moving.

It was several minutes before the third moth appeared.

Its siblings had nearly reached the top of the dome, after a long, stealthy climb. The newcomer was too eager for that. It stood poised at the same window from which the others had emerged, gripping the frame, balancing its convoluted bulk on the edge of the wood. Then, with an audible snap of air, it beat its way straight upwards, into the sky.

Yagharek could not be sure where the next noise came from, but he thought the two crawling slake-moths hissed at their flying sibling, in disapproval or warning.

There was an answering hum. In the stillness of the Gla.s.shouse curfew, the clicking of mechanized gears from the top of the temple was easily heard.

Yagharek was quite still.

A light burst forth from the top of the pyramid, a blazing white ray, so sharp and defined it seemed almost solid. It beamed from the lens of the strange machine.

Yagharek stared through his mirrored gla.s.ses. In the faint ambience radiating backwards from the glaring searchlight he could see a crew of cactacae elders stationed behind it, each frantically adjusting some dial, some valve, one grasping two enormous handles that jutted from the back of the light-emitting engine. He swivelled and twisted the thing, directing its luminous shaft.

The light glared savagely onto a random patch of the dome's gla.s.s, then was wrested by its wielder into another position, swung randomly for a moment, then pinioned the impatient slake-moth as it reached the broken panes.

It turned its horned eyesockets to the light. The monstrous creature hissed.

Yagharek heard shouts from the cactus people on the ziggurat, a half-familiar tongue. It was an alloy, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d hybrid, mostly words he had last heard in Shankell, alongside New Crobuzon Ragamoll and other influences he did not recognize at all. As a gladiator in the desert city, he had learnt some of the language of his mostly cactus bookmakers. The formulations he heard now were bizarre, centuries out of date and corrupted with alien dialects, but still almost comprehensible to him.

". . . there!" he heard, and something about light. Then as the slake-moth dropped away again from the gla.s.s to extricate itself from the torch, he heard, very clearly, "It's coming!"

The slake-moth had easily fallen away and out of the reach of the enormous torch. Its beam oscillated wildly like a madman's lighthouse as the cactacae fought to point it in the right direction. Desperately they swung it over the streets, up at the roof of the dome.

The other two moths remained unseen, flattening themselves against the gla.s.s.

There was a shouted discussion from below.

". . . ready . . . sky . . ." he made out, then some word that sounded like the Shankell words for "sun" and "spear" run together. Someone shouted out to take care, and said something about the sunspear and the home: too far, too far, they shouted, they shouted, too far too far.

There was a barked order from the cactus directly behind the vast torch, and his team adjusted their motions obscurely. The leader demanded "limits," of what Yagharek could not understand.

As the light lurched wildly, it found its target again, momentarily. For a moment, the tangled presence of the slake-moth sent a ghastly shadow across the inside of the dome.

"Ready?" shouted the leader, and there was a confirming chorus.

He continued to swivel the lamp, desperately trying to pin the flying moth with its hard light. It swooped and curved, arcing over the tops of the buildings and careering in spirals, a dimly glimpsed display of virtuoso aerobatics, a shadowy circus.

And then, for a moment, the creature was caught spreadeagled in the sky, the light caught it full on and time seemed to stop at the sight of the thing's awesome, unfathomable and terrible beauty.

At the sight, the cactacae aiming the light tugged some hidden handle, and a gob of incandescence spat out of the lens and blazed along the path of the searchlight. Yagharek's eyes widened. The clot of concentrated light and heat spasmed out of existence a few feet before it hit the gla.s.s of the dome.

The momentary white-out seemed to still all sound in the dome.

Yagharek blinked to clear the afterimage of that savage projectile from his eyes.

The cactacae below began to talk again.

". . . get it?" asked one. There was a confusion of unclear answers.

They peered, along with Yagharek, unseen above them, into the air where the slake-moth had flown. They scoured the ground with their eyes, turning the powerful beam towards the pavement.

Throughout the streets below, Yagharek saw the armed patrols standing still, watching the searching light, standing implacable as it swept over them.

"Nothing," shouted one to the elders on high, and his report was repeated from all sectors, shouted into the claustrophobic night.

Behind the thick curtains and the wooden shutters of Gla.s.shouse's windows, threads of light spilt into the air as torches and gaslights were lit. But even woken by the crisis, the cactacae would not peer out into the darkness, would not take the risk on what they might see. The guards were left alone.

And then, with a sough of wind as lascivious as a s.e.xual breath, the cactus people on the temple summit learnt that they had not not hit the slake-moth: it had ducked in a sharp zigzagging manoeuvre out of the range of their sunspear, it had flown low enough over the rooftops to touch them, to claw its way towards the tower, to pull itself slowly up and to rise magisterially into view, wings outstretched to their full compa.s.s, patterns flickering across them as fierce and complex as dark fire. hit the slake-moth: it had ducked in a sharp zigzagging manoeuvre out of the range of their sunspear, it had flown low enough over the rooftops to touch them, to claw its way towards the tower, to pull itself slowly up and to rise magisterially into view, wings outstretched to their full compa.s.s, patterns flickering across them as fierce and complex as dark fire.

There was a tiny moment when one of the elders shrieked. There was a split second when the leader tried to tug the sunspear into position to blast the slake-moth into burning fragments. But they could not but see the wings unfolded before them, and their cries, their plans, evaporated as their minds overflowed.

Yagharek watched in his mirrored eyepieces, not wanting to see.

The two moths still clinging to the ceiling of the dome dropped suddenly away. They plummeted towards the earth, to lurch away from gravity with a stunning curving glide. They swept up the steep sides of the red pyramid, rising like devils from inside the earth, manifesting beside the transfixed cactacae horde.

One reached out with grasping creepers and whipped it around the thick leg of one of the cactus people. Thin arms and avaricious talons bit into cactus flesh without response, as the three slake-moths selected their victims, each grabbing hold of one of the entranced elders.

On the ground below the lights were moiling in confusion. The armed patrols were running in circles, shouting to each other, aiming their weapons skyward and lowering them again, cursing. They could see almost nothing. All they knew was that some vague, fluttering things were whirling like leaves around the top of the temple, and that the elders had stopped firing the sunspear.

A group of hard, brave warriors ran in to the entrance of the temple, racing up its wide staircases towards their leaders. They were too slow. They were helpless. The moths moved away from the building, slipping smoothly through the sky, their wings still stretched out, somehow flying while the wings presented an unmoving, mesmerizing vista. Each moth dipped slightly in the air as its prey was dragged from the edge of the brick. The three cactus elders dangled in snares, cat's-cradles of eerie slake-moth limbs, gazing up in stupor at the tumbling storm of night-colours on their captors' wings.

Several seconds before the squad of cactacae burst up from the trapdoor onto the roof, the moths disappeared. One by one, according to some flawless unspoken order, they shot straight up and burst out of the crack in the dome. They slipped out by some breakneck charm, pa.s.sing without a moment's pause through a gap not quite large enough for their wings.

They took their comatose prey with them, tugging the deadweight bodies into the night-city with a repulsive grace.

The cactus elders left beside the wilting sunspear shook themselves in confusion and exclaimed in amazement and discomfort as their minds returned to them. Their shouts became horrified when they saw that their companions had been taken. They wailed in rage and swung the sunspear up, aiming pointlessly at the empty skies. The younger warriors appeared, their rivebows and machetes poised. They looked around in confusion at the miserable scene and lowered their weapons.

Only then, finally, with the victims shouting blood-oaths and caterwauling in anger, with the night full of confused sounds, with the slake-moths flying out across the dark metropolis, did Yagharek emerge from the martial trance and continue climbing down the girders inside the Gla.s.shouse dome. The monkey-constructs saw him move, and followed him towards the streets.

He moved sideways along cross-beams, ensuring that he came to ground behind the backs of the houses, in the little sc.r.a.p of wasteland that surrounded the foetid stub of the ca.n.a.l.

Yagharek dropped the last few feet and landed silently, rolling on the broken bricks. He crouched and listened.

There were three little crunches as the mechanical apes landed around him and waited for orders or suggestions.

Yagharek peered into the filthy water beside him. The bricks were slippery with years of organic muck and slime. At one end, thirty feet or so within the dome's walls, it came to an abrupt brick end. This must have been the start of a little tributary onto the main ca.n.a.l system. Where it met the dome's wall, the ca.n.a.l was cut off with a rudely made blockage of concrete and iron. It had been hammered into place in the water, its edges sealed as tight as they could. There were still enough tiny impurities and channels in the sodden brickwork to ensure that the trench was kept full of water from outside. It seeped in through the decaying stone and eddied to a stop, thick with rubbish and dead things, a cloying broth of water-rotting filth.

Yagharek could smell it. He crept a little further away, towards the squat stumps of a wall that rose out of the shattered architecture. Outside, he realized, in the streets of the Gla.s.shouse, the frantic shouts continued. The air was full of idiot demands for action.

He was about to settle down, to wait for Shadrach and the others, when Yagharek saw mounds of the broken bricks rising all around him. They tumbled to the ground with a little thudding downpour. Isaac and Shadrach, Pengefinchess and Derkhan and Lemuel and Tansell rose out of the brickdust. Yagharek saw that a pile of sc.r.a.p-wire and gla.s.s behind them was two more monkey-constructs, moving forward now to join their fellows.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Isaac stumbled forward, trailing ashes and grime. The sewer muck that coated his clothes and bag was now coated with the grit from the collapsed buildings. His helmet-another like Shadrach's, complex and mechanical looking-lolled battered and absurd on his head.

"Yag," he said haltingly. "Good to see you, old son. So glad . . . you're all right." He grasped Yagharek's hand, and the garuda, taken aback, did not extricate himself from the grip.

Yagharek felt himself emerge from a reverie he had not known he was in, looking around him, seeing Isaac and the others clearly, for the first time. He felt a belated surge of relief. They were filthy and scratched and bruised, but none of them looked hurt.

"Did you see see it?" said Derkhan. "We'd just come up-it took us ages to work our way through the d.a.m.n sewers, we kept hearing things . . ." She shook her head at the memory. "We found our way up through a manhole and we were in a street not too far from here. It was chaos, total chaos! The patrols were all running towards the temple, and we saw some . . . that light-gun thing. It was quite easy to make our way here. No one was interested in us . . ." Her voice trailed off. "We didn't really see what happened," she concluded quietly. it?" said Derkhan. "We'd just come up-it took us ages to work our way through the d.a.m.n sewers, we kept hearing things . . ." She shook her head at the memory. "We found our way up through a manhole and we were in a street not too far from here. It was chaos, total chaos! The patrols were all running towards the temple, and we saw some . . . that light-gun thing. It was quite easy to make our way here. No one was interested in us . . ." Her voice trailed off. "We didn't really see what happened," she concluded quietly.

Yagharek breathed in deep.

"The moths are here," he said. "I have seen their nest. I can take us there."

The a.s.sembled company were elyctrified.

"Don't the d.a.m.n cactus know where they are?" said Isaac. Yagharek shook his head (a human gesture, the first he had learnt).

"They do not know the slake-moths sleep in their houses," said Yagharek. "I heard them shouting: they think the moths come in to attack them. They think them intruders from without. They do not . . ." Yagharek stopped, thinking of that panic-stricken scene on the top of the cactacae sun-temple, of the helmetless cactus elders, the brave, idiot soldiers charging up, lucky enough to have missed the moths, saving themselves from pointless death. "They do not know how to deal with the moths at all," he said quietly.

As he watched, Pengefinchess's undine swept over her shirt from below, wetting her skin, rinsing the dust from her and her clothes, leaving them incongruously clean.

"We should find the nest," said Yagharek. "I can take us to it."

The adventurers nodded and began an automatic inventory of their weapons and equipment. Isaac and Derkhan looked nervous, but set their jaws. Lemuel looked away sardonically and began to pick his nails with a knife.

"There is something you must know," said Yagharek. He was addressing everyone, and there was something peremptory in his tone, something that would not be ignored. Tansell and Shadrach looked up from carefully rummaging through their backpacks. Pengefinchess put down the bow she had been testing. Isaac looked at Yagharek with a terrible forlorn resignation.

"Three moths left by the broken roof, dandling mindless cactacae. But there are four. Vermishank told us. Perhaps he is wrong, or perhaps he lied. Perhaps another has died.

"Or perhaps," he said, "one has stayed behind. Perhaps one is waiting for us."

CHAPTER F FORTY-FOUR.

The cactacae patrols huddled together at the base of the Gla.s.shouse, arguing with the remaining elders.

Shadrach crouched behind an alley, out of sight, and pulled a miniature telescope from some hidden pocket. He flicked it out to its full extent, played it over the congregated soldiers.

"They really don't seem to know what to do," he mused quietly. The rest of the intruding gang were huddled behind him, flat against the damp wall. They were as un.o.btrusive as they could make themselves in the moving shadows cast by the elevated torches that sputtered and burnt above them. "That must be why they have this curfew going on. The moths are taking them. Of course, it may always be in place. Whatever-" he turned to face the others "-it's going to help us."

It was not hard to creep unseen through the darkened streets of the Gla.s.shouse. Their pa.s.sage was quite unimpeded. They followed Pengefinchess, who moved with a weird gait, halfway between a frog's leap and a thief's creep. She held her bow in one hand, in the other an arrow with a wide, f.l.a.n.g.ed head for use against cactacae, but she did not have to use it. Yagharek moved with her, a few feet behind, hissing directions at her. Occasionally she would stop and gesticulate behind her, flattening against the wall, hiding behind some cart or stall, watching as a brave or foolhardy soul above her pulled back the curtain from their window and peered into the street.

The five monkey-constructs scampered mechanically beside their organic companions. Their heavy metal bodies were quiet. They emitted only a few strange sounds. Isaac did not doubt that for the cactus people of the dome, the regular diet of nightmares would that night be amended to include some metallic scuttling thing, some clattering menace that stalked the streets.

Isaac found walking in the dome deeply unsettling. Even with the red-stone additions to the architecture and the spitting torchlight, the streets seemed basically normal. They could have been anywhere in the city. And yet, stretching over everything, creeping inwards from horizon to horizon, encircling the world like some claustrophobic sky, the enormous dome defined everything. Glimmers of light came through from outside, warped by the thick gla.s.s, uncertain and vaguely threatening. The black lattice of ironwork that held the gla.s.s in place ensnared the little townscape like a netting, like a vast spider's web.

At that thought, Isaac felt a sudden shuddering lurch of emotion.

He felt a vertiginous sense of certainty.

The Weaver was somewhere nearby.

He faltered as he ran and looked up. He had seen the world as a web, for a split second, had glimpsed the worldweb itself, and had sensed the proximity of that mighty arachnid spirit.

"Isaac!" hissed Derkhan, running past him. She pulled him with her. He had been standing still in the street, gazing skyward, desperately trying to find his way into that awareness again. He tried to whisper to her, to let her know what he had realized, as he stumbled after her, but he could not be clear and she could not listen. She dragged him with her through the dark streets.

After a twisting journey, ducking out of sight of patrols and glancing up at the glowering gla.s.s sky, they halted before a clutch of dark buildings, at the intersection of two deserted streets. Yagharek waited until they were all close enough to hear him, before turning and gesturing.

"From that top window there," he said.

The swooping dome bore down inexorably on the tail of the terrace, destroying the rooftops and reducing the ma.s.s of the street's houses to ever-more-squat piles of rubble. But Yagharek was pointing at the end furthest from the wall, where the buildings were mostly intact.

The three floors below the attic were occupied. Glimmers of light spilt from the edges of curtains.

Yagharek ducked back around the edge of a little alley and pulled the others in after him. Way off to the north, they could still hear the consternated shouting from the confused patrols, desperate to decide what to do.

"Even if it wasn't too risky to get the cactacae on our side," hissed Isaac, "we'd be f.u.c.ked f.u.c.ked if we tried to get them to help us now. They're in a d.a.m.n frenzy. One sniff of us and they'll go berserk, hack us up with those rivebows faster'n you can say 'knife.' " if we tried to get them to help us now. They're in a d.a.m.n frenzy. One sniff of us and they'll go berserk, hack us up with those rivebows faster'n you can say 'knife.' "

"We must go past the rooms where the cactus people sleep," said Yagharek. "We must get to the top of the house. We must find where the slake-moths come from."