Perdido Street Station Part 55

"Here I am," he murmured. "Naked as a dead man on the river's dawn. As requested."

He did not know if the Weaver's dreamlike p.r.o.nouncement, that it had hummed that ghastly night in the Gla.s.shouse, had been any kind of invitation. But he thought that by responding to it he might make it one, changing the patterns of the worldweb, weaving it into a conjuncture that might, he hoped, please the Weaver.

He had to see the magnificent spider. He needed the Weaver's help.

Halfway through the previous night, Isaac and his comrades had become aware that the night's tension, the unsettled sick feeling in the air, the nightmares, had returned. The Weaver's attack had failed, as it had predicted. The moths were still alive.

It had occurred to Isaac that his taste was known to them now, that they would recognize him as the destroyer of the egg-clutch. Perhaps he should have been petrified with fear, but he was not. The railside shack had been left alone.

Maybe they're afraid of me, he thought. he thought.

He drifted on the river. An hour pa.s.sed, and the sounds of the city waxed unseen around him.

The noise of bubbles disturbed him.

He leaned up gingerly on his elbow, his mind rapidly clicking back into focus. He peered over the edge of the boat.

Yagharek was still visible, his posture completely unchanged, on the riverbank. Now there were some few pa.s.sers-by behind him, ignoring him as he sat there covered up and smelling of filth.

Close to the boat, a patch of bubbles and disturbed water boiled up from below, snapping at the surface and sending out a ring of ripples about three feet across. Isaac's eyes widened momentarily as he realized that the circle of ripples was exactly exactly circular, and contained, that as each ripple reached its edge, it flattened impossibly, leaving the water beyond it undisturbed. circular, and contained, that as each ripple reached its edge, it flattened impossibly, leaving the water beyond it undisturbed.

Even as Isaac moved back slightly, a smooth black curve breached in the dark, disturbed water. The river fell away from the rising shape, splashing within the limits of the little circle.

Isaac was staring into the Weaver's face.

He snapped back, his heart beating aggressively. The Weaver stared up at him. Its head was angled so that only it emerged from the water, and not the looming body which rose higher when it stood.

The Weaver was humming, speaking deep in Isaac's skull.

. . . YOU PEACH YOU PLUMB THE ONE THE DEADNAKED AS WAS ASKED LITTLE FOURLIMBED YOU PEACH YOU PLUMB THE ONE THE DEADNAKED AS WAS ASKED LITTLE FOURLIMBED W WEAVER THAT YOU MIGHT BE . . . it said in a continuous lilting monologue . . . . . . it said in a continuous lilting monologue . . . RIVER AND DAWN IT DAWNS ON ME THE NEWS IS NUDES ABOB RIVER AND DAWN IT DAWNS ON ME THE NEWS IS NUDES ABOB . . . The words ebbed until they could not be properly heard, and Isaac took the chance to speak. . . . The words ebbed until they could not be properly heard, and Isaac took the chance to speak.

"I'm glad to see you, Weaver," he said. "I remembered our appointment." He breathed deep. "I need to talk to you," he said. The Weaver's humming, crooning incantation resumed, and Isaac struggled to understand, to translate the beautiful babbling into sense, to answer, to make himself heard.

It was like a dialogue with the sleeping or the mad. It was difficult, exhausting. But it could be done.

Yagharek heard the subdued chattering of children walking to school. They walked some way behind him where a path cut through the gra.s.s of the bank.

His eyes flickered across the water where the trees and wide white streets of Flag Hill stretched back from the water, on a gentle incline. There, too, the river was fringed with rough gra.s.s, but there was no path and there were no children. Nothing but the quiet walled houses.

Yagharek pulled his knees slightly closer and wrapped his body in his rank cloak. Forty feet into the river, Isaac's little vessel seemed unnaturally still. Isaac's head had bobbed tentatively into view some minutes ago, and now it remained poking slightly over the lip of the old boat, facing away from Yagharek. It looked as if he was staring intently at some patch of water, some flotsam.

It must, Yagharek realized, be the Weaver, and he felt excitement move him.

Yagharek strained to hear, but the light wind brought nothing to him. He heard only the lapping of the river and the abrupt sounds of the children behind him. They were curt, and cried easily.

Time pa.s.sed but the sun seemed frozen. The little stream of schoolboys did not ebb. Yagharek watched Isaac argue incomprehensibly with the unseen spider-presence below the surface of the river. Yagharek waited.

And then, some time after dawn but before seven o'clock, Isaac turned furtively in the boat, fumbled for his clothes and crawled like some slinking ungainly water-rat back into the Canker.

The anaemic morning light broke up on the river's surface as Isaac tugged himself through the water, towards the bank. In the shallows he performed a grotesque aquatic dance to pull on his clothes, before hauling himself streaming and heavy up the mud and scrub of the bank.

He collapsed before Yagharek, wheezing.

The schoolboys t.i.ttered and whispered.

"I think . . . I think it'll come," said Isaac. "I think it understood."

It was past eight when they got back to the railside hut. It was still and hot, thick with indolently drifting particles. The colours of the rubbish and the hot wood were bright where light breached the splintering walls.

Derkhan had still not returned. Pengefinchess slept in the corner, or pretended to.

Isaac gathered the vital tubes and valves, the engines and batteries and transformers, into a vile sack. He retrieved his notes, rifled through them briefly to check them, then stashed them back into his shirt. He scrawled a note for Derkhan and Pengefinchess. He and Yagharek checked and cleaned their weapons, counted their meagre store of ammunition. Then Isaac looked out of the ruined windows into the city which had woken around them.

They must be careful now. The sun had gained its strength, the light was full. Anyone might be militia, and every officer would have seen their heliotype. They drew their cloaks around them. Isaac hesitated, then borrowed Yagharek's knife and shaved bloodily with it. The sharp blade skittered painfully on the nodules and b.u.mps on his skin that were the reason he had first grown a beard. He was ruthless and quick, and soon stood before Yagharek with a pasty chin, inexpertly shorn of whiskers, bleeding and patched with copses of stubble.

He looked ghastly, but he looked different. Isaac dabbed at his bleeding skin as they set out into the morning.

By nine, after minutes of skulking, striding nonchalantly past shops and arguing pedestrians, finding backstreet routes wherever they existed, the companions were in the Griss Twist dump. The heat was unforgiving, and seemed greater in these canyons of discarded metal. Isaac's chin stung and tingled.

They picked their way over the wasteground towards the heart of the maze, towards the Construct Council's lair.

"Nothing." Bentham Rudgutter clenched his fists on his desk.

"Two nights we've had the airships up and searching. Nothing at all. Another crop of bodies every morning, and not a G.o.dsd.a.m.n thing all night. Rescue dead, no sign of Grimnebulin, no sign of Blueday . . ." He raised bloodshot eyes and looked across the table at Stem-Fulcher, who sucked gently at the pungent smoke of her pipe. "This is not going well," he concluded.

Stem-Fulcher nodded slowly. She considered.

"Two things," she said slowly. "It's clear that what we need is specially trained troops. I told you about Motley's officers." Rudgutter nodded. He rubbed and rubbed at his eyes. "We can easily match those. We could easily tell the punishment factories to run us off a squadron of specialist Remade, with mirrors and backwards weapons and all, but what we need is time time. We need to train them up. That's three, four months at the least. And while we're biding our time the slake-moths are just going to keep picking off citizens. Getting stronger.

"So we have to think about strategies for keeping the city under control. A curfew, for example. We know the moths can can get into houses, but there's no doubt that most of the victims are picked off the streets. get into houses, but there's no doubt that most of the victims are picked off the streets.

"Then we need to dampen speculation in the press about what's going on. Barbile wasn't the only scientist working on that project. We need to be able to stamp out any dangerous kind of sedition, we need to detain all the other scientists involved.

"And with half the militia engaged in slake-moth duties, we can't risk another dock strike, or anything similar. It could cripple us quickly. We owe it to the city to put an end to any unreasonable demands. Basically, Mayor, this is a crisis bigger than any since the Pirate Wars. I think it's time to declare a state of emergency. We need extraordinary powers.

"We need martial law."

Rudgutter pursed his lips mildly, and considered.

"Grimnebulin," said the avatar. The Council itself remained hidden. It did not sit up. It was indistinguishable from the mountains of filth and garbage around it.

The cable that entered the avatar's head emerged from the floor of metal shavings and stone debris. The avatar stank. His skin was patched with mould.

"Grimnebulin," he repeated in his uncomfortable, wavering voice. "You did not return. The crisis engine you left with me is incomplete. Where are the Is that went with you to the Gla.s.shouse? The slake-moths flew again last night. Did you fail?"

Isaac held his hands up to slow the questioning.

"Stop," he said peremptorily. "I'll explain."

Isaac knew that it was misleading to think of the Construct Council having emotions. As he told the avatar the story of that appalling night in the cactus Gla.s.shouse-that night of so-partial victory at such horrendous price-he knew that it was not anger or sadness that caused the man's body to shake, his face to spasm in random grotesqueries.

The Construct Council had sentience, but no feelings. It was a.s.similating new data, that was all. It was calculating possibilities.

He told it that the monkey-constructs had been destroyed and the avatar's body spasmed particularly sharply, as the information flooded back down the cable into the hidden a.n.a.lytical engines of the Council. Without those constructs, it could not download the experience. It relied on Isaac's reports.

As once before, Isaac thought he glimpsed a human figure fleeting in the rubbish around him, but the apparition was gone in an instant.

Isaac told the Council of the Weaver's intervention, and then, finally, began to explain his plan. The Council, of course, was quick to understand.

The avatar began to nod. Isaac thought he could feel infinitesimal movements in the ground under him, as the Council itself began to shift.

"Do you understand what I need from you?" said Isaac.

"Of course," replied the Construct Council in the avatar's reedy quaver. "And I will be linked directly to the crisis engine?"

"Yes," said Isaac. "That's how this is going to work. I forgot some of the components of the crisis engine when I left it with you, which is why it wasn't complete. But that's just as well, because when I saw them, they gave me the idea for all this. But listen: I need your help. If this is going to work we need the maths to be exact exact. I brought my a.n.a.lytical engine with me from the laboratory, but it's hardly a top-notch model. You, Council, are a network of d.a.m.n sophisticated calculating engines . . . right? I need you to do some sums for me. Work out some functions, print up some programme cards. And I need them perfect perfect. To an infinitesimal degree of error. All right?"

"Show me," said the avatar.

Isaac pulled out two sheets of paper. He walked over to the avatar, holding them out. In the dump's smell of oil and chymical mould and warming metal, the organic stink of the avatar's slowly collapsing body was shocking. Isaac creased his nose in disgust. But he steeled himself and stood beside the rotting, half-alive carca.s.s and explained the functions he had outlined.

"This page here is several equations I can't get the answers to. Can you read them? They're to do with the mathematical modelling of mental activity. This second page is more tricky. This is the set of programme cards I need. I've tried to lay out each function as exactly as I can. So here for example . . ." Isaac's stubby finger moved along a line of complicated logic symbols. "This is 'find data from input one; now model data.' Then here we have the same demand for input two . . . and this really complex one here: 'compare prime data.' Then over here are the constructive, remodelling functions.

"Is that all comprehensible?" he said, stepping back. "And can you do it?"

The avatar took the papers and scanned them carefully. The dead man's eyes moved in a smooth left-right-left motion along the page. It was seamless until the avatar paused and shuddered as data welled along the cable to the Construct's hidden brain.

There was a motionless moment, and then the avatar said: "This can all be done."

Isaac nodded in curt triumph. "We need it . . . well . . . now. As soon as possible. I can wait. Can you do that?"

"I will try. And then as evening falls and the slake-moths return, you will turn on the power, and you will connect me. You will link me up to your crisis engine."

Isaac nodded.

He fumbled in his pocket and drew out another piece of paper, which he handed to the avatar.

"That's a list of everything we need," he said. "It's all bound to be in the dump somewhere, or it can be rigged up. Do you have some . . . uh . . . some little yous somewhere that can track this stuff down? Another couple of those helmets you got for us, the ones communicators use; a couple of batteries; a little generator; stuff like that. Again, we need that now. The main thing is we need cable. Thick conducting cable, stuff that can take elyctrical or thaumaturgic current. We need two and a half, three miles miles of the stuff. Not all in one, obviously . . . it can be in pieces, as long as they can be connected easily one to the next, but we need of the stuff. Not all in one, obviously . . . it can be in pieces, as long as they can be connected easily one to the next, but we need ma.s.ses ma.s.ses. We have to link you up with our . . . with our focus." His voice quietened as he said this, and his face set. "The cable has to be ready this evening, by six o'clock I think."

Isaac's face was hard. He spoke in a monotone. He looked at the avatar carefully.

"There's only four of us, and one of those we can't rely on," he went on. "Can you contact your . . . congregation?" The avatar nodded slowly, waiting for an explanation. "See, we need people to connect those cables across the city." Isaac tugged the list out of the avatar's hands and began to sketch on the back: a jagged sideways Y for the two rivers, little crosses for Griss Twist, The Crow, and scribbles delineating Brock Marsh and Spit Hearth in between. He linked the first two crosses with a quick slash of pencil. He looked up at the avatar. "You're going to have to organize your congregation. Fast. Fast. We need them in place We need them in place with the cable with the cable by six o'clock." by six o'clock."

"Why do you not perform the operation here?" asked the avatar. Isaac shook his head vaguely.

"It wouldn't work. This is a backwater. We have to channel the power through the city's focal point, where all the lines converge.

"We have to go to Perdido Street Station."

CHAPTER F FORTY-SEVEN.